Weekly Scorecard 6-14-10
The numbers for the week shows a spread between the pending sales and the sold numbers to be about 50%; with the sold numbers being higher. This shows a slowing of volumes post tax credit. What something like a short term tax credit does is “borrow” buyers from the future and it takes a few months for the market to get back into a normal equilibrium after the expiration of the incentives. I suspect about September or even August we will be seeing what the true underlying market demand is. However sales do continue to happen and pricing appears stabile with average sold per sq. ft. price being roughly on par with the pending per sq. ft. price. When the market was diving in the winter of 2009 you would see the pending per sq. ft. pricing lower than the average per sq. ft. sold. This is not the case now and I suspect this real estate market in the next couple of months will have adjusted to the new economics.
The spreadsheet is here: Weekly scorecard 6-13-10