Florida Numbers

Following are "The Numbers" from Mike Morgan at MorganFlorida.
The first set of numbers are for the last 7 days. The second set of numbers are for the prior week. Sold represents a home that was under contract and has closed, while Pending sales are contracts written this week, but they don’t all close. Less than 85% of Pending listings will actually close.

• New Listings - 541/508
• Price Drops - 177/228
• Sold - 67/41
• Pending - 50/42
• Listings to Pending Sales = 10.8212.09
• Listings to Closings (Sold) = 8.079/12.39
• Open Houses – No Open Houses. Holiday Weekend.
• Sales – Nothing sold this week.
• Showings – A slow week. The only homes that had showings were those with recent price drops.
• Listings – We received 10-12 calls from new sellers, but we turned down all listing requests this week with the exception of two. The two listings we took were referrals from good clients. Moving forward we are not going to take any listings unless they are priced 2-5% under the market.
• Buyer Inquiries – A new category for the weekly report. We saw an average week for the number of inquiries, maybe even a bit up. Unfortunately, all of these potential buyers were looking for bargains. That is the first thing out of their mouth. Not only bargains, but steals. The typical caller wants a home with 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 car garage on an acre with a pool for under $300,000. Me too.
• Inventory – Still building, but we did see the rate of build-up slow down a bit this week. Please don’t take that as very much of a positive sign. We are still seeing 10 listings for every contract.
• Advertising – The deadline for the next issue of the Real Estate Book is in one week. If you want to feature your home in the next issue, the cost is $450 for a full page or $150 for a one third page. We only run full page ads with either 1, 2 or 3 homes per page, as compared to most agents that crowd in 9-12 tiny listings.
• Rental Market – We turned down all requests from flippers that want to rent. The rental market is flooded with flippers trying to salvage something out of their investments. Unfortunately, there are far more vacant homes than renters.
• Home Builders – The builders are lowering prices and offering a variety of incentives.
• Suggestions – Selling Agent Bonuses. These are still the homes that are getting the most showings. If you must sell, I suggest dropping the price now versus later. The market is getting softer. If you wait, prices will continue to drop and you will be trying to catch a very sharp knife.

Possibly the most interesting factoid of Mike's Email is his refusal to take listings that are not UNDER priced:

We turned down all listing requests this week with the exception of two. The two listings we took were referrals from good clients. Moving forward we are not going to take any listings unless they are priced 2-5% under the market.

The situation in Florida will soon spread to all of the other bubble areas.
You can see it already with rising foreclosures in Denver, Ohio, Indiana, and now California.

Mike Shedlock / Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/