“Improving” and “market” in one sentence? Yep. Don’t take my word for it. Follow this series of posts, each dedicated to a single market indicator (in no particular order), and draw your own conclusion. Am I nuts? Am I right on? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.
In the first post of this series we took at the decreasing inventory of homes for sale in Bullhead City. Most notable was the 15% drop from the beginning of 2009. Today let’s see what’s going on over on the other side of supply and demand.
Exhibit B: Pending Sales
When a buyer and seller enter into a purchase contract, escrow is opened and the sale is considered to be pending until escrow closes. Since a typical escrow is at least 30 days, closed sales are really a measure of demand in the past. However, you can get a good feel for current demand by counting pending sales.
March is typically one of the busiest months of the year in Bullhead City for pending sales, but take at the chart below:
You can see that pending sales just about doubled from February to March, and they were up by 43% year-over-year.
It really speaks for itself. Clearly more people were buying homes in March than we have seen in quite a long time, but why?
Is it low prices? Low interest rates? Is the government stimulus actually working? Maybe it’s the Home Buyer Tax Credit? Or are people just tired of waiting?
Maybe it’s a combination of all of those things. What do you think?
Next up, Exhibit C: Absorption Rate
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