Sales improving, but inventory increasing at faster pace
Market Watch: Highland Park, Deerfield, Northbrook and Glenview Illinois Sales of existing homes (excludes new construction) in all 4 suburbs is picking up slightly. During the 12 weeks endeing June 1st, 17 single family homes sold (closed) per week, on average. This is an increase over the prior 12-week period where 11 homes were sold each week. With a similar trend, we saw an average of 25 homes go under contract each week during the most recent 12-week period. This was an increase from an average of 11 homes going under contract each week druing the prior 12 weeks. Details for each community are in the downloadable chart below. Inventory levels, however, continued to rise. During the one week ending June 1st there were well over 1240 single family homes available for sale in all 4 suburbs combined - with an average of 1,172 homes available for each week during the most recent 12-week period. The prior 12 weeks the average number of homes for sale was 981. The median price of the homes sold and going under contract have been increasing slightly each week. At first this puzzled me. But then I realized that since in general prices of homes have been going down, the best way to interpret this increase in the median price is as follows: Most of the people making purchases recently did not have a property to sell, since these are peole lease affected by the current makret slump. Many of these are probably first-time home buyers, purchasing smaller, less expensive homes. As these first-time buyers make their purchases, this then allows the sellers to turn around and purchase larger homes. So that increase in the median price just shows that the smaller homes are selling first. Hopefully this will continue to trickel up through all of the price ranges. Download market_watch_6.08 chart.docx Thanks for reading! nsk

