It’s Wednesday and time again for the weekly inventory update. It’s a historic event actually, the first time we’ve seen a real decline in the GSMLS Active Listings in quite some time. When I noticed this today, I decided to do a bit digging into the underlying activity behind the change this week, what I found was rather interesting, but first the numbers:
GSMLS
11/16 – 12833
11/23 – 12693
NJMLS
11/16 – 5801
11/23 – 5811
Hudson MLS
11/16 – 1764
11/23 – 1784
Now let’s explore what I found happened to the GSMLS numbers this week. At first glance someone might see the decline and proclaim “They are buying again!” Sorry, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, the active listings did decline, but it wasn’t because of sales.
Here is a breakdown of the weekly activity on GSMLS for Northern NJ (Ber, Ess, Hud, Mor, Pas, Som, Sus, Uni, War):
New Listings: 831
Back on Market: 130
Total Listings Added To Active: 960
Total Listings Sold: 670
At this point you are probably saying, “Grim, but you said we saw a decline, how can it be?” I asked myself the same question, and dug deeper yet.
Expired Listings: 194
Withdrawn Listings: 191
Temporarily Withdrawn: 92
Total Withdrawn or Expired: 477
Ah hah! Now it makes sense! We had a net loss of 186 listings, but it wasn’t due to sales picking up. Comparing a real demand (Sales) of 670 with a supply of 961 still shows us that inventory is being added at a rate faster than consumers are purchasing. So what about the withdrawn or expired listings? Well who knows really, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing them back in the spring.
Caveat Emptor!
Grim
James — In one town I’ve been tracking, I did see 3-4 houses (out of around 50) go into contract over the last 2 weeks. [ 2 houses fell out of contract/review]. This is a very small sample, of course. In 3 other towns, I saw no such uptick.
It could be people rushing to make a deal before the holiday closing season.
Incidentally, one house I’ve been tracking in Roseland was originally listed at $699. No bites, was reduced to $649 and relisted. Finally sold for $610.
Some people might be pulling listings to relist in spring (which could lead to big inventory spike then)
Grim, we talked about this property not too long ago that you visited. Here’s a move I’ve been seeing more of. A withdrawal of a listing and then a re-listing with a higher price. Seems the RE agents are still using their old tricks of listing high and hoping buyers thinking an offer lower than listing would be a bargain. Any RE agent representing the buyer worth their weight in salt would find both listings and know the ploy.
Original listing:
http://listings.gsmls.com/SearchDetail/Scripts/PrtBuyFul/PrtBuyFul.asp?prp=Mls&MlsNumList=2205614
New listing:
http://listings.gsmls.com/SearchDetail/Scripts/PrtBuyFul/PrtBuyFul.asp?prp=Mls&MlsNumList=2218113
Nice catch there Richard, I was actually in that home during an open house.
It’s a completely remodelled home, not bad. But considering they only paid 308k for it in ’02. Sorry, they didn’t add 300k in value, the total amount of the renovations were likely under 100k.
Oh, and keep in mind it has a shared driveway with a home directly behind it, no real backyard, and an entirely unusable garage.
A big thumbs down to Schweppe Burgdorf and their relisting tactics. This kind of behavior should not be dismissed as insignificant.
grim
grim ghost,
I agree, if you go back through the archives and look for the historical sales data, you’ll see a decline after the peak with a slight bump in December, finally sliding far downhill into February.
grim
You want unethicality ?
There was a house in Warren listed at $624K. Pretty big house in a great town, but it was in a flood zone and its report said that.
Then it gets withdrawn and relisted at $599K. Only this time the GSMLS report says unknown for Flood Area. It seems to have got a bite now. Maybe it was in the sellers disclosure but this is darn unethical.
Oh, well isn’t that nice. I guess they are hoping that they can get someone to at least take a look instead of just skipping it because it’s flood. I’m sure it’s in the sellers disclosure, but it’s obvious they know, so it should have been in the MLS as well..
grim
Fools buying at these prices.
Buy now and regret later.