The Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS has just announced October’s housing numbers and surprises us with a whopper: In October 2011 there were fewer homes for sale than any October since 2004!
The inventory of Twin Cities homes for sale has seen a progressive decline since its peak in 2007 and that decline I believe is likely to continue into 2012. Many homeowners today that want to sell cannot because of the market and thus are staying put and not putting their homes on the market. Further, with the large number of foreclosures and short sales sold in recent years, the number of “move up” buyers is greatly reduced since when a foreclosure or short sale sells there isn’t a new buyer created.
Home unit sales are still down significantly from 2004′s levels though so our housing supply is still not balanced, but it is getting closer and closer each month. We will likely in fact swing to a statistical seller’s market in the next couple years, but I don’t see that as creating much upward pressure on prices but rather will put a good support in for the prices we are at.
