Highest November Contract Activity in 5 Years, Inventories Continue to Shrink

Rockville, MD –(December 12, 2011) – The following analysis of the Washington, D.C. Metro Area housing market has been prepared by RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), and is based on the November 2011 RBI Pending Home Sales Index™ released today.

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OVERVIEW

The number of contracts signed in the Washington, D.C. metro area for the month of November outpaced the 5-year November average pace by 23.3%.  While month-over-month sales usually decline at this time of year in this market, with a 10 year average drop of 6.2% , there was actually a 3.9% month-over-month increase in closed sales this November. Median sales price also showed an improvement over seasonal patterns,  increasing 4.7% from October to $335,000, whereas the 10 year average change is a nominal 0.3% increase month-over-month. While the median sales price showed some resilience, due in part to a 13.6% decline in foreclosed sales from October, it slipped 3.0% year-over-year from November 2010.

In the interest of saving keystrokes, we'll go ahead and quote directly from NAR's Economists' Outlook post regarding national inventory trends... 

"The total homes listed for sale continue to move downward.  The latest decline in October to 3.33 million was partly seasonal, as autumn and winter months nearly always have fewer listings in comparison with spring and summer months.  Still, examining listings only in the month of October (so as to get an apple-to-apple comparison), this year saw the lowest inventory since 2005."

Lawrence Yun - Chief Economist, NAR

Click here to see national inventory trends for October going back to 2001. Here's a chart listing the existing home inventory levels for the MRIS footprint, Baltimore Metro, and DC Metro regions.  Refer to Mr. Yun's summary above when looking at our local chart below...