Inventory, Price and Applications

Let’s take a look at Sacramento inventory, asking price and mortgage applications today. A quick check at Housing Tracker revealed inventory is still growing and prices are inching up. As of May 1 there were 8,914 homes on the market in our area with a median asking price of $395,000. During the month that is a 10 percent increase in homes from the 8,103 homes available on April 1. The median asking price has increased 1.4 percent in the last month, 2.3 percent in the last two months but is still 1% below where it was on September 1, 2005 (six months ago) at $399,000. Of interest is what has happened in the past few weeks. The increase in homes on the market is accelerating. In each of the four weeks in April the increase has been larger than the previous week. The week of April 21 to April 28 had an increase of 221 and then on May 1, three days later the number grew over 200. This is the selling season and there is clearly increased activity in the market but it may still be a while before we see the growth in homes available slow and start declining.

Another interesting report available is what The Mortgage Bankers Association calls their Weekly Mortgage Application Survey. It is an index that measures application volume and during the week of April 28 they have reported volume is up 8.8 percent from the previous week. Purchase loan volume was up 11.3 percent while refinance applications increased 5.1 percent. The refinance share of the activity decreased to 35.2 percent which is the lowest it has been since June 25, 2004. There full report can be seen at Mortgage Application Volume Rebounds in Latest Survey.