A long walk off a short pier
In case you’re wondering, we now have 584 single family houses on the market, 169 of which are priced above $4.5 million. Four houses in that price category have gone to contract in the past 90 days, 15 in the past 6 months and 47 in the past 12 months. Readers with a long memory will recall that 12 months ago, there was still an active real estate market (although even at 47 per year, we’d have a 3.6 year inventory).
I assume that we’ll soon see some kind of pick up from the current four- sales-per-quarter rate, which is pretty dismal even for a recession. One hundred-sixteen $4.5 million + houses sold in 2007, 101 in 2006 and 107 in 2005, and if we come close to those numbers again, we’ll be in good shape. If not, we’re looking at a 10 1/2 year inventory of expensive houses and that would be interesting, eh?
