News headlines can leave you scratching your head. Like this one from the Press Enterprise.
"It was yet a different story in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Kleinhenz noted, where last month sales dropped 25 percent from a year earlier despite the eagerness of buyers to take advantage of dual tax credits."
"Inland area sales down 25% from a year ago". Say what, Dataquick's May report has IE sales down roughly 7%, so how can another report have the sales down 25%. Reading the article it's hard to tell but this is actually just existing homes (no new homes). Still that's a pretty shocking number if it's true. Of course the Tax credit expired so that will have something to do with the drop in sales. But a drop of 25% is a scary number, it means the market is pretty damn BAD. With only a week left to close and still get the tax credit you have to wonder what the sales will be like next month.
Even with sales tapering off (when they should be climbing due to the summer buying season) I don't see the inventory climbing much. There's still a shortage of decent properties at decent prices. There's lots of mediocre or trashy homes priced way too high but few nice homes. REO's are still few and far between. The forecast "flood" of REOs so far has not materialized. Short sales are still the majority of the listings. Even with the Obamanomics plan to speed short sales they are still a royal pain in the butt to deal with.
So far this year nothing has gone as anyone expected. No flood of foreclosures when the moratoriums and workout plans ended. Rates didn't shoot up when the MBS program ended, in fact they've actually gone down (sure much of that was due to the stock market crashing again). And the expected flood of sales from the end of the tax credit also isn't materializing. It seems like we are experiencing "opposite day" (sorry for the sponge bob reference) but our opposite day is lasting a year........