Reinforcing data...

From one of my real estate news feeds comes this story, which reinforces yesterday's posting on trends that I'm seeing locally.

There was some good news this month for Midwestern cities hardest hit by the housing downturn.

In 10 of the 26 markets analyzed by Altos Research and Real IQ, asking prices increased in July, with the largest monthly gain in hard-bitten Detroit, up 4.8 percent. Denver and Cleveland also showed solid improvement, up 2.3 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.

Asking prices fell in July by more than 1 percent in Phoenix, Miami, Tampa, Fla., New York, Salt Lake City, Washington, DC, San Jose, Calif. and Los Angeles. The largest monthly decline occurred in Las Vegas with a fall of 4 percent.

Inventory levels declined in 20 of the 26 markets followed by Altos with Detroit and Cleveland contracting the most at 6.1 percent and 4.0 percent respectively.

Inventories rose by the largest amount in Portland and Seattle, up 8.2 percent and 2.8 percent respectively. Other markets with inventory increases were San Jose, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia.

Days on the market declined in just three of 26 markets in July with Detroit down 3.8 percent. Cleveland declined 7.4 percent and Las Vegas was down 7 percent.

Inventory turnover increased the most in Atlanta, rising 29.4 percent, followed by New York City with an 18.6 percent increase and Austin up 15.4 percent.

I can certainly support these positive findings with local anecdotal examples and the data that I collect and chart on a weekly basis on my Web site www.themilfordteam.com. I have noticed that the percentage of sales involving foreclosed homes is also down locally, which is good news. That means that more “regular” sales are taking place lately. Some areas locally have also seen a slight decline in their Days-On-Market (DOM) numbers, meaning that homes arte selling faster.

It has also been interesting to see the inventory go up slightly during the summer months (which is to be expected and is an annual thing), while the DOM numbers declined, showing greater strength in the market right now. The expected time to sell has also declined recently, albeit only slightly from 20 months to 19; but, that is another step in the right direction.

Maybe we haven’t really turned the corner yet; but, I get the sense that we are at least peeking around it!