A most unusual week in real estate

I've been tracking six markets in my immediate area for several years now and I believe that this is the first week ever that I had one of the markets not record a single sale. I don't track sales below $20,000, which includes all leases; so there was the possibility that I missed seeing a really low priced sale. I looked and that was not the case. For last week the Brighton market - city and township - did not record a single sale. There was one lease for $2,000/week; but, that was it.

It's not as if Brighton is my smallest market either. Milford, followed by Highland are smaller, in terms of units sold year-to-date. The South Lyon/Lyon Twp market is also smaller in terms of units. So it is a bit unusual that the Brighton market would be silent for a whole week. Maybe there is a pent-up demand building - the Brighton Bubble, so to speak - that will burst forth next week, as the month comes to an end.

Otherwise, and elsewhere, the markets that I track seem to be following a pattern of stabilizing and even rising home sale prices (at least in the averages and medians that I measure). Inventory is still down a bit and homes above $200K are finally selling. The foreclosed and short-sales, as a percentage of overall sales continues to fluctuate above and below the 50% mark, with last weeks sales made up of 53% of those distressed categories, after having been below 50% for a couple of weeks.

It's great to see activity in the segments of the market above $200K. That gives me great hope that a recovery has in fact started. All indication are that, if we have not started back up, we are at least bouncing along the bottom, with things not getting worse either. Time and the benefit of hindsight will tell us eventually if we had reached the bottom by this date. I'll see yo in the future where we can pontificate mightily that we knew it all along.