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Pending Sales May Be Up 8% Nationally, But That’s Not The Case Here in Solano County
April 5th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Vallejo
There were all sorts of stories on the internet today from real estate bloggers bubbling over the National Assn. of Realtor’s report earlier in the day that the Pending Home Sales Index for February was up more than 8% from January and 17% above where it was a year ago.
In touting the huge increase, NAR suggested that the one-month jump “may signal the early stages of a second surge of home sales this spring.”
So it was no surprise when many of my real estate colleagues all over the country jumped on that press release and quickly spun their own idyllic stories about how the real estate market was ready to take off again.
Still, as someone who tracks the housing numbers here in Benicia, Vallejo and the rest of Solano County on a regular basis, I had to scratch my head.
For just a few weeks ago, here on this very site, I had posted the following story: Ugly February Home Sale Numbers For Solano County: Are We Taking A Step Back?
In that post, according to my statistics, February’s total number of sales was down 6% in Solano County. And the median price was also down from the previous month — by 7%.
That made it very hard for me to believe that the pending sales totals would really be up dramatically, despite what was being broadcast all over the internet.
So I compared Solano’s pending sales statistics for both months and found that there were 389 pending sales in January and 378 in February.
Since there were three more days in January than February, that’s almost a wash. Maybe even a slight edge for February. But certainly not anything like the 8% gain in pending sales that was being bandied about nationally.
Towards the end of NAR’s press release, it did mention that here in the west, the pending sales index did actually drop in February by almost 5%.Of course that wasn’t the figure that made headlines.
In a few days, I’ll be compiling the final March numbers for Solano County as well as those for the first quarter of 2010. Those quarterly numbers should give us a much better barometer of what really lies ahead for Solano County.
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MARKET UPDATES
- Housing Inventory Way Up In Most of Solano County
- Monthly Solano Real Estate Report — Feb. ‘10
- Benicia & Vallejo Home Sales Report — Feb. 10
- Monthly Solano Real Estate Report — Jan. ‘10
- Benicia & Vallejo Home Sales Report — Jan . ‘10
- 4th Qtr Solano County Home Sale Statistics
- Benicia & Vallejo Home Sales Report — Dec. ‘09
- Monthly Solano Real Estate Report — Dec. ‘09
- Solano/Benicia-Vallejo Home Sale Report Archives
- See All Archived Market Updates
