2009 Fourth Quarter Update

This evening I'm putting out the first of two full market update posts for this week. We'll start with a wrap-up of activity in the fourth quarter of 2009, and then later this week I'll put together a full 2009 year in review.

Back in October when I did my third quarter review, I mentioned that I've added a data source to these updates. You can go back to that post if you want the long, geeky explanation of what that means. Bottom line, some of these numbers are combined numbers from our Lompoc MLS and CCRMLS. Let's start with those:

We had 118 total sold units in the Lompoc Valley for the last quarter of the year. That was up 5.4% from the same quarter a year ago, and was the best fourth quarter in terms of unit volume since 2004. 71 of those units were REO's (60.2%), and 17 were short sales (14.4%). Those numbers appear to be pretty close to the year end numbers I'll be reporting later, and though there was a little bit of fluctuation, this activity has been pretty stable.

The average price per square foot dropped a little this quarter, as you'll see from this updated chart. I think that this number dropped a little bit despite what appears to be a stable market in terms of price in most segments and areas. But the mix of properties that sell in any given quarter can influence that number in a small market like ours, and I don't think that every segment of our market has quite bottomed out just yet. I do see data that indicates that some areas and segments might be seeing the first signs of appreciation, as you might have noted if you've been reading this blog for a while.

Now let's get to the numbers that come exclusively from the LVAOR MLS:

Looking at how buyers are financing their purchases, 19.8% of our sales were all cash transactions, 12.9% were conventional financing, 49.5% were FHA, 16.8% were VA, and 1.0% fell into the "Other" category. The cash percentage is very close to where it's been for the past couple of quarters, but the mix of loans definitely shifted dramatically this quarter. 12.9%? How much longer do we call that kind of loan "conventional"?

Market times continue to be short, with a median of 26 days on the market (DOM) for all sold units. This quarter I decided to break them down a little to see the differences in distressed properties, and not surprisingly, we see that the median DOM for REO's is a little lower at 21 days. Also no surprise, the median DOM for short sales was considerably higher, at 102 days. Traditional sales had a median DOM identical to REO's at 21. That one surprised me a little bit.

Escrow times remain stable, with a median of 42 days. Breaking that out into the REO/SS/Trad format doesn't seem to get us much more info - all three are pretty close to that number. To be honest, I think that our industry probably doesn't report this type of data properly for short sales, but that's a long technical discussion that you probably don't really care about, so I'll skip it here.

From what I see, it looks like we're still bouncing along at the bottom of the market. I've said here before that I think that we're here for a while, and I'll stick to that story. It's still a great opportunity market for buyers, and I'll be delving more into that in coming weeks.

Come back in a couple of days - probably Friday - and I'll put up some total numbers for the year and do a little bit of guessing at what 2010 holds in store for us.