Inventory Dwindled

Inventory has been tight all year. Seems like home buyers looking in MB can't find anything, and when something terrific comes along, it's off to the races – multiple offers.

MBC's been reporting on this phenomenon all year, and Dave's been living this reality with buyer clients. 

We last formally updated you on the state of things around Memorial Day, in a post aptly titled "Pre-Summer Inventory Check-In."

So what would Summer bring?

Would a long series of sellers who had heard the proverbial "bell" ringing now bring their properties to market?

Would a slow Summer allow inventory to grow and grow?

Or, would it be more of the same?

The verdict: It was pretty much more of the same.

With notable exceptions, most properties to come out this Summer made fairly quick deals, and nowhere near enough new inventory came in to grow the overall supply in MB.

So here, now, a few days after Labor Day, we're down on overall supply, whether you look at the whole city or at various subsets. (Click our chart here to enlarge.)

Before Summer began: 87 active SFRs + condos/THs citywide.

Now (Sept. 6): 67, a drop of 23%.

There are slightly fewer properties in escrow than active, 60 pending (or in "backup" status). 

That puts our active/pending ratio citywide at 1 to 1.1. Tight. Remember when 1:1.3 seemed tight in Feburary? (See "Quite a Ratio.") 

West of Sepulveda, the story with SFRs is even more constrained.

There were 50 active SFRs west of the highway at the end of May.

Now: 34, a drop of one-third.

We've seen 7 SFRs list new in the past week, citywide, which is neither lots nor few. Just enough to hold steady.

So now we'll have to see what Fall brings... another fall in inventory?

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UPDATE: Within hours of this post going up originally, 4 new listings hit, bringing the citywide total to 71 and the west of Sepulveda SFR total to 36.