Weekly Special | September 7, 2015

It’s Time For Those In The Shadows To Emerge

There have been 12% fewer “fresh” home sellers entering the market in 2015 versus the same time period a year ago.

Fresh sellers are those who are first entering the market, meaning we have excluded the home sellers who are trying again after having failed recently.

I believe the Tallahassee real estate market is at an interesting crossroads that will soon reveal whether or not we have still have thousands of homes in the “shadow inventory” that are remaining to be listed and sold to conclude the housing market recovery.

The graph above shows that the number of fresh sellers coming into the market is lower this year than last year (by 12%), and simultaneously the number of home buyers active in the market has risen by 14% based upon our most recent home sales reports.

Simply put, supply is falling and demand is rising. That sure sounds like a housing market recovery in progress to me.

So the million dollar question that we’ll see answered over the next six months or so is “from where will the future supply come?”

Will home builders be cranking up production, or will equity growth among existing homeowners free them to finally sell their homes? Many should escape from the shadows and emerge as both supply and demand.

I hope we’ll find a combination of the two, with a healthy dose of the latter, so that the normal rate of home sales returns to invigorate our economy.

The original one-page Weekly Special PDF is still available.