First Look at February Numbers – Down but with a Bright Spot

Looking at preliminary numbers for February (they will change a little as agents report closings over this next week) shows a some continuing negative news, but with a very strong positive change.  First of all, let’s get the negative out of the way.  The number of homes closed in February was down in the county.  At this point (9:30 Sunday night), agents are reporting 1,207 sales throughout the county.  I figure that by the time the stragglers report, we will be close to 1,300 which is even with January and about 30% bellow last February.  The good news is that there was a nice increase in the number of homes in escrow which bodes well for climbing back above the 2,000 home sales for the month of March.

This coincides with the increase noted by agents (and builders I have spoken with) in the  number of buyers coming around to open houses and through builder sales offices.  A lot of these buyers are indicating that they are waiting for the new conforming limits to be available in loans (likely to be mid-April) before they purchase, so they haven’t yet resulted in escrows being opened.  However, the fact that they are out looking is a good sign that this summer might not be as bad as a lot of the pessimists think.

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