SF Peninsula Real Estate Guru

One way to track a market is to look at the number of monthly homes sales versus the number of new listings per month.

 Looking at this percentage of sales to listings can often provide more insight into the market than the actual number of homes sales. The number of home sales may be small - but is that because no one is buying (low demand) or no one is selling (low inventory). The number of homes sold is constrained by the number of homes for sale. It is hard to buy a house that is not for sale !

Looking at these figures, again we see the market is weaker in the first quarter of 2008 than it was in the first quarter of 2007. The number of home sales is March 2008 was approx. 80% of the number of new listings. The number of homes sales in March 2007 was approx. 50% of the number of new listings.