Market Stabilization?

Last year, I posted about the pending home sales and how it looked like our market was on the way to stabilization. You can read that article here.   While it looks like nationally, pending home sales slipped slightly in February 2013 compared to January 2013, the indicators are still saying our market is picking up.  The reason for the slight dip in pending home sales?  National Association of Realtors (NAR) Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said that limited inventory is slowing many areas “Only new home construction can genuinely help relieve the inventory shortage, and housing starts need to rise at least 50 percent from current levels,” he said. “Most local home builders are small businesses and simply don’t have access to capital on Wall Street. Clearer regulatory rules, applied to construction loans for smaller community banks and credit unions, could bring many small-sized builders back into the market.”

All signs are pointing to a nation-wide price increase. With a dip in housing supply and interest rates still scraping rock bottom,  up-tick in pricing by the end of the year doesn’t seem surprising.  That’s certainly been the buzz locally.  The vast majority of our single family homes have sold, and inventory has taken a dip. At this moment, there are 28 listings between $150,000 and $200,000; with a total of 174 residential listings (in any price range or area in the Valley) are active .

What do you think?  Have you noticed a change in our market locally or nation-wide?