The selection of inventory for buyers has declined. Those of you who are actively searching for a property are experiencing this – where you used to receive multiple emails a week with properties that fit for you, that activity may have slowed to maybe one email per week or less! This is because the number of new listings has been declining over the past year and has leveled out to a lower number of active listings per month. There were only 383 active listings for single family detached homes at the end of December 2011 – down from 587 listings in December 2010!
These numbers change even more drastically in certain price brackets, for example if we look at a price range of $75,000 to $125,000 there were only 161 active listings for sale at the end of December 2011 which is down from 258 in December of 2010. There isn’t a shortage of qualified buyers either indicated by the blue and green bars on the same graph, which makes the competition for properties even stronger!
