"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics" ~ Benjamin Disraeli
When I was in junior high school my parents decided to go on a trip to Vegas by themselves. They left my brother and I at home for the weekend. I remember this weekend like it was yesterday, my buddies Arturo and Brian came over and my brother (who was the only one of us who had money) bought us Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES. We literally played that game for 48 hours straight, stopping to eat and nap as we tried to beat the game. We were wildly unsuccessful. We didn't beat that game until years later and a friend of ours gave us the cheat codes book. Anyway, that experience moved me away from video games that you could "beat", and from then on all I have played are sports video games. Well, one video game NCAA College Football for PlayStation 2...because I am too cheap to get the new console to just play maybe 10-15 games a year!
I play NCAA for two reasons: 1. I love USC (I tried Madden, but I have no attachment to any NFL team, although I feel a growing attachment to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots...much to the chagrin of my friends - all of whom support really random teams), and 2. I love statistics. I play the game to churn out yards. I play to win the Biletnikoff award (presented to the top wide receiver). I play to win the Heisman. I play to win National Championships. I play to recruit...and build a dynasty. It's actually quite scary...
Statistics is one of the reasons that I love my job. I get to break out my trusty number 2 and my business calc and run all kinds of numbers. I get to calculate PMI. I get to figure out the riddle of mello roos. I get to work on PITI...figure in some HOA...and I am really smoking. Questions like, how much extra purchase power would I have if I wasn't buying a property with an HOA? Or, how much would I have if I was in a lower tax area? No mello roos? No special assessment?
So, as I was running the inventory searches for Corona last night...two thoughts hit me...1. how do they calculate the "standing inventory" report we get monthly (you know the one, there are 6 months of inventory in Corona, CA - really how do you determine that?)? And, 2. the quote above on statistics. So I began to pull some data to see if I could see where we are in Corona, and more importantly where we are going.
Here is what I found:
We currently have 1,030 homes available in Corona.
147 REO
625 Short Sale
258 Standard
Over the past 12 months Corona has averaged 305 closed sales per month. The high month was June with 368. The low month was February with 248. So, someone could say that we have 3 1/3 months of "standing inventory". However, this is very misleading. During the same time period, the last 12 months, Corona has averaged 450 listings taken per month.
Now, hold on a minute, if we are adding 145 more houses than we are subtracting per month, then our "standing inventory" should be in the 1,740 range. And it would be somewhat reasonable to believe that the trend would continue in the near future. We could make the assumption that in January our inventory would be in the 1,200 range and this would continue to depress the values of all of the property in Corona.
Again, it is not quite that simple. A quick search of the MLS of the past 12 months reveals that we are averaging approx. 165 listings that go expired or canceled per month. Now, this is not an exact science because a lot of these homes are short sales and they come back on the market the next month (or 5 months later) as either a bank owned or an investor owned home.
At first glance, we are now looking at the inventory shrinking by a modest 20 listings a month. Which means, we are looking at a "standing inventory" of 50 months. This looks like we are in a state of equilibrium. The market is standing pat, values holding firm, even ticking up in some neighborhoods. I had a listing agent tell me last month, "we are going to hold out for our price because we are the only home available in the area". While he was technically correct, there were no other homes available...what he wasn't taking into consideration was the 21 homes at some stage of foreclosure in that neighborhood.
And this is our last wild card as we try to figure out where real estate is heading. There are over 3,000 homes in Corona at some stage of foreclosure. That is 1 out of 7 houses...a number that seems astronomical to me because of the amount of homes already foreclosed. This is called "shadow inventory" and is truly wrecking havoc on the real estate industry. An asset manager with Wachovia told me that they expect their bank to begin liquidating their assets by the 3rd quarter of 2011.
During the meltdown of 2008 and 2009, I felt that 2010 was going to be the quiet before the storm. Pretty interesting words because we had just been through a huge storm, but this storm was going to be different. It was going to involve people who could continue to pay the mortgage. It was going to involve more people (5 year ARMs and Option ARM loans are coming due). And the real kicker, it is going to cut an already deeply wounded economy. We have been lured into a false sense of security because the stock market is over 11,500.
The goal is to continue to work on these numbers every month so that we can have an accurate picture of what real estate is doing in Corona, CA.
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