US Home Sales Contracts Rise… but what about South Lake Tahoe?

April 6th, 2010 categories: Escrow Report, For Buyers, For Sellers, Lake Tahoe Real Estate, Major Market Reports

Gold is a good color for South Lake Tahoe homes in escrow, don't you think?

A Look at the difference in US trends and South Lake Tahoe Escrow, if any.

We always like it when national reports come out about existing home "contracts". That of course means escrow, and we'd like it if the National Association of Realtors (NAR) would just call it that in their reports.

Another reason we like these reports, whatever they are called (pending home sales is another NAR appellation), is it gives us a barometer so to speak to gauge how we are doing in South Lake Tahoe compared to the rest of the country in general.

CNNMoney.comFirst lets look at a few bullet points in the NAR article as reported today by CNNMoney.com, then we'll compare them to South Lake Tahoe:

  • Pending home sales rose 8.2% in February.
  • This is the single-biggest monthly rise since October 2001.
  • Economists were expecting a 1% decrease.
  • This is a 17% gain over February last year.
  • The unexpected increase could indicate demand driven by the federal government's homebuyer tax credit.
  • Pending home sales are considered a forward-looking indicator since many of the contracts don't result in completed transactions for many weeks or months.
  • Home sales contracts fell 4.8% from month-to-month in the West, but still fared 14.6% better than last year in that region.

 South Lake Tahoe : (current escrow details and escrow chart here)
The NAR report measures signed real estate contracts, not completed sales, for existing single-family homes, condos and co-ops. For this comparison we're looking at South Lake Tahoe, CA single family home sales only.

  • On February 1, there were 80 homes in escrow in South Lake Tahoe. While we have an escrow count in our records on December 9, 2009 ( 93 ), we do not have such for January, 2010, other than what it was at the end of the month. Therefore we do not have the means to accurately compare the difference in escrow from January to February of this year.
     
  • On February 22, however, there were 97 homes in escrow, or 21.2% more than there were at the end of January. Compared to the 8.2% national increase in pending home sales in February compared to the month prior as reported by the NAR, we find this notable, and an additional 13% gain over the 8.2% national average.
  • There were 58 homes in escrow in South Lake Tahoe on April 7 of last year. There are 106 today, or 48 more. This represents an 82% increase over last year, or 65% more than the national trend as reported by the NAR.

 The Bottom Line :

Compared to the NAR report, we're seeing even more significant increases in buying appetite than the national trend.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 10:38 am and is filed under Escrow Report, For Buyers, For Sellers, Lake Tahoe Real Estate, Major Market Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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