We’ve heard a few comments about how the number of homes for sale in the Shasta MLS dropped sharply last month. Today, its around 735 homes for sale in the Redding area.
In fact, the real number of homes for sale hasn’t changed all that much over the last 6 months.We’ve shown this before, and we should have a new chart reflecting February 2012 in a day or two. Shown again here to illustrate that today’s low inventory has been steadily, but not steeply declining. The dotted red line at the top.

So what happened? Well, they changed the rules on the reports. Previously, short sales that had offers in to the bank/lender (Pending) were still reported as Active, swelling the perceived inventory numbers. The theory was that because the bank/lender had not yet agreed to the transaction, that agents should still show the property, and submit backup offers. In reality, we never like to show homes we can’t sell. So the number of “Active” homes was inflated by the large number of short sales in lender limbo. Removing Pendings from the reported number of Active homes didn’t change the housing inventory, only how it was calculated.

There’s much nuance to the discussion of whether that was a good idea. We think it is. The real number of homes for sale in our area is quite low. Of the 735 homes listed today, oops… now 734 since I last looked this morning, only 607 are in Shasta County. Of those, only 261 are at, or under, $200,000. That’s the very popular price point.

So what’s that mean? Inventory is low. So are prices, and more importantly perhaps, so are interest rates. If you’ve been waiting to sell, waiting for demand to pick back up, here we are. We have buyers out there looking, and they don’t have much to look at.