Looking back at August

August was a busy month for showing properties with roughly the same activity as we saw in August 2007. It was however, a very slow month for closings with only 44 closings, just ¼ of the sales and 30% of the volume that we saw last August.

That brings the year-to-date closings and volume to roughly 45% of 2007 levels. The inventory level seems to have leveled out. Interestingly, the average and median sale prices have not changed that much. This tells us that there are less Buyers willing to pay the current prices and most Sellers are not willing to lower their prices to the Buyers level.

Financing has been very difficult for Buyers and we have seen a number of transactions fail due to financing. Hopefully, with the Fed stepping in, this will help some of these conditions and enable more Buyers to obtain loans.