Dataquick reported home sales for Ventura County for December 2010. Home sales came in at 761 down 15.1% YoY and up 27.4% MoM. The median sales price came in at $355,000 down 1.4% YoY and down 5.3% MoM. This is still more of the same, horrible sales and a stagnant market. Nothing is really changing much on the demand or supply side so it's just a grind.
San Fernando Valley Single Family Home sales for December 2009 came in at 637 which is up 9.45% MoM and down 7.81% YoY. The median price for single family homes came in at $400,000 which is up 1.27% MoM and up 13.31% YoY. The supply constrained market is hurting sales in the SFV. I don't see any near term catalyst to drive sales higher, just a long slow slog while we get to wait and guess what the government is going to next to "fix" housing.
Condo sales came in at 236 which is up 17.41% MoM and up 2.16% YoY. Median price for condos came in at $240,000 which is up 6.67% MoM and up 6.67% YoY. Condos are faring a bit better than SFH because there is more supply and it appears some buyers are choosing to buy a condo when they can't find what they want in a detached home.
The red line was my attempt to create a predictor for sales but it hasn't been working out so well since May of this last year. IMHO, it appears that some pendings are being double counted, instead of falling out and going BOM (which would reduce my predictor), they are just switching buyers and updating the pending date which gets them counted in the current months pendings again. This is supposition on my part since I don't know how SRAR constructs their numbers but nothing much else makes sense. 
Dataquick reported home sales for Ventura County for December 2009 today. Home sales came in at 896 up 2.3% YoY. The median sales price came in at $360,000 up 6.5% YoY. This report was a bit surprising to me because all of the data up through January 3rd (last time I looked) showed sales coming in down 10% YoY. The number of late reporters this year was much higher than normal by at least triple. Also the number of sales that aren't seen through my data sources were higher than average so my formula for predicting sales under predicted by much more than I have seen. This was the strongest December in the last 3 years but still a very weak sales volume. To put it in context if you look at the top chart you will notice this December doesn't even match the ultra-slow January/February sales volume for most years this past decade. Foreclosure activity dropped dramatically in December, especially when looked at on a daily average basis. For example while Notices of Default dropped 17.5 percent in aggregate, they actually dropped 32.5 percent on a daily average basis due to the fact that December had 22 days on which documents were recorded, versus 18 in November.
“The dramatic drop in foreclosure activity may have been a Christmas gift to homeowners,” says Sean O’Toole, Founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar.com, “however, given rising mortgage delinquencies it is becoming increasingly clear that foreclosure activity no longer fully represents market realities”.
San Diego trustee sales for December 2009 came in at 1039. The drop from the previous month is mainly due to the fewer sales scheduled during the last half of the month. 
Orange County trustee sales for December 2009 came in at 655. The drop from the previous month is mainly due to the fewer sales scheduled during the last half of the month.
Trustee sales for December 2009 in Ventura County came in at 240. Most servicers know better than to schedule sales during the last two weeks of December so sales trailed off at the end of the month. Most of those sales that would normally take place during that time were just postponed another week or two into the beginning of January so the January pace should be pretty good. One fly in the ointment may be the directive that no HAMP mod can be put into foreclosure but the servicers have plenty of inventory to choose from as to who to foreclose on so it is quite possible that might have no net effect. The trustee sale investors are having a field day with the low inventory enviroment and I bet they are looking forward to the first few weeks of January.
Los Angeles County Trustee sales came in at 2575 for December 2009. The drop from the previous month is mainly due to the fewer sales scheduled during the last half of the month.
Here is the sales breakdown for the San Fernando Valley for December 2009. The SFV has a lot more late reporters as a percentage of sales and so it is a bit tougher to discern right now just how weak sales will ultimately be for December . One thing is clear, sales will be down YoY. If I estimate 15% increase (which is about right historically) due to late reporters that means there will be a 10% drop in YoY sales. This is the context of mortgage rates down YoY, prices lower and the ongoing tax credit. Limited supply means limited sales and the market is running out of supply in the price points in which people can afford to buy homes. Sales will continue to stagnate as a result.
Here are the sales for Ventura County for December 2009. December is clearly on track to again have sales down year over year a trend that has continued since July. This is because there are fewer REO's being sold, as clearly indicated by the table. Less motivated supply will mean continued slow sales. Either prices fall and sales pickup or prices stagnate and so do sales, there is no free lunch. Based on the above numbers I predict Dataquick will report sales around 760 for December.
Here are the various Back On Market (BOM) measures for San Fernando Valley home sales. Each kind of tells a slightly different story, BOM as a percentage of sales is falling, BOM as a percentage of current pendings is flat and BOM as a percentage of last months pendings is rising. The SRAR chooses to use BOM as a percentage of sales as what they track. They all were around 37% last month. A healthy chunk of aren't able to close.
Total sales (SFH + Condo) were 922 last month. Total pendings for the month came in at 914 and BOM for December was 342. January will definitely be better than last year but clearly not be as good as December '08. That is normal seasonality of January and February being the slowest months of the year. If we use history as a guide, we should start seeing pendings and New listings pick up after the Super Bowl.
Dataquick released figures for Ventura County today. Sales volume was 876 which was up 20.2% Month over Month and 48.5% Year over Year. Median price was $338,000 which is down 4.79% Month over Month and 35.60% Year over Year. Dataquick notes that 55.7% of Southland sales were foreclosures, similiar percentages as seen in my previous breakdown of distressed sales. Currently Dataquick doesn't give short sales percentages but we see they are a rising force in the marketplace.
I think the banks and servicers got motivated at the end of the year to clear as much inventory as possible. The reason I say this is because in my weekly pending counts I never saw a surge of pendings or contingent transactions. It looked like there was a rush to close as many pendings deals as possible before the end of the year. Any strength in sales volume is tempered by the source of that strength, falling prices because of distressed sales. Sales volume is still very weak relative to history. If the distressed sales ever slow, sales will slow right along with them. While affordability has improved that doesn't mean homes are affordable.
Ventura County:
Here are the updated numbers for December 2008 for the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County. Foreclosures posted their highest volumes for the year. I think the servicers have bulked up their asset management divisions to deal with the inflow better. This will mean less of a loss for them going forward as they can cycle through inventory faster instead of it sitting waiting in the wings to be processed and brought to market. The discretionary seller will be increasingly pushed aside unless they are willing to compete with the distressed market. I perused pendings in a couple markets to see if there is any difference in composition going forward and based on my initial observations it looked like more of the same for the foreseeable future. 
