Saturday, October 21, 2006

Supply of homes on market takes dip?!?

That was one of the font page headlines in today’s, 10/21/6, Orlando Sentinel (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-homes2106oct21,0,349657.story?coll=orl-home-headlines). While this may be so, as reported by ORRA (the Orlando Regional Realtor® Association), I find that it is at the same time somewhat incorrect in that there is a better defining picture of this situation.

Statistics are great. They are the numbers – the so to speak ‘black & white’ of the situation. But at the same time they can be manipulated. That is one basic reason that I do not believe in the CMA (Comparative Market Analysis), because I can take those numbers and manipulate them to my needs. At one time, & I apologize for the digression here, an appraisal was as good as the bible when it came to real estate valuation. But this has drastically changed over the years. Lately, I’ve seen appraisals that were so wholly undervalued & then another appraiser might come in with a greatly different value. The reason that I mention this here is that as good as numbers are, then can be greatly manipulated.

Back to the article in question. While a good article, it states in the second paragraph that the supply of homes in the Greater Orlando market has dipped. And this is true. But in the fourth paragraph, the article mentions the sales drop "in the Realtors' core Orlando market (mainly Orange and Seminole counties)."

Why I say that this is conflicting is because for the past 10 months I have weekly gathered the data on inventory of single-family homes, condos & townhomes that are listed available for sale in the MLS in just Orange & Seminole counties. While I’ve seen a couple of weeks here & there where there has been a drop in inventory, the overall data suggests differently.

Proof in point:As of 10/17 the total inventory, as specified above, is 16,045. On 9/20, this figure was 15,828; and, on 8/22, 15,479. I utilized these dates because they are approximately 1 month apart. This shows you that even though there was a week 9/28-10/4 where there was a drop in available home of 93 units, that we have had a consistent rise in inventory in the core Orlando market.

I am not saying your story is erroneous, but I think that this shows a better picture of what is really going on in the Greater Orlando Real Estate Market, especially in the counties of Orange & Seminole.

Until next time – MARC IT SOLD!

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