We have the lowest inventory level since spring of 2007 when we were just one year into our Jacksonville real estate market downturn.  While we are down around 1500 units from the height of our  inventory levels since the downturn began, our inventory level is still almost double that of spring 2006 when the slide quietly began.

In the past month 635 single family and townhome units (non-condo) have sold.  Last year, for the same dates, this number was 855.  In the same time period in 2006 when most buyers, sellers, the media and agents had not caught on to the fact that we were in a downturn, the number was 1,258.  Not too far off of the almost 1,500 we saw at one point during the summer of 2006.

Jacksonville Florida real estate market inventory levels are at 13.64 based on sales over the past year, and 17.3 months based on sales over the past 30 days.

Our pending to active ratio is just over 14%.  A healthy, balanced market hovers around the "middle" with 50% being perfectly balanced.  A high number indicates a strong seller's market.  At our lowest, that number was around 10%, this occurred for about a four week stretch last December and early January.  We have not seen this ratio that low since then, for the past quarter we have seen this number hover around the 14%-16% range.

The biggest news is that this week, for the first time, the number of homes under contract that are short sales or foreclosures surpassed the 50% mark!  In the Jacksonville Florida Real Estate market 51.5% of all homes (non-condo) currently under contract are short sales or foreclosures.

Last year at this time buyers and agents were still largely avoiding short sales.  This continued on through a good portion of the year.  This is no longer possible.  A quarter of all listings on the market are short sales or foreclosures and those are priced very competitively, as a rule.  The fact that only a quarter of all active listings are short sales or foreclosures, yet over 50% of homes under contract are short sales or foreclosures shows that this is where the bargains are.  If the prices for straight resales were in line with short sales you would expect to see a similar ratio for actives and pendings, however, short sales and foreclosures are getting a larger share of contracts from a lower inventory.  The pending to active ratio for Jacksonville short sales and foreclosures is around 30%, slightly more than double the same ratio for the market overall.

In the past 30 days 31% of all homes closed  were short sales or foreclosures.  This number should start trending up more given the rapidly increasing number of pending homes that fall into this category.  Short sales do have a higher fallout rate because of the complexity of the transaction but this can be minimized with proper handling of short sales transactions by real estate professionals.  We have no way of knowing how many of the pendings have unrealistically low contracts on them that have no shot of bank acceptance.  Those will eventually go back on the market, which is why it's important to put in the lowest possible offer that a bank will accept going into the process.  It saves time and aggravation for buyers and sellers.  If you are trying to sell your home, you have to price your home to be the next to home to sell.  With the market prices trending down, this means lower than your competition if you truly want to sell.