There is only a 4 month supply of single family homes in Long Beach. This is Bullish. And it is in sharp contrast to last fall when I saw a 10 month supply of homes for sale.

Why such a steep change? The main reason is that sales have picked up.

While this increase in the number of sales is the main cause, the number of listings has also been dropping. The next chart shows the number of available SFR listings in Long Beach. In the last two months the chart shows two figures. The first if the total number of listings (currently about 1,100) but the second bar is the total number of listings after short pays have been removed (currently around 800).




I believe that the 800 figure is a more accurate representation of the true number of "salable" listings, as most short pays don't get approved and they also sit on the market for much longer awaiting some type of response from the bank.

In addition, when comparing the number of listings to last year when they peaked around 1,200 - 1,400, very few of these listings were short sales.

Anecdotally, I hear many agents have good qualified reasonable buyers, but no listings to sell them. This is also the case with myself. Short of some new financial crisis, we may have already hit bottom. What do you think?