100 Days of Sacramento MLS Housing Stats

Now that summer is over, I thought I'd post some housing inventory data I've been gathering. The Sacramento Bee is kind enough to give access to MLS records through their web site (click for a larger image):

Since I started gathering data on June 22, inventory has increased by over 2400 homes, or by 33%. Some interesting features of the data set include the weekly listing peaks every Saturday, and the end of the month decreases when homes that don't sell are automatically dropped from the MLS. According to this article, prices in Sacramento in August continue to show year-over-year increases, although monthly appreciation has moderated. There were 3806 resale home transactions that month, while MLS inventory increased by 1071. That means that 20% of all newly listed homes didn't sell. Inventory seems to be leveling off near it's peak, but this could just be the usual end-of-the-month dropoff. It will be interesting to see what happens with inventory this Fall. Traditionally, Fall is a slow period for real-estate. If inventory continues to build, we could be looking at price corrections at some point.