decreasing inventory? what is going on?

Typically, many people take their homes off the market after Thanksgiving so they don't have to show it during the holidays. January will be a more important metric.

bonus season has barely begun. you 'aint seen nothing yet...

I've gotten a lot of "temporarily unavailable" updates in the last week. I think modern is right -- just wait until after the holidays are over. The inventory will uptick.

A lot of folks that bought in recent years in Manhattan live in their place and/or are not forced to sell.

seamus, I love 993 Turbos... and I like it when I hear that someone else has sold a similar model for a higher price than I paid for it and makes me sad lately that the market is falling for them. I'm not forced to sell but it sure felt better when I knew I could get more money for it.

When the market was going up, it wasn't like everybody needed to buy so I don't get this "not forced to sell" mentality. Let me put it another way, if the unemployment is 6.7%... it means a lot (more) folks are still working than not, but doesn't mean we as a nation aren't alittle more nervous.

modern has it spot on, between thanksgiving and new years is typically a very soft time of year. people don't want to keep showing their homes during this time and quite frankly, even fewer buyers are looking around during this time so on the margin some people will take their homes off the market. certainly new listings will wait until the new year to post. You want good traffic in your first few open houses; if you listed on thanksgiving, you could have 6 weeks of very low traffic and suddenly you're apartment has been on the market for 6-8 weeks already by late january (when buyers have a sense of bonus and may start looking) and isn't "fresh" inventory.

My question is, who are the 370 people who signed in the last 30 days, and, what were you thinking?

Besides the seasonal inventory fall, 68 units is not material, so it's a silly post.

Get back to me when inventories fall to last year's level of about 5,000.

Actually, I'm surprised it's not below 9000, and I'm with UD on his 10-11000 call for spring inventory. This is usually a VERY slow time. I guess people don't regularly give condos for the holidays.

"I guess people don't regularly give condos for the holidays."

In the long-run it might be cheaper than paying those exorbitant monthlies.

contracts signed data is very lagging. Its basically when SE picks up on the webad that is updated by the agent as CONTRACT SIGNED. Its not via any internal brokerage listing service feed, as far as I know. So, most agents let a listing that is in contract stay marketed as available, in the hopes to get a few more calls from buyers to get new clients to work with.

Maybe there is a 2-3 week lag. Its shady, yes. But in a business where agents work on commission, not salary, and leads mean business, it is to be expected. The data sometimes is ONLY as good as the agent that edits and updates it.

A 2-3 week lag in contracts signed hardly explains for the above posters' surprise. There could be a 2-3 month lag and I think they'd still be surprised by that data.

That there is a delay doesn't mean things are any better. It could be that the velocity is falling during the delay, and we have no way of knowing it.

I think we need to assume the delay as a constant.