Q4 reports / inventory still low

is inventory the canary-in-the-mine number?
Interesting that the inventory number stayed down (measured by quarter over quarter) even though the number of transactions dropped from Q3 to Q4. (As I noted last week in Q4 reports coming in / demand continues, there were only 2,518 sales in Q4 compared to 3,499 in Q3.) Logically, one would expect Manhattan prices to hold so long as inventory remains at these low numbers — unless/until there is an emphatic change in the local or national economy.

That inventory at year-end represented only 4.5 months worth of sales at the (historically high) 2007 level of sales (13,430 transactions).

seasonal? you crunch the numbers
Before we get into a discussion about seasonality of Manhattan sales inventory, look at the most recent Miller Samuel chart available (that I see) on their website, monthly from September 2007 back to December 2000. I don’t read that chart as saying January-February are consistently the low inventory months.

By year, the lowest month for inventory was June in 2001, March in 2002, December in 2003, December in 2004, March in 2005, December in 2006, and August in 2007 [partial year]. Yes, I see how often “December” appears in that parenthetical, but unless someone better schooled in statistics [rather, schooled in statistics] shows me there is a seasonality no that chart, I don’t see it. In any event, December 2007 at 5,133 was well above July and August in 2007.

© Sandy Mattingly 2008