Collin County Real Estate continues to strengthen

August housing numbers for the Dallas suburbs in Collin County continue to show improvement over last year. Allen, Plano and Richardson pending numbers are all well into the 20's with Richardson topping the local charts at a whopping 38%. McKinney and Frisco lag slightly behind at about 17-18 but this can partially be explained by the number of new starts by builders. The pending ratios are an indication of business that will close in the near future. The numbers for all of the communities matched or beat the best pending numbers of the last 13 months. Recent newspaper articles point to the fact that sales are down across Collin County for the year. That much is true. The issue that I have with their findings is that they are not looking at the trends. My expectation is that by the end of 2009 we will see numbers that are comparable or exceed those of 2008 in terms of unit sales. Part of this will be fueled by the first time home-buyer tax credit. A good deal of credit will end up going to the collapse of the financial markets in late 2008. I will be absolutely amazed if we do not sell substantially more homes in the 4th quarter of 2009 than we did in 2008. The other key data that the folks at the Morning News are not looking at is the months of inventory. These numbers have been cut substantially and on the average are a half to full month lower than last year. This indicates a significant change in not only new home inventory but in re-sells as well. I certainly do not want to seem to bullish on the local housing market but we are seeing some positive signs in spite of the fact that consumers are not driving this market. This market is set up to move up quickly once that consumer engine heats up.