"Inventory is having an impact on prices"

It looks like the "spring selling season" didn't pull Olympia out of its slump:

This year's larger inventory of South Sound homes for sale might be keeping homes on the market longer and slowing prices down.

For the past four months, it has taken longer for homes to sell compared with last year. And for the first time in May, the gains in year-to-year median sales prices took a noticeable drop, according to Olympic Multiple Listing Service data.

Regardless, the number of Thurston County homes sold in May was 15 percent higher than last year, leaving the number of homes sold up 9 percent from January through May this year.

Current active listings in Thurston County are about 1,277 homes, up from 879 the same time last year, the listing service reported Monday. New homes that have come onto the market are responsible for much of the increase in listings.

"Inventory is having an impact on prices," said Jerry Wilkins, manager of the listing service.

I love how they give the sales figure in percentage and the inventory as an absolute number. It makes them much harder to compare that way. FYI, the figures provided translate to a 45 percent increase in inventory. Directly comparing the 45 percent inventory increase to the 15 percent sales increase makes it a little harder to be stubbornly optimistic.

I also love how these real estate enthusiast types can admit that things are slowing down, but still phrase it in an extremely positive way:

Future monthly median increases might not top 20 percent, Wilkins said.

Aww.

(Jim Szymanski, The Olympian, 06.06.2006)