Today, finally, I'll get around to talking about the numbers for Warren County.

Inventory in Warren County has stayed relatively stable month over month. There were 560 homes listed for sale in February and 567 in March. No significant difference there. Surprisingly enough, Warren County is the one county where there's very little difference year over year in this number. In March of 2007 there were 558 homes listed.

93 new listings came on the market in February. March was up slightly with 98. There's a significant difference in last year's numbers, however. In March of 2007 there were 161 new listings.

We do start to see some differences with contracts, month over month. In February there were 22 new contracts. In March that jumped up to 34. Of course, that's less impressive when you consider that a year ago there were 52 new contracts.

There were 24 closed sales in March, 22 in February and a year ago there were 39.

Overall, the patterns are similar to what we've seen in the other counties.

Prices in Warren County are down almost 17% year over year. It's worse than Fauquier, Culpeper or Rappahannock, but not as bad as Prince William.

Next week I promise an end to all these boring statistics for awhile!

The latest market statistics again show that inventory is decreasing in Fauquier, Culpeper, Rappahannock, Prince William and Fairfax. Those are the counties I've looked at so far, but I'd be surprised if other counties weren't also reflecting this trend. 

Given that the number of sales is still way below last year's rate, which was slightly below the 2004 rate, the inventory is not decreasing because of increasing activity by buyers!  People are taking their homes off the market.

While I'd be more excited about a big jump in the number of buyers out there, this is very good news! The only way to stop some of the downward pressure on prices is for inventory to fall. 

The decline in inventory is not dramatic and so I don't expect to see much immediate impact on the market.  If you're a seller, you're still going to be feeling the pressure on sales prices.  If you're a buyer you've still got lots of negotiating leverage.

But, this is a hint that we might be starting to turn that corner. If inventory continues to decline at its current rate, I still believe it will take until at least next spring to truly start to see a more balanced market.

One thing that could speed that up is decreasing interest rates.  There are hints this week that the Fed is contemplating lowering rates.  And 30-year fixed mortgage rates have been coming down for about six weeks now.  If we continue to see that we may also see more buyers jumping into this market. And that's something every seller is definitely hoping for!