The November numbers are out for our area. The good news is that, finally, the trend of ever increasing inventory seems to have stopped, at least for this month! I suspect that this might not be a permanent condition given that it's November numbers we're looking at.

Typically as we get close to the holidays, many families take their homes off the market as they have enough to do without keeping their house in showing condition at all times.

The funny thing is, there are generally fewer buyers and fewer people tramping through your home anyway, But those few who are out looking at properties this time of year are serious buyers. The ratio of showings to offers goes up in November/December.

And, if you think about it, if a lot of owners take their homes off the market just for a couple of months around the holidays, if you're a seller the odds just got a lot better for you! A lot of your competition took themselves out of the running!

If you're a buyer and there's something you were seriously interested in that got taken off the market, no problem. Most agents can negotiate getting you in to see any property that the owners still ultimately want to sell. And, you won't have to worry about any other offers competing with you!

For those of you who want the hard numbers each month, I'll be posting those over the next 24 hours. They will be posted both in the Local Market Conditions category and in the category for their respective counties. But no e-mail link will go out for the numbers this month. If you want me to send you an individual e-mail with the link to something specific, just let me know.

Let's hope the reduced inventory is more than just a blip and that this is the beginning of that light at the end of the tunnel!