Today I went to an Economic Forecast regarding the housing market in Bakersfield and Kern County. It was given by Leslie Appleton-Young who is the resident economist for the California Association of Realtors. I will go into the forecast latter, when I receive the PowerPoint from her presentation, but for now, I would like to show you some charts I made for Bakersfield zip codes 93312 and 93307. These two zip codes are the two zip codes that have the most activity right now. 93307 because it is also the zip code with the most foreclosures, which is where a lot of the action is coming from.

What these 4 charts show is the Supply versus the Demand and the Months Supply of Inventory, AKA the Absorbtion Rate. What that means is, how long, at the present rate of sales, would it take to burn through the glut of inventory? You take the number of sales and divide it into the number of houses on the market. As Jethro Clampett would say, 'the goes into's".

93312 is doing pretty well, in fact, it is getting to be balanced, leaning a little bit to "Seller's Market."  In September of 2007 we had 14.8 months of houses in 93312, but now in October of 2008 we are down to 2.8 months, the lowest it has been in the past 2 years. 132 "units" sold, with 530 "units" still on the market.

93307 is down to a 4 "Months Supply of Inventory" or MSI. A little higher than 93312's MSI of 2.8, but still a lot lower than the peak of 34.3 months supply in December of 2007. In October there were 530 "units" and 132 "units" were sold in October of 2008.

Anyway, things are improving in the Bakersfield housing sector, and that is good news what with all the other economic uncertainty on the horizon. Back in December of 2008 with 480 houses for sale in 93307 and only 14 sold, it looked like it would take 3 years to burn through them. Now, less than a year later, we are down to 4 months.