The willingness of buyers to pay over the list price will probably keep dropping off, just like it did last year. There were discounts too, with 16% of the September sales closing at 10% or more BELOW their list price.

The lousy way we measure pricing makes it look like the market is steady:

In the months when the average and median sales prices increased, it didn’t mean your home’s value went up – it just means that the set of homes were a little bigger and nicer than other months. And vice versa!

Today, there are only 134 pendings, so it will be in the monthly sales counts where we’ll see impact. Last year, the monthly sales in the fourth quarter were 133, 123, and 110, and if we can get close to those counts with mortgages around 8%, it would be great.