These charts track market activity by week for the last six months through February 19, 2012 for San Francisco houses, condos, co-ops and TICs. Listings for Sale (not including listings currently under contract): Inventory remains terribly low. Months Supply of Inventory (MSI) – how long it would take to sell the entire inventory of homes for sale at current rates of market activity – which we will measure again once February ends, is probably as low as it has ever been.

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Listings Accepting Offers: Typically, in the first 6 weeks of the year, the market slowly comes awake after the holidays. This year demand blasted off in mid-January. We’re looking at similar numbers of listings going under contract now as during the (typical) post-Labor Day surge, but with almost 50% fewer homes for sale.

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New Listings coming on Market: New listings are clearly not meeting demand. Appealing, reasonably priced homes are flying into escrow almost immediately upon being put on market. Multiple offers on such listings are now the norm and not the exception.

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Percentage of Listings Accepting Offers: This is the clearest snapshot of (very strong) buyer demand meeting (very low) supply of homes available to purchase. The percentages in the SF market over the past 5 weeks are certainly the highest by far in recent years, and are either at or close to historical highs.

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