Here’s the Weekly Market Activity Report from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors.

There are fewer homes to choose from for today’s prospective buyers than there were a year ago. There are currently 32,978 residential housing units up for sale in the Twin Cities region, down 5.5 percent-or about 2,000 units-from this time last year. The cause of the lessened supply is a decrease in new listings combined with more homes coming off the inventory list by way of “sold” signs. For the week ending July 26, there were only 1,816 new listings, a drop of 16.5 percent from one year ago. Newly signed purchase agreements (pending sales) for the same year-over-year comparison increased by 5.1 percent.

Less supply coupled with promising signs of demand have created a new market picture. In August, our Supply-Demand Ratio (SDR) indicates that there will be 8.68 homes for sale per buyer, a decrease of 4.2 percent from one year ago. This is the second consecutive month of downward year-over-year movement in this metric, which is a good thing. A well-balanced market for the month of August would show an SDR of about 5 homes for sale per buyer. We have a ways to go, but we’re on the right track if this trend continues.