The U.S. Open Golf Championship is coming to Torrey Pines in six weeks.  Who won the contest for two Trophy Club tickets?

We waited an extra month to allow late-reporters to record an additional 77 closed sales for the first quarter of 2008.  The grand total was 2,950 - Congratulations to HaCanada for nailing it right on the money!

The tickets came in the mail yesterday, so if you'd like to send me your address, I can get those to you.

The intent of the contest was to spotlight one of the most important indicators to watch - the number of sales.  How did the 1Q08 numbers compare to previous years? 

Not good - there was a 25.6% decline year-over-year, the worst in recent history. 

Here is the graph showing the number of sales (in red) and the average sales prices (in green) for the first quarter of each year going back to 1996.

You see an uptick in sales in 2001 and 2003.  You can attribute those to Countrywide - they started pushing the interest-only mortgages in 2001, and the neg-ams in 2003.