Here's more on the latest Santa Fe housing numbers from Alan Ball, general manager of Southwestern Title & Escrow in Santa Fe. If you're trying to sell.

"I personally would like to write more upbeat news and share more positive information with each of you," Ball writes in his latest monthly newsletter, released July 10. "But for the umpteenth month in a row, the statistics do not show any measurable improvement in Santa Fe area home sales."

There are more and more homes on the market, but fewer getting sold. Especially slow-moving are million-dollar-and-up homes, no matter how ugly. See?



At this rate, Ball writes, it now takes an average of two years for the market to absorb Santa Fe's housing inventory. That's up from an average of eight months at the end of 2006.

So what's the takeaway? Ball explains:

If sales do not show improvement in the next 120 days, we are likely to see numerous homes go off the market and become anything from rentals managed by owners to just bank‐owned vacant homes for rodents and weeds. If you do not HAVE TO sell this year, I strongly recommend taking your home off the market for a couple years.

SFR started noticing all those weeds a couple of months ago.

(Sadly, the above photo is not from a Santa Fe real estate listing. It's from this awesome blog.)