The month of August had just over 8000 homes sold which is slightly down from last month but still showed another increase in average sales price per square foot (just over 3%). Just over half of this month's sold homes were lender owned.

The one area that really stuck out to me, were how many more short sale homes are selling now. This sector has certainly shown a significant increase as over 1500 short sale listings closed through this past month. Banks are becoming more and more open and negotiable to short sales. And buyers are finding these to be some of the best valued deals around. But you will still need to be prepared for a wait as short sales are still taking anywhere from 2-6 months to go through the lender approval process.