There is just a glimmer of positive news from this chart, however. The rate of decline in the CMI has peaked and is now starting to fall very slightly. The highest rate of decline was 9.12% per week during the second week of June. This has now eased a little to 8.94% per week. This is still pretty bad for sellers and the market as a whole, but at least it has stopped getting worse at an accelerating rate. Once this trend consolidates, we would expect the weekly rate of decline to keep dropping.

If the current trend continues, we would see the CMI hit 110 on August 14 and 100 eight days later. We would enter a buyer's market in the first week of September. Of course, this is just one of billions of possible scenarios and we do not pretend to know what will actually happen. Demand could improve or get worse tomorrow and supply is equally unpredictable. You cannot foretell the future, but you can study the present. Most market observations you will see elsewhere are one to three months old. This is why we measure the market every day rather than waiting until the end of the month.

What is looking unlikely at the moment is that closing prices will move significantly higher than they already are. We are at the wrong time of year for that, even if the CMI were not falling. The summer months almost always see a consolidation or fall in average closing prices because the luxury market contributes less to the averages between June and September.

There is still an excess of demand over supply at the lowest end of the market , which include a larger proportion of condos and townhomes. Homes over $2 million remain in low supply compared with a normal market, even though demand is down. It is the middle of the market, between $400,000 and $1 million, that is seeing the largest amount of extra supply and a huge drop in demand. This includes the bulk of new homes, which are now appearing on the MLS in much larger numbers than 3 months ago. If the CMI measured just this mid-range price sector, it would be showing lower numbers than the chart above. The mid-range is likely to become a balanced market before the low-end or the high-end.