The best real estate professionals leverage the power of data to deliver excellent value and real market understanding to customers. With the exceptional tools at their disposal, they can help buyers and sellers understand market trends and make important decisions. Real estate is “hot” again, even during the winter months, but nobody is predicting a rocket ship rise. It helps everybody if this market recovery incline is smooth and steady, like the gentle flow of a hot air balloon. Here are the numbers for this week.

In the Twin Cities region, for the week ending January 19:

• New Listings decreased 1.6% to 1,077
• Pending Sales increased 17.4% to 822
• Inventory decreased 31.6% to 12,197

For the month of December:

• Median Sales Price increased 15.9% to $168,000
• Days on Market decreased 23.4% to 108
• Percent of Original List Price Received increased 3.5% to 93.8%
• Months Supply of Inventory decreased 40.0% to 3.0

Click here for the full Weekly Market Activity Report.From The Skinny.