YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST AND IT FINALLY HIT THE NEWSPAPER!
For those of you that have abandoned our local newspaper, you might have missed the headline on the business page last Friday:
REPORT: FINDINGS UPBEAT FOR ARIZ. HOUSING MARKET
Prices Rise, foreclosures are down
We have been seeing this trend for the last year but no one outside of the real estate world believed it to be true. The article goes on to say that “Metro Phoenix home prices are up. Fewer inexpensive homes are for sale, and the number of pending foreclosures are down.” This positive update is a result of ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business naming Mike Orr director. He is the publisher of The Cromford Report, the daily online analysis of the Phoenix housing market that we follow carefully.
Investors have grabbed the oversupply of homes under $300,000 and there is no glut of homes that the banks are hiding. It may be true for other markets, but not ours. We are still getting foreclosures but the rate has dropped nearly 50%. The supply of homes at all price points in metro Phoenix is down 42% from a year ago.
We are all anxious for home values to rise across the board so that everyone again has equity in their homes. The last indicator to rise will be home prices; it was the last indicator to fall when this meltdown occurred and it will be the last to improve. We have been in this situation since 2007 but it took until 2009 for housing prices to drop significantly. Be patient; they will rise again. We need our luxury market to sell faster and higher (luxury being $1,000,000 and up) and that will pull the rest of the market up.
The supply of homes listed for sale in metro Phoenix is down 42% from one year ago. ARMLS shows that the entire Phoenix metro area has about 15,000 homes/condos/patio homes for sale. Nearly every city has seen a drop in the number of listings with few coming onto the market. There are more listings pending (in escrow) than active and this has been true for a couple of months.
Supply is down, demand is holding strong. In a normal market, prices would rise. We are not a normal market yet but prices are creeping up and we are returning to a seller’s market in some price points. It is still neighborhood by neighborhood and house by house.
Spring and summer are our strongest buying periods so if demand stays this high, prices should begin to follow! Stay tuned for more!! And call us if you want us to look at your neighborhood!
