Another installment of the Sunday Stats, on Monday this week. Since it’s the Labor Day holiday – which we ironically celebrate by taking a holiday – today feels like Sunday, tomorrow Tuesday will feel like Monday for most of us, and when Friday arrives in 4 days instead of 5 it’ll be a great treat.
Inventory levels continue to drop. First timers are keeping The Phoenix Agents hopping lately, and we hear the same from most of our colleagues. The federal $8,000 first time home buyers’ tax credit isn’t (and shouldn’t be) the reason many rookies are home shopping but you can’t shake a stick at it either.
(click pics to enlarge, back to return)
There’s also quite a lot of investor activity going on. We’ve been helping first time buyers shop lately in both Queen Creek and Surprise. We had the bright idea of looking for non-bank owned properties, since foreclosures are so hard to get a contract accepted on. Almost every single one of the non-bank owned homes was a fix and flip! Investors are buying homes at the foreclosure auctions, installing new paint, carpet, appliances and lighting fixtures, then selling them at a (small) profit. Talk about shades of the boom-boom era.
Note: These charts include data from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) and include single-family detached homes, patio homes, town homes, condos, multifamily housing, and loft housing. The charts exclude commercial properties, raw land, mobile & manufactured homes. All data believed accurate but – since it is based on data in the ARMLS – author is unable to guarantee.
Heather Barr is a Realtor. She's a chow hound, a gym rat, and the only political junkie in the USA who can actually keep her political views to herself. Instead, she focuses on educating her clients about the often-confusing world of residential real estate.
Tagged as:
Sunday Stats
Sorry gang, stats are late this week. The level of buyer interest in buying has reached near-frenzy in some price bands, and ThePhoenixAgents team is kept hopping day to day.
Click the charts to enlarge; use browser’s back button to return to the post. Note: this chart includes all areas covered by the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS), and includes detached homes, patiohomes, townhomes, condos, multifamily housing, loft housing. It excludes only manufactured and mobile homes.
The chart above shows the entire MLS with history going back to last October. The “Months’ Inventory” and “Sold In Past 30 Days” are the interesting numbers in this chart. As Chris noted in his recent post, sales volume is waaaaay up. We’re selling as many homes per month now as we did in the peak of the boom-boom years. Of course as everyone knows, prices are way off those boom-boom era highs. But you can’t have 40% appreciation per year forever or pretty soon we’re all living in cardboard boxes because it’s all we can afford.
(Note: this chart includes all areas covered by the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS), and includes detached homes, patiohomes, townhomes, condos, multifamily housing, loft housing. It excludes only manufactured and mobile homes.)
This chart (above) breaks down the entire MLS into the ZIP codes we prominently cover here at ThePhoenixAgents.com
Finally, the chart above shows that all the sales volume is happening in the lower price ranges. (It includes only single family, detached houses. It excludes condos, patiohomes, townhomes, multifamily housing, and manufactured/mobile homes).
I began charting this data because I’ve got a theory that the “recovery” we’ve all been hoping for has already begun in the sub-$75,000 price band and will creep up the price bands.
Here’s my theory, for what it’s worth: Investors will buy the cheapest properties they can find that cash-flow. When that price band is sold out, the investors will move up to the next price band and buy everything they can get to cash flow in that band. Lather, rinse, repeat until we’re back to a normal market.
Of course at some price point the properties stop cash-flowing as rental properties. I guess that might be around $175,000 to $225,000, depending on the investor’s cash on hand, the rents in the area, etc.
It’s anybody’s guess where the buyer demand comes from at prices above that level. Maybe that’s when the “pent up buyer demand” that some folks talk about steps in.
Heather Barr is a Realtor. She's a chow hound, a gym rat, and the only political junkie in the USA who can actually keep her political views to herself. Instead, she focuses on educating her clients about the often-confusing world of residential real estate.
Tagged as:
Sunday Stats
(click pics to enlarge, back to return)
