A client who’s also a friend emailed me through LinkedIn the other day. He said,

David: How’s the market going for you? Do you see residential real estate coming back anytime soon?

Thought our readers might be interested in my answer.

Heather: Sadly, no, I don’t see it coming back anytime soon. Earlier this year I was hopeful that we’d be back on the road to normal by Fall 2010 or Spring 2011, but I’m less hopeful now.  It seems like the economic news is mostly bad, more and more people expect a double dip recession and the politicians are on hold for the summer, getting ready for a Battle Royale in November.

To top it off, Phoenix-area residential real estate often seems to be a leading indicator, and we’ve seen a big slowdown in the volume of residential resale homes getting sold in July. For most of 2009, about 5,500 or 6,000 resale homes sold Valleywide. March through June 2010 we averaged about 6,500 or 7,000 homes sold Valley-wide. July 2010 sales volumes were only 5,200 and August sales volumes are looking like they’ll come in at about 5,000 homes sold. But the volume of new bank owned homes hitting the market hasn’t slowed at the same rate. Same supply, less demand, simple Econ 101 says prices drop.

I’m battening down the hatches and prepping for another 3 years of sluggish creeping along the bottom, price-wise in Phoenix-area real estate.

I could be totally wrong. I hope I am. But I’m battening down the hatches all the same. My new mantra is simplify, small-ify, use hand-me-downs, reduce, re-use, recycle… lather, rinse, repeat.

Phoenix-area real estate coming back soon? is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Phoenix Real Estate Market Trends: are we nearing a turnaround?
2. Down Payment Assistance Coming Back?
3. Phoenix real estate market analysis

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.

Sunday Stats, Sept 7 2009 is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Sunday Stats, May 10, 2009
2. Sunday Stats for April 25, 2009
3. Sunday Stats, May 31, 2009

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.

Sunday Stats (on Tuesday) is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Sunday Stats
2. Sunday Stats
3. Sunday Stats, May 10, 2009

Lately we’ve been talking and writing about the sales activity being up – mostly in the lower price ranges and bank-owned sectors of the market, and mostly anecdotal evidence.  That part about anecdotal’s about to change; take a look at the chart below:

(click on the chart to see a full-screen view.)

2 things jump out at me from that chart:

May’s Record Sales Levels.  Last month we were at or near the record pace we saw in 2004 and 2005.

Summer Peaks.  Each year’s activity level peaks in the summer, so I’m expecting the next couple of months to also be very strong.

Other Notes (and legal mumbo jumbo):

All data was pulled from the MLS and is deemed accurate but not guaranteed.

I’ve been pulling this data for a long time and realized today I don’t have a "county" field. (mostly because I use this data for city-by-city comparisons, and because I apparently goofed up when I built it!)  Instead of Maricopa County, I’m pulling the cities of:  Ahwatukee, Anthem, Apache Junction, Avondale, Buckeye, Carefree, Cave Creek, Chandler, El Mirage, Fountain Hills, Gilbert, Glendale, Goodyear, Laveen, Litchfield Park, Maricopa, Paradise Valley, Peoria, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Sun City, Sun City West, Surprise, Tempe, and Tolleson.

Your procrastinating re-pulling all his data with a ‘county’ field Realtor,

Chris Butterworth

Sales activity is WAY up! is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Chris Butterworth is: Realtor. Analyst. Husband. Father. Writer. Amateur Photographer. Triathlete. Soccer Dad. Big fan of technology, efficiency, and the Arizona Wildcats.

Other posts you might like:

1. Pending Sales – What’s On The Horizon – Update #2
2. New Distressed Listings by Month – May 2009
3. Surprise Market Activity

I’ve been pulling this chart for a few months now, and it’s nice to finally see a 2-month in a row decline in the number of new ‘distressed listings’.

I do have to wonder how much of this decline is directly related to some of the banks’ moratorium on new foreclosures..  Is this trend for real, or are we seeing an artificially suppressed number of listings while a tidal wave of soon-to-be-listed homes sits in waiting?

The first chart below shows the total number of new listings for distressed properties by month.  The second chart breaks the number down to a listings-by-day number, which better accounts for the varying number of days in each month.

(click on each chart to see a full-screen view)

I’m pulling all new distressed listings from the MLS, regardless of their current status (active, sold, etc.)  I’m looking at Single Family Detached homes in Maricopa County, with some sort of bank involvement – Short Sales, Pre Foreclosures, Auctions, and Lender-Owned properties.

All data pulled from MLS and is assumed accurate but not guaranteed.

Your seeing but not yet believing Realtor,

Chris Butterworth

New Distressed Listings by Month – May 2009 is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Chris Butterworth is: Realtor. Analyst. Husband. Father. Writer. Amateur Photographer. Triathlete. Soccer Dad. Big fan of technology, efficiency, and the Arizona Wildcats.

Other posts you might like:

1. Recovery? Not yet.
2. Sunday Stats, May 10, 2009
3. Sunday Stats for April 25, 2009

Click all charts to enlarge; use browser’s back button to return

The whole MLS:

The ZIPs most often covered by The Phoenix Agents”:

New this week, stats for the entire MLS by price band. The market is completely segmented these days, so I hope this will be interesting and useful for our readers. Lower price bands are selling strongly, while what I call “middle class housing” is getting stale instead of selling.

Glossary and More Information

What is “Months Inventory” and/or “Absorption Rate”?

The entire Sunday Stats series

Sunday Stats, May 31, 2009 is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Sunday Stats, May 10, 2009
2. Sunday Stats for April 25, 2009
3. Sunday Stats

(click chart to enlarge; use browser’s back button to return to article)

Changing up the color coding this week – so many ZIP codes are past “recovery” and in to “Seller’s Market!” that I’m abandoning the red-for-bad and green-for-good color scheme in favor of gray shading.

Gray shaded boxes show ZIPs that are recovered (i.e. no longer the extremely strong buyer’s market that has prevailed in metro Phoenix for what feels like the past 374 years). These gray shaded ZIPs are seller’s markets.

Definitions

• Seller’s Market: less than 6 months’ supply on the market
• Buyer’s Market: more than 6 months’ supply on the market

Check back tomorrow for charts that break down the sellers’ vs. buyers’ market by price range. It’s a completely segmented market out there for the past couple of months with some price bands recovered, some are a silly-ridiculous strong sellers’ market, and some have several decades of homes for sale.

Sunday Stats is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Sunday Stats for April 25, 2009
2. Sunday Stats
3. Sunday Stats (a day late)

Sorry this is late. Weird, Sunday Stats on a Thursday. That’s what happens when the buyers start crawling out of the woodwork, drawn by unbelievable low mortgage rates, an $8,000 tax credit for firs timers and incredibly good home prices. Your blogging Realtors don’t blog as much because we’re busier than we’ve been since the boom era of Summer 2005.

Here’s this week’s chart, showing continued strong improvement in the outlying suburbs (85379, 85382) and the older communities on the north end of Phoenix (85027, 85024). The older sections of Glendale are a hotbed of buyer activity too (85306, 86308).

The Desert Ridge area is heating up too and buyers should be aware they might not have the strong upper hand in negotiations that they might be expecting when house shopping here.

(click chart to enlarge; use browser’s back button to return)

Click here for past entries of the Sunday Stats

Would you like to receive these updates by email? Send a note to Heather@ThePhoenixAgents.com

Sunday Stats, May 10, 2009 is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Sunday Stats
2. Sunday Stats
3. Sunday Stats for April 25, 2009

Here’s the chart for this week:

(click to enlarge; use browser’s back button to return)

The gray bands are new this week. They’re to highlight ZIP codes where the real estate market is balanced. Most folks in the biz generally agree that 6 months’ inventory is a “balanced” market. What this means is that if sales continued at the current pace and no additional homes were listed for sale, it would take 6 months for all the currently for-sale homes to sell.

In a balanced market, neither buyers or sellers have the upper hand in negotiating over price and terms. Of course you could still have a seller who was desperate to sell and gave that information out, giving buyers the upper hand on that particular home. But that would be kind of foolish, and anyway I’m talking generalities.

So there’s a TON o’ green this week and where there isn’t green there’s mostly gray. So that’s great news: most of the North Valley or Northwest Valley is improving or in recovery.

But that’s not the whole story. Here’s the rest of the story:

(all the slick charts in this post are courtesy of The Cromford Report . I couldn’t make anything that cool.  Click to enlarge; use browser’s back button to return)

That’s a chart of the amount of bank-owned sales in Surprise ZIP 85379. That big swath of red on the right? Those are bank owned sales. Seventy-eight percent of sales in Surprise in the past few weeks were bank owned.

That big ocean of light blue on the left? Those are 52% of the homes currently for sale that are in some stage of foreclosure. Presumably if they don’t sell before the foreclosure auction happens, they’ll be back on the market shortly, as bank owned homes. And the cycle begins again. Despite my recent blog pledge of puppies and sunshine, I see the wisdom of my partner’s post that we’re not out of the woods yet.

Here’s the charts for ZIPs 85306, 85308, and 85310:

Essentially, the ZIPs that are recovering the quickest are those with the most foreclosures. Doesn’t really surprise, but I hoped it would be interesting to see it in black and white. Or red and blue.

Sunday Stats for April 25, 2009 is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Sunday Stats, April 5
2. Sunday Stats
3. Sunday Stats

I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about the accelerated pace of sales, and how the market *may* be improving.  Taking a look at the numbers this morning bears that out – the numbers look terrific compared with 3 and 6 months ago.  That being said, I’ll stand by my earlier comments about the market being driven by bank-owned properties: we’re not seeing a recovery for regular sellers, but we are seeing a cleansing of the bank-owned inventory, which is a required step in the recovery process.

Here are the numbers for the Northwest Valley, sliced and diced for your review:

As you can see, the numbers are very strong at the lower end of the pricing scale, where most of the bank-owned properties are listed.

All that being said, be wary when you see or hear "one number reporting", such as "The 4.1 month supply of housing in the NW Valley represents a clear sellers’ market." 

Using these numbers to your advantage:

Buyers – you’re going to have more leverage to negotiate on the higher-priced properties, especially in the ranges where there aren’t any sales at all.

Sellers – if you’re willing & able to compete with the banks’ prices, you should see an awful lot of activity, and possibly even multiple offers!

Your slicing and dicing like a prep-cook Realtor,

Chris Butterworth

Northwest Valley Market Stats is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Chris Butterworth is: Realtor. Analyst. Husband. Father. Writer. Amateur Photographer. Triathlete. Soccer Dad. Big fan of technology, efficiency, and the Arizona Wildcats.

Other posts you might like:

1. Northwest Valley market statistics
2. Northwest Valley Market Statistics
3. more Northwest Valley Market Statistics

Stats are late this week, due to Easter dinner with the family.  In short your Honor, I blame the bunny.

Here’s this week’s chart (click the chart to enlarge; use browser’s back button to return)

I’ve done something this week that I should have done weeks ago: I flipped the color coding for certain ZIP codes.

Red still means “bad” and still shows market movement away from a balanced market. But in the grey-highlighted ZIPs we’re on the other side of a balanced market. There’s too little supply and too much demand in those ZIPs, making a strong seller’s market. Obviously in the rest of the ZIPs we track we’re still knee-deep in heavy duty buyer’s market.

If you continue the Econ 101 supply vs demand analogy, prices should start to increase in the gray highlighted ZIP codes. It’ll be really interesting to see if they do.

Anyway, here’s the chart showing the entire MLS statistics (click to enlarge; back to return):

I’m encouraged by the 6.08 number in the Months of Inventory column.  At least in the ZIP codes we track here at The Phoenix Agents, things are much closer to normal than they’ve been in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, housing prices won’t be zooming up anytime soon. My best guess says there’s still some bottoming out to do. It’s likely we’re going to see the pendulum swing too far towards low prices, just like it swung too far towards silly-ridiculous high prices in 2006. I’m just encouraged to think that we may be on our way out of the woods instead of being on the way in.

Sunday Stats (a day late) is a post written by The Phoenix Agents at Thompson's Realty. If you're reading this anywhere other than a feedreader (rss subscription) of ThePhoenixAgents.com, the site you're reading this on is guilty of copyright infringement.

Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.

Other posts you might like:

1. Sunday Stats, A Little Late
2. Sunday Stats
3. Sunday Stats