Month: August 2009

Market Stats Update

Posted on by Admin

For the past five or six years (very much unlike my first 20 – 25 years in the real estate business) the price of Phoenix residential real estate has been front page news and sometimes even national news.  What you will see here aren’t the glaring headlines – that all sound so much better than my title for this post – but actual stats.  Hopefully, seeing them will help you to have a more accurate idea of what is happening.UpstatGraph

1.  July residential resale properties were over 9,000 for the 3rd month in a row.  You would have to go clear back to 2005 to find sales success like that.

2.  The trend for the median sales price (the middle point, half of all sales are below this number and half of all sales are above it) is overall, rising.  It is currently at 125k.  Last April it was 116k.

3.  The average (or mean) sales price is up to 175k.  March of 2009 it was 159k.

Foreclosures Surge?

Posted on by Admin

This was just now posted on AzCentral with the headline, "Foreclosures surged in July.  This is what passes for "reporting" by most media about the real estate market.  June foreclosures were 5,149.  July’s numbers (per the article) were 5,316.  A difference of 167 foreclosures or 3.24%.  And that is being called a "surge".marketStats

I wonder if anyone’s paycheck went up at an annual rate of 3.24% they would ever consider it a surge?

This isn’t to suggest that the number of foreclosures going up is ever a good thing – just that reading past the headlines and actually looking at the numbers might shed a bit of light on the subject.

If anyone cared to truly examine some relevant market statistics for the Greater Phoenix area here are a couple I personally find quite interesting: The current "success rate" for all listings in ARMLS is 64.8%.  You can see that (along with some other very interesting numbers) here.  But since most of the sales occurring are lender owned properties, that number doesn’t mean too much to me.  Let’s break it down.

Scroll down on this page and you will see the breakdown, based on types of listings.  The success rate (percent of all listings of that type that sell) for lender owned is 91.4%.  Not very surprising – at least not in our market.  But look at the comparison between "normal listings" and short sales.  The numbers are almost the same!  Normal listings success rate is 50.2% and short sales success rate is 49.4%.

I know, I know, the normal listings stat surged way ahead. 🙂