{"id":885,"date":"2019-03-14T23:39:36","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T23:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/?p=885"},"modified":"2019-03-14T23:39:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T23:39:58","slug":"885","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/?p=885","title":{"rendered":"The Spring Market Awakens"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a slow and non-spectacular beginning to the year, the market appears to be finally waking up.\u00a0 March heralds the beginning of the spring buying season \u2013 so<\/p>\n

\"\" prognosticators watch closely for signs of market health.\u00a0 In the valley the supply side of the economic seesaw (supply & demand) has been fairly stable, if persistently undersupplied. Supply changes tend to be slow moving.\u00a0 Demand, as we have mentioned in the past, can change far more quickly.\u00a0 Jitters were set off in the last quarter of 2018 when the erosion of summer demand persisted.\u00a0 The erosion should not have been shocking given the hit affordability took both in years of rising prices combined with a rapid rise of interest rates. \u00a0\u00a0As Tom Ruff in the ARMLS Blog so brilliantly explains:\u00a0 \u201cThe decline in year-over-year sales volume began in October as interest rates rose. Adding angst to the problem, employees saw their 401(k)s shrink as the Dow Jones Industrial and the S&P 500 indexes fell 18.8% and 19.6% respectively between the first of October and Christmas Eve. Attempting to soothe nerves, the federal government shutdown from December 22 thru January 25. Happy Holidays everyone! \u201c<\/em><\/p>\n

We could not have stated that better.<\/p>\n

The \u201csky is falling\u201d predictions of prices dropping, however, have no economic basis to them.\u00a0 That happens only after time in a buyer\u2019s market.\u00a0 We repeat, we remain in a \u201cgentle\u201d seller\u2019s market. In fact, despite the sluggish start – demand is picking up steam.\u00a0 So naysayers predicting a buyer\u2019s market or drop in prices will likely have to wait beyond this year.\u00a0 At least in the valley.\u00a0 The proof is in the numbers as evidenced by Michael Orr of the Cromford Report:<\/p>\n

The market started the year far behind 2018 in terms of demand – the monthly sales rate was down 11% on January 1 from a year earlier while the count of listings under contract was down 17%. At the end of January these numbers had changed to down 17% and 14% respectively. At the end of February they had changed to down 8% and 12% respectively.<\/em><\/p>\n

What can we conclude from this? First, we know the under contract count is a leading indicator for closed sales. The 17% gap at the start of January suggested that January closings would be weak and they were indeed, down 17%. The slight improvement in under contract counts to 14% down suggested a mild recovery in February. We actually saw an even stronger recovery to just 8% down. This is quite respectable when you consider that because pricing was up year over year, the dollar volume in February was $2,127 million, not far (2.6%) below 2018s $2,184 million.<\/em><\/p>\n

At 12% down compared with last year, under contracts counts are recovering from 17% and 14% down at the beginning of the previous 2 months. We anticipate that March sales will reflect that recovery and it is possible that the sales gap could narrow further, even enough to close the dollar volume gap completely. This assumes that current trends continue, which is not certain, but reasonably likely.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not all areas were impacted equally.\u00a0 Phoenix and Central Valley fared the best (down 2.4%) and the Northeast Valley the worst (down the 4.7%).\u00a0 All in all \u2013 not much to fret about.\u00a0 To quote Mark Twain \u201c\u201cThe reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 And so it is with our market.\u00a0 As always, we will continue to keep you informed as the trends solidify for the year.<\/p>\n

Russell & Wendy Shaw<\/p>\n

(Mostly Wendy)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a slow and non-spectacular beginning to the year, the market appears to be finally waking up.\u00a0 March heralds the beginning of the spring buying season \u2013 so prognosticators watch closely for signs of market health.\u00a0 In the valley the supply side of the economic seesaw (supply & demand) has been fairly stable, if persistently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-values","category-market-stats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nohasslelistingblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}