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Well I guess I’ll start with the trite phrase – I have good news and bad news regarding the greater Phoenix real estate market last month.
Where do we start? With the good news obviously. We closed over 7,000 transactions last month, which is well above the monthly median number for both the last 120 months (10 years) as well as the last 10 Julys. Also the number of Pending Sales is 9,800, which is in the top third for the last 120 months. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? With ample inventory to choose from, record low interest rates and affordable prices, isn’t the market in good shape?
Well, let’s look at the bad news from July. The number of sales per month is down 23% in the last 30 days (from 9,100 to 7,000). Pending Sales are down 6% (from 10,400 to 9,800) for the same period. Although prices, both average and median are unchanged from 7/09, the average is down $6,000 (3%) and the median down $2,000 (2%) in the last 30 days. The market is indeed undergoing some changes and whether they are all attributable to the tax credit going away or a reflection of consumer confidence and job security, remains to be seen.
I think Mike Orr’s 8/2/10 newsletter on www.cromfordreport.com is a must read. He provides excellent analysis and graphs to show the trends over the last 90 days. There are some developments at different price points that we need to be aware of and continue watching. Stay tuned for more Market Reports later this month. Also be prepared for the Arizona Republic to broadcast the bad news, which probably won’t help the situation much.
