Phoenix Business Journal – by Adam Kress
Single-family home prices are dropping at record levels, and the Phoenix area is getting hit harder than most.
According to the National Association of Realtors, home prices dropped 7.7 percent from first-quarter 2007 to first-quarter 2008. In Phoenix, the numbers were down more than 15 percent, to a median sales price of $220,200 for the period.
The NAR said this was the largest year-over-year decline since the group began reporting prices in 1982. The national median sales price was $196,300 for the first quarter, down 4.8 percent compared with the last three months of 2007.
The Housing Crisis is over?
May 9, 2008
In the opinion piece, The Housing Crisis is Over?, from the Wall Street Journal, reports that Cyril Moulle-Bertaux suggests that April 2008 marked the bottom of the U.S. housing market. And in his R.O.I. column WSJ’s Brett Arends makes a similar argument. He looks at the data on housing starts since 1972, which shows that new housing starts slumped below the one million mark in March. Every time that has happened in the last 50 years, Mr. Arends writes, it proved to be the bottom of a recession. Mr. Arends points out that Bill Wheaton, a legendary real-estate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has also suggested that fears about the real-estate crash were overdone. And he points to a private portfolio manager in London, who said the homebuilding stocks on Wall Street were at last a “buy.” In the Journal editorial, Mr. Moulle-Bertaux suggests that the housing market will revive, as more first-time buyers are lured in by falling prices and lower mortgage rates. “Homes on average are back to being as affordable as during the best of times in the 1990s,” he writes. “Numerous households that had been priced out of the market can now afford to get in.”
And Now April Existing Home Sales are UP!!!
May 1, 2008
We saw that March had an increase from February sales. Now April has seen a 13% increase from March sales. There were 4783 existing home sales in April. This is really good news. Combine that news with the fact that the number of homes currently in escrow is close to 8000 means May looks to have at least as many sales as April. I believe we will hit 5000 homes sales in May. Right now Inventory is at 54716 with 49% of those properties sitting vacant. We have just under 12 months of inventory.
I believe the bottom is here for Metro Phoenix.
March Existing Home Sales are WAY UP!!!
April 1, 2008
It will be 15 days before you hear the “official” numbers from Arizona Association of Realtors, but you can say you heard it here first. March existing home sales are up, WAY UP!!! There were 4200 existing home sales in March which is an increase of nearly 24% over February’s sales. The bigger news is that the number of homes currently in escrow is close to 7000. This means that within the next 45 days or so most of these properties will be closing escrow. If the number of homes in escrow stays consistently at or above about 6500 the monthly sales figures should remain brisk at over 4000 per month. If all things continue along as they are now, April existing home sales will hit at least 4700. Even though inventory is still hovering at 56000, months of inventory is now at 13 months and should shrink to 12 months by the end of April.
Have we hit the bottom? Can’t say yet, but we should know soon.
Stay tuned….
