The tight residential real estate market has a couple of bright spots in year-over-year data, according to a report from Phoenix REALTORS® that analyzes data from the most recent numbers available.
“We’re seeing a steady market trend as the number of days on the market has declined for each of the last five months,” said Butch Leiber, president of Phoenix REALTORS’ Board of Directors and an active broker. “The average was 72 days in April and dropped to 56 days in August.”
The number of new listings is up each month, showing a 37.8% increase since April, with nearly 5,000 new listings going on the books in August. In April, the number of new listings didn’t even break 4,300. The inventory has been steady at 2.4 months over the past five months.
Numbers also reveal that the supply of homes for sale for July and August is the lowest it’s been so far this year. In August, the inventory was down 35.3% from a year earlier. Buyer selection is low, but the steady increase in new listings is encouraging. The inventory climbed over 500 homes from July to August.
“We’re seeing stability in the percentage of list price received,” Leiber said. “It’s been holding at higher than 98% of the asking price over the same five months and nearly 99% the last two months. In August, it was slightly higher than one year ago.”
As a case in point, August 2023 saw 98.7% of list price received, while last year, the percentage was 98.1%.
Closed and pending sales are up in August over July, hovering lower than a year ago. This change puts the brakes on a downward trend that started in April. August saw 3,342 pending sales and 4,925 closed sales. Both data are up from 3,224 and 4,725 in July. The current numbers are much less than the 4,292 pending sales and 5,308 closed sales in April.
The Phoenix data are hopeful when compared to National Association of REALTORS® numbers showing a 2.2% decline from July.
“Nationally, sales have been trending down since April,” Leiber said. “Over the same period, Phoenix numbers are trending up, according to NAR data.”
Mortgage rates are still a significant factor affecting sales. The interest rates have been hovering above 6.5% since May. Nationally, it’s caused sales to decline 16.6% in a year-over-year comparison. Phoenix is down just 3.1% in August 2023 compared to August 2022.
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