Arizona Home Prices On The Rise & Time Is Running Out

By • August 18th, 2009

Arizona Open House Tour 1 Home Balcony View

If you have been waiting around for the best possible time to buy a property, you need to buy now. I know that most of you have been listening to the news and reading all about the amount of bank owned properties, foreclosures, short sales, and all the inventory on the market. The times are changing and if you think that home prices are still falling and you can get a better deal tomorrow, I am going to show you why I think differently.

Let’s look at a little history of the market through the statistics of the local MLS. I won’t bore you with a complete history lesson. I am going to start with January of 08. The inventory levels in 01/08 were at 19.82 months, meaning that if there were no more houses added to the inventory, we would have enough homes to sell for 19.82 months, before we would have no more homes to sell. We all know that old rule of supply and demand, and how it affects prices when there is a lot of inventory (supply). That is exactly what happened in the housing market as well.

Now let’s look at what the inventory levels looked like in August of 08, exactly one year ago. The number of homes for sale then caused us to have an inventory level of 9.98 months. That number is less than half the inventory of only 7 months earlier. Now let us take a look at the Volume of sales & the Average sales price, and see how they relate to the inventory levels. The sold volume in January of 08 was 898.63 Million, and yes that is the total sales volume for a single month. The average sold price in the same month was $312,046. Now let’s look at the figures for August of 08, one year ago. The sold volume for 08/08 was 1.322.32 million, and the average sold price was $238,080. So you can see that the volume went up and the prices went down, and the inventory also went down.

Now it is time to look at how the numbers are changing. We are not able to see the numbers for August yet, as we are still in the month of August. We will look at how the numbers are different for the month of July. The inventory levels in July of 09 were at just 4.23 months. That is a large decrease in the number of homes a buyer has choose from, since the number of 19.82 in 01/08. In regards to the sold volume and the average sale price, the average sold price hit THE BOTTOM, at an average sales price of $158.82 in March of this year. The sales volume for the same month, March was 1.202.60 million.

I know you have been waiting patiently for me to tell you the numbers that are going to prove my point, as to why you need to buy, very very soon. I mean you need to buy right now, or you will pay more tomorrow, for the a different property, as the one you wanted will be sold. I know there are always those properties that are on the market for a long time. There are reasons for that, and those reasons, have nothing to do with what I am saying here. There will always be properties on the market that are overpriced for what they are, where they are, or the condition they are in, and possible a few more factors as well. The properties that are priced right, for the condition, location, and type of property they are, those are the properties that are selling faster, and faster these days.

Like I said earlier, the inventory for July of 09 was 4.23 months supply on hand. So if we have no more properties to come on the market there is not enough homes to last the year out. The sold volume for last month was 1.593.87 million up from 1.322.32 last year around the same time. The average sold price rose from the $158,082 price in March 09 to $175,023 in July 09. So you can see that those of you that waited just since March to buy a house, on average paid $16,041 more for your home. Do you still want to wait to buy a home? Give us a call, we can negotiate the best possible price for you, who knows, maybe we can even roll back the clock.

Share and Enjoy: