Actives Rise Again....Pendings Too.
AWC Fall....
Sales for month likely to top 8000....
Pending: 13,199 (+99 from last week)
Pending SFAM: 11,583 ( +88 from last week)
AWC: 6,538 ( -88 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,775 ( -96 from last week)
CLOSED 10.25 1,624 ( -12 from last week)
Closed SF: 1,426 ( -2 from last week)
Active: 32,212 ( +325 from last week)
Active Sfam: 24,860 ( +318 from last week)
CLOSED MTD: 5,311
Closed Sfam: 4,615
I don't have time for much analysis today, but two key things are showing up. One is that active listings continue to rise; Troy Wahlberg, of AZValley Real Estate, wrote in that since anti-deficiency legislation was repealed, banks have increased the number of homes that they are foreclosing as they are not hedging that they might be able to go after owners for deficiencies any longer. He has seen the trustee sales return to their previous level, which would account for the slight uptick in listings we are seeing hit the market. It is not a wave, certainly, but we are likely to see an increase in inventory as we go through the winter months, when sales typically slow down. Listings also typically slow down, but much of our new inventory is lender-owned so the seasonal aspect may not matter much to them.
The second issue is that we are on track for a decent sales month, and I will say that we will pass 8000 sales overall. Its not a given, but the last week should be fairly decent, and all things being equal, we should get there. Its not a blowout month, but we are definitely far ahead of 2008's pace.
We would like to see inventory falling, but we are not at the peak sales months, and we are also seeing some evidence of new home sales likely competing for buyers. I have been seeing new homes going up in many of the outlying communities like Buckeye and Coolidge. Builders are offering some tremendous value for new homes, and the new home reports are showing some consistently better numbers than last year. In all likelihood, those are not spec homes- builders, even the big ones, are not going to go and put up 20+ spec homes at a clip on the same block- they either already have buyers for those homes, or they have some reasonable data that tells them they are selling fast enough to warrant their construction. Our resale prices have been going up, but I think we are going to see where they encounter some resistance as builders bring their pricing power to bear and offer up bargains that many buyers, especially first-time buyers, can't ignore.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
ARMLS STATS 10/12-18/09
Pendings Top 13K, Actives up slightly.
AWC still higher as short sales climb.
October should top September's Sales
PENDING SALES: 13,100 ( +134 from last week)
Pending Sfam: 11,495 ( +140 from last week)
AWC: 6,626 ( +14 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,871 ( +11 from last week)
Closed (10/18): 1,636 ( +309 from last week)
Closed Sfam: 1,428 ( +279 from last week)
Active: 31,887 ( +147 from last week)
Active Sfam: 24,542 ( +70 from last week)
Closed MTD (10/18): 3,636
Closed MTD Sfam: 3,154
The number of active listings rose slightly, as we have reached that time in the early fall before the holiday season that home listings tend to increase, and sales start to slow down. It was not a sharp increase, but it did go up statistically. I will discuss more about this next week. We are not being buried by new foreclosure listings, so I will leave it there for now.
Interestingly, pendings continue to rise, now topping 13,000 again. Solid pending numbers usually lead to solid sales numbers, so we can anticipate that October will be okay. We are running slightly ahead of September's pace, but not significantly so. Enough to put us over the 8000 mark, which will not be bad for October. Still, it is likely that activity will decrease somewhat as we head into the dormant season. I expect active listings to rise a bit during the fall, as there are foreclosures out there, and they will be put on the market by the banks.
We are of course still buried in short sale contracts. They are taking far too long to close, and that is affecting what should look like an even stronger recovery in home resales.
There has been in some interesting development in other areas that I will have to address another time; I don't have the time today to do so. One of those articles is that London, England, who had virtually the same problem we had with their housing market before we did, is now suffering a housing shortage. Bloomberg has the article here. Their market is not our market, but it does show how quickly these things can change. They were considered to be in a massive housing freefall, and now it appears they are coming out of it.
There are a couple of other articles posted by Diana Glick of CNBC that shows the dichotomy of the real estate market. There are massive foreclosures, but getting a house you want is competitive. Its not the way we want the market to be working, but there is a reason for buying in places like Arizona and Nevada: the future population is moving here. Boomers are just starting to make moves, and places like Anthem in Pinal County, and Vegas, and Northwest Arizona across the bridge from Nevada will be growth areas. Count on it.
Lastly, indicators are that October should be a decent month-we can expect it to be better than September, although probably not by a lot. It might be a lot better; its difficult to read that right now. We are only slightly better paced than September, but we do have good pending numbers, so I am not sure. We are in all likelihood going to top 8000 sales in October, so that is pretty positive.
AWC still higher as short sales climb.
October should top September's Sales
PENDING SALES: 13,100 ( +134 from last week)
Pending Sfam: 11,495 ( +140 from last week)
AWC: 6,626 ( +14 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,871 ( +11 from last week)
Closed (10/18): 1,636 ( +309 from last week)
Closed Sfam: 1,428 ( +279 from last week)
Active: 31,887 ( +147 from last week)
Active Sfam: 24,542 ( +70 from last week)
Closed MTD (10/18): 3,636
Closed MTD Sfam: 3,154
The number of active listings rose slightly, as we have reached that time in the early fall before the holiday season that home listings tend to increase, and sales start to slow down. It was not a sharp increase, but it did go up statistically. I will discuss more about this next week. We are not being buried by new foreclosure listings, so I will leave it there for now.
Interestingly, pendings continue to rise, now topping 13,000 again. Solid pending numbers usually lead to solid sales numbers, so we can anticipate that October will be okay. We are running slightly ahead of September's pace, but not significantly so. Enough to put us over the 8000 mark, which will not be bad for October. Still, it is likely that activity will decrease somewhat as we head into the dormant season. I expect active listings to rise a bit during the fall, as there are foreclosures out there, and they will be put on the market by the banks.
We are of course still buried in short sale contracts. They are taking far too long to close, and that is affecting what should look like an even stronger recovery in home resales.
There has been in some interesting development in other areas that I will have to address another time; I don't have the time today to do so. One of those articles is that London, England, who had virtually the same problem we had with their housing market before we did, is now suffering a housing shortage. Bloomberg has the article here. Their market is not our market, but it does show how quickly these things can change. They were considered to be in a massive housing freefall, and now it appears they are coming out of it.
There are a couple of other articles posted by Diana Glick of CNBC that shows the dichotomy of the real estate market. There are massive foreclosures, but getting a house you want is competitive. Its not the way we want the market to be working, but there is a reason for buying in places like Arizona and Nevada: the future population is moving here. Boomers are just starting to make moves, and places like Anthem in Pinal County, and Vegas, and Northwest Arizona across the bridge from Nevada will be growth areas. Count on it.
Lastly, indicators are that October should be a decent month-we can expect it to be better than September, although probably not by a lot. It might be a lot better; its difficult to read that right now. We are only slightly better paced than September, but we do have good pending numbers, so I am not sure. We are in all likelihood going to top 8000 sales in October, so that is pretty positive.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
ARMLS STATS FOR GREATER PHOENIX 10/13/09
Active Listings Rise
Pendings up Sharply, Too
AWC reaches new heights, short sale contracts likely cause.
PENDING: 12,966 ( +406 from last week)
Pending SFam: 11,355 ( +305 from last week)
AWC: 6,612 ( +79 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,860 ( +75 from last week)
Closed 10/5-10/11 1,327 ( -807 from last week)
Closed SFam: 1,149 ( -721 from last week)
Active: 31,740 ( +420 from last week)
Active SFam: 24,472 ( +359 from last week)
CLOSED MTD 10/11/09: 1,977
Closed SFam: 1,713
The number of active listings rose sharply in the last week, as more homes are put on the market as historical data shows in the fall. The number of pendings rebounded sharply as well, forecasting probably a good but not great October, but also a better than normal November.
The closings for the first full week of October are a decent number at 1300+, so we can anticipate sales reaching similar levels as September, but maybe just a tad better. We are going into what is a traditionally slower period of buyer activity, and a somewhat higher level of Seller activity, so we will likely see a short-lived spike in listings through October, before the normal fall-off in November and December.
I have a full day planned here, so I don't have any time for analysis, but hopefully I can comment more on the source of the rise in inventory after I do some research. It was a fairly sharp uptick, so one wonders if a particular bank released a bunch of their listings on to the market. I will dig a little deeper and see if I can come up with that info.
Pendings up Sharply, Too
AWC reaches new heights, short sale contracts likely cause.
PENDING: 12,966 ( +406 from last week)
Pending SFam: 11,355 ( +305 from last week)
AWC: 6,612 ( +79 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,860 ( +75 from last week)
Closed 10/5-10/11 1,327 ( -807 from last week)
Closed SFam: 1,149 ( -721 from last week)
Active: 31,740 ( +420 from last week)
Active SFam: 24,472 ( +359 from last week)
CLOSED MTD 10/11/09: 1,977
Closed SFam: 1,713
The number of active listings rose sharply in the last week, as more homes are put on the market as historical data shows in the fall. The number of pendings rebounded sharply as well, forecasting probably a good but not great October, but also a better than normal November.
The closings for the first full week of October are a decent number at 1300+, so we can anticipate sales reaching similar levels as September, but maybe just a tad better. We are going into what is a traditionally slower period of buyer activity, and a somewhat higher level of Seller activity, so we will likely see a short-lived spike in listings through October, before the normal fall-off in November and December.
I have a full day planned here, so I don't have any time for analysis, but hopefully I can comment more on the source of the rise in inventory after I do some research. It was a fairly sharp uptick, so one wonders if a particular bank released a bunch of their listings on to the market. I will dig a little deeper and see if I can come up with that info.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
MLS STATS 10/06/09
September surprise-Almost 8000 closings!
AWC falls, are short sales starting to move?
Fall in pendings, actives slightly higher.
Home prices: Up or Down in September?
PENDING: 12,560 ( -588 from last week)
Pending SFam: 11,050 ( -546 from last week)
AWC: 6,533 ( -56 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,785 ( -62 from last week)
Active: 31,320 ( +103 from last week)
Active Sfam: 24,113 ( +82 from last week)
Closed 9/29-10/4: 2,134 ( +20 from last week)
Closed SFamily: 1,870 ( +15 from last week)
Closed September: 7,946 (September '08: 6,067)
Closed Sfam: 6,961
September finished fairly strong, almost reaching 8000 sales which I didn't expect. The number of sales shows there is still some life in the market before the dormancy that usually hits us in October and November and lasts until March. Pendings took a little dip, which is fairly normal, as quite a few closings at the end of the month will disappear. They normally rebuild over the next several weeks.
I thought it was interesting to see AWC fall; this number has climbed pretty well forward for the the last year, mostly due to long-lived short sales residing there. Its possible that they are starting to move a bit, or that short sales in the system might have crested and could now start disappearing a little. Its not the ideal time of year, as there is not a lot of sale momentum going into November, but the pendings are still relatively high, and November is likely to show up okay. There have been some historically low interest rates, and there is still some buyer activity out there.
The best stat is that sales ended up stronger than expected; as I really didn't have a lot of faith we would cross 7500, and we fell just short of 8000. That is a very good month, by any measure of the circumstances we are in.
It is also necessary to place this in the context that the new home sales index has been stronger for much of the year than in either 2007 or 2008, and has been making even bigger gains the last several weeks as well, hitting a peak last week not seen since 2006. This is not to say that there are tremendous raw numbers of sales, but the index uses sales to subdivision ratio, and that ratio is tremendously better than last year or 2007. The most telling way to look at this is: in 2008 for the same week, the traffic to sale ratio was 21:1. That means for every 21 people who looked, one person bought. The 2009 ratio for the same period is 10:1! That is showing marked improvement, and is one of the reasons that there are getting to be more cautiously optimistic builders. It is not a bull market for them, by any means, but they can at least see that things are moving in the direction that they can start thinking about putting up homes again to meet demand.
Now, the best for last. The most fascinating statistic that I found for September sales was that the median sale price for sold listings jumped from $126,000 in August, to $130,000 in September. That is about a 3.2 % increase in price. That is a great sign. The dollar volume of sold listings also increased over August, and has bested the 2008 monthly dollar volume for the last four months, and 5 out of 6. This is also a positive sign. These are leading indicators about trends, and as we saw from 2006-2008, the trends don't change very quickly, they tend to follow a course. We are on a course for a better real estate market in six months than we have today, and I think we can take some comfort in that.
The number of new listings has also continued to decline over the summer. March is the highest number of new listings, but June was the highest this summer. We have fallen since then. It is still a relatively high number compared to sales, but apparently, we have reached something of an equilibrium in inventory. It might rise a little, but the number of new actives tends to fall pretty sharply in November-December. There are variables of course, such as lender listings, but they have been claiming that since March, and it has yet to happen. In fact, it looks like March was the peak month for listings this year, and we weathered that. We would have to see a catastrophic amount of listings in October, with a drastic reduction in sales, to really erode our position of a real estate recovery at this point.
AWC falls, are short sales starting to move?
Fall in pendings, actives slightly higher.
Home prices: Up or Down in September?
PENDING: 12,560 ( -588 from last week)
Pending SFam: 11,050 ( -546 from last week)
AWC: 6,533 ( -56 from last week)
AWC SFam: 5,785 ( -62 from last week)
Active: 31,320 ( +103 from last week)
Active Sfam: 24,113 ( +82 from last week)
Closed 9/29-10/4: 2,134 ( +20 from last week)
Closed SFamily: 1,870 ( +15 from last week)
Closed September: 7,946 (September '08: 6,067)
Closed Sfam: 6,961
September finished fairly strong, almost reaching 8000 sales which I didn't expect. The number of sales shows there is still some life in the market before the dormancy that usually hits us in October and November and lasts until March. Pendings took a little dip, which is fairly normal, as quite a few closings at the end of the month will disappear. They normally rebuild over the next several weeks.
I thought it was interesting to see AWC fall; this number has climbed pretty well forward for the the last year, mostly due to long-lived short sales residing there. Its possible that they are starting to move a bit, or that short sales in the system might have crested and could now start disappearing a little. Its not the ideal time of year, as there is not a lot of sale momentum going into November, but the pendings are still relatively high, and November is likely to show up okay. There have been some historically low interest rates, and there is still some buyer activity out there.
The best stat is that sales ended up stronger than expected; as I really didn't have a lot of faith we would cross 7500, and we fell just short of 8000. That is a very good month, by any measure of the circumstances we are in.
It is also necessary to place this in the context that the new home sales index has been stronger for much of the year than in either 2007 or 2008, and has been making even bigger gains the last several weeks as well, hitting a peak last week not seen since 2006. This is not to say that there are tremendous raw numbers of sales, but the index uses sales to subdivision ratio, and that ratio is tremendously better than last year or 2007. The most telling way to look at this is: in 2008 for the same week, the traffic to sale ratio was 21:1. That means for every 21 people who looked, one person bought. The 2009 ratio for the same period is 10:1! That is showing marked improvement, and is one of the reasons that there are getting to be more cautiously optimistic builders. It is not a bull market for them, by any means, but they can at least see that things are moving in the direction that they can start thinking about putting up homes again to meet demand.
Now, the best for last. The most fascinating statistic that I found for September sales was that the median sale price for sold listings jumped from $126,000 in August, to $130,000 in September. That is about a 3.2 % increase in price. That is a great sign. The dollar volume of sold listings also increased over August, and has bested the 2008 monthly dollar volume for the last four months, and 5 out of 6. This is also a positive sign. These are leading indicators about trends, and as we saw from 2006-2008, the trends don't change very quickly, they tend to follow a course. We are on a course for a better real estate market in six months than we have today, and I think we can take some comfort in that.
The number of new listings has also continued to decline over the summer. March is the highest number of new listings, but June was the highest this summer. We have fallen since then. It is still a relatively high number compared to sales, but apparently, we have reached something of an equilibrium in inventory. It might rise a little, but the number of new actives tends to fall pretty sharply in November-December. There are variables of course, such as lender listings, but they have been claiming that since March, and it has yet to happen. In fact, it looks like March was the peak month for listings this year, and we weathered that. We would have to see a catastrophic amount of listings in October, with a drastic reduction in sales, to really erode our position of a real estate recovery at this point.
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