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.