ARMLS is out with the latest stats for home buying. As you can see below, monthly sales are up month-over-month by 4.6%. The year-over-year comparison shows an increase of 4.3%
As far as new inventory, it’s down 9.2% month-over-month while the year-over-year comparison shows an increase of 4.5%
Now, total inventory has a loss month-over-month of 4.3% while year-over-year shows an increase of 5.1%.
When it comes to the UCB listings, ARMLS reports May listings percent of total actives was 16.7% with CCBS listings at 2.1% of total actives as you can see from the chart below.
Also, months supply of inventory for April was 3.26 with May at 2.98.
New average list prices are up 4.7% year-over-year. The year-over-year median is up 4.7%.
Sales prices are up 4.9% year-over-year on average while the year-over-year median is also up 7.0%.
Tom Ruff of The Information Market says ten years ago, tax records in Maricopa County show the median resale home sale price rose to $253,400. But they fell to $119,000 in April of 2009 but then rose steadily through 2010 due to tax incentives. When those incentives ended, the median fell back to $112,000 in August of 2011. This year, 2011, is known as the bottom of our market.
Tom Ruff says, in central Phoenix, “using ZIP code 85014 as an example of an area fully recovered, the peak annual median resale price was $268,000 in 2006. The median resale price fell 58% before bottoming at $112,500. Prices since the bottom have risen 240%. The median resale price for the first 5 months of 2016 in 85014 is $270,000 or 101% of peak pricing. There is currently only 2.4 months supply of inventory listed.”
Looking at the chart below, you can see there’s a slight increase in the forecast for median
and a slight decrease for average sale prices in June.
Foreclosures pending month-over-month show a decline of 7.4% while the year-over-year figure
was down 28.6%.
As far as short sales, ARMLS says they dropped 39.6% year-over-year. Lender owned sales
dropped 31.6% year-over-year. The total distressed year-over-year changed to a decrease of 35.3%
Days on market fell by 4 days year-over-year while month-over-month saw a drop of 1 day.
As far as resale median home values, Tom Ruff of The Information Market also points out there’s one big difference between our peak prices in 2006 and our current prices, and that’s the cost of money. “In June of 2006, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage averaged 6.68% as reported by Freddie Mac, where for the week ending June 9, 2016, the average rate was 3.66%. Interest rates today are 46% lower than they were in June 2006. When we apply these rates to a $200,000 mortgage, the interest paid in June of 2006 would have been $1,113 per month compared to $610 today.”
One more thing. In his report, “The New American Home”, Stephen Kim of Barclays Capital finds that Baby Boomers are looking to downsize, while Millennials are “choosing style over square footage.” As a result, the new American home is “shrinking in size for the first time in 40 years.”