By Mike Bodeen · 25 February 2019
Days like this past Saturday remind me how much I love my career! Saturday however, did not start out to be very promising. Due to the amount of snow in North Scottsdale’s premier Desert Mountain golf community, one of the key homes I was going to show my client couldn’t be viewed due to a leaking roof.
My client flew in on Thursday from the SF Bay Area and had a grueling all day Friday interview with his possible new employer in Scottsdale. He could only view houses on Saturday and was heading back to the Bay on Sunday. Though we stressed to the seller’s agent that we can see past the issue, the seller still refused us access to see this near million-dollar home. Get this – the property has been on the market for 678 days!
Now we’re down to 3 homes to view and because of the snow (unbelievable, right?) we were warned at the guard gate that some of the higher up neighborhoods were having issues with cars getting stuck. “Be prepared to call a tow truck,” they said! Well, being a former snow country resident of Lake Tahoe and Truckee for almost 20 years, I thought, not a problem, right? Wrong. I had long abandoned 4-Wheel and All-wheel driving. So, following our second showing, we got slightly stuck in the driveway. My rear wheel Genesis came with a lot of accolades, but snow/ice conditions were apparently not one of them. Fifteen minutes of tracking back and forth, and help from the melt off, we got out.
The good news is that my client loved two of the three homes we saw that day. I have to say it sort of tugged on the old heart strings to see all the white stuff up there on Sonoran Desert foliage. Every day in our business is a different day. I love it!
It Pays to View the Long Term!
First off, thanks to Ben Allred of Waterstone Mortgage for sending me this informative inter-active link below. The link to this national appreciation map shows the short and long-term rates of appreciation (ROA) for every state in the country, even since 1975. It’s very cool.
https://sf3.tomnx.com/landingpage/?token=gMBlBvIGJ
Note that the rates below are cumulative. For example the past 5 years shows a total of almost 49% total appreciation, or 9.71% (not compounded) per year. But if you go back 10 years which included the great recession, the annual rate of appreciation was just over one-half percent per year (.62%). Not so good, except that that rewind enabled thousands to buy very affordable homes in Arizona. Though a terrible bottoming out resulted for many ten years ago, the market has since adjusted, strengthened, and stabilized.
If you bought a home 20 years ago in 1999, your home has since appreciated 121% or 6% per year (not compounded). The average annual ROA for Arizona is near 5%
Arizona’s Rate of Appreciation (ROA)
past quarter: 2.15%
past year: 9.00%
past 5 years: 48.58%
10 years: 6.16%
20 years: 120.63%
30 years: 196.71%
since 1975: 581.98%*
Avg Annual ROA: 4.86%*
Except for the average ROA, rates of appreciation shown are cumulative for each period. Calculations are derived from the FHFA Housing Price Index. Data is considered accurate but not warranted.