By Mike Bodeen · 12 November 2018
According to Mark Twain (purportedly), “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” I also like the venerable L.A. Dodger’s recently retired announcer Vin Scully’s take on statistics, “Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.”
Our Phoenix Metro residential real estate sales market is slowing. That’s a true statement! But a complete picture, it is not!
Today, we’ll show you two charts for your illumination (hopefully). It certainly was for me.
Let’s first look at the macro numbers comparing homes under contract valley wide, according to the most reliable source of current listing activity we have – the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS), provided to us by the Cromford Report.
The first chart (see above), shows that the total number of listings in the ARMLS domain currently under contract equal 7,745. One year ago (11-11-17), the number of listings under contract totaled 9,003. This is an overall drop of 14% in one year! That’s large!
But it’s not a totally accurate picture. If you own a condo, for example, the numbers will be different. The numbers will likewise change from neighborhood to neighborhood, zip code to zip code and city to city. And the numbers will differ from within those geo parameters as well.
Today we’ll look at the parameters of price range. We’ll likewise compare now with one year ago:
Largely because of lower available inventory, the lowest price range (Under $200,000) had the highest decrease in listings under contract (40%) since 2017.
The highest price range ($3,000,000+) tied the low end for the highest decrease in one year, at 40%.
The largest segment of the market increase were those listings priced between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000. These under contract listings rose 43% from last year.
So if someone tells you that the market is slowing, remember that this is mostly true at the low end and the high end of the price ranges. For people with homes valued between 200k and 800k (most people), you won’t have noticed much change.
Market data referenced in this article comes from The Cromford Report.