By Jonathan Bodeen · 18 May 2020
In recent weeks, the Real Estate market here in the Phoenix area has been reheating, some might say dramatically. This is mostly true in the median price ranges (500k and below). The luxury market, while showing signs of improved demand, is not showing the same enthusiasm.
The below charts track the amount of listings that go under contract each week for their respective cities. This is probably the best and most important indicator of demand we can measure. The gold line represents last year and the green line this year.
Last year, you’ll see a typical annual trend, where most of the activity occurs in the spring and volume decreases through summer fall and winter. For this year, You’ll also notice a sharp dip on each chart, which shows the highly unusual drop in demand which the COVID-19 restrictions spawned. More importantly (at least for the purposes of this article) You’ll notice that in almost all of our major cities listing contracts are recovering, representing a return of our normal seasonal demand levels.
PHOENIX
CHANDLER
SURPRISE
SCOTTSDALE
PARADISE VALLEY
A few caveats:
55+ communities are still struggling and have not seen the same return in demand. We assume this is tied to both restricted travel (a good portion of 55+ community buyers are out of state) and an understandable reticence of our more vulnerable population to expose themselves to unnecessary risk.
The luxury market is sending more mixed messages, but it’s not all doom and gloom on that front either, plenty of reasons to be positive.
What we are documenting here is short term positivity. We can’t yet understand how the last two months will effect us in the long term. Soon we will offer not predictions, but detail factors that could help or hurt the real estate market in the long term.
We are fairly positive about the overall direction we are heading, but there is certainly going to be more to this story!