By Mike Bodeen · 24 July 2023
25,000 homes for sale in the Phoenix Metro is the historical norm.
We have to be honest though, there’s not much about our residential real estate market that’s been normal.
In the Great Recession, during the fall of 2007, there were close to 58,000 homes for sale in our Phoenix Metro communities (see chart). A record high.
In March of 2022, there were roughly 4,900 resale homes for sale, nearing the record bottom. Two historical extremes.
Over the past nine years, 2023 included, listing inventory has been below 25,000.
In our Monday Market Snapshot, The Bodeen Team encourages folks, especially first-timers to jump into the market, as difficult as that has been at times. During the past two years, we began to strongly exhort buyers to come off the fence and go for it.
Mortgage rates remain near 7%. Prices are near their peaks. Yes, there was a brief drop in sales prices last year, but they are now recovering and no doubt soon will reach new highs in the price of homes.
Mike and Jonathan, how can you still be encouraging buyers to buy?
A true story.
This guy I know – he’s my age (old, right?) and is nearing those golden years of retirement, and who has a daughter who is a single mom with two girls in high school living with he and his wife. They get along pretty well. In truth however, the daughter, at nearly 40 years old, and her girls, aren’t crazy about living with her parents. And the parents, who love their daughter and granddaughters, aren’t crazy about not being empty nesters – which they had been before the daughter’s family’s moved in quite awhile ago.
So anyway, my friend had this thought to buy his daughter a home nearby where he lives. That way, they can live happily ever after in two separate abodes.
Now, being a faithful follower of the Snapshot, he agrees that buying a home for his daughter is probably a good thought, until he began to do battle in his mind. Buy a home at the top of the market with a 7% 30-year mortgage? And he needing to pay most of the mortgage too? In other words a big negative cash flow each month?
After some restless nights, and getting his wife on-board, he took the plunge and bought a small 3 bedroom home in the Anthem community in North Phoenix. His daughter and girls moved in this past Saturday. Yes, some doubts remain. But he sees it as a win-win.
Who is he? That would be me. Taking my own advice. And in my shoes, you would do it too!