Welcome back!
Realizing that it has now been three months since I’ve written my last blog post, I have decided to update again. Quite honestly, I am planning to write more frequently. I have been so busy doing short sales in the recent months that I have focused all my attention there and on my family.
The Tucson real estate market has been alive with activity lately. It is typical to experience a lot of movement going on during this time of year, but it is still encouraging to see it this year because of how dead some markets are and because of all the negative talk in the media about how terrible things are. So what is going on? Here we go.
Home Sales Volume and Home Sales Units
Home Sales Volume and Home Sales Units both increased this month over last month. Last month (May) showed a 13.5% increase over April and June showed a 14.6% increase over May for sales volume. However, June is the first month where the Home Sales Units has experienced an increase over the numbers a year ago. In recent months we have seen improvements month-to-month, but have still been lower than last year. More units have sold, but will this continue?
Our home sales volume is still showing an increase month to month, but is still nearly 14% below what we saw last year at this time. This is a result of how low prices are and of how quickly the lower priced homes are selling. I have seen a marked increase in first time home-buyers since the $8,000 tax credit was made available.
Median and Average Sales Prices
Over the past couple of months, median sales prices have bounced around a bit. This is typical because it is dependent on how many units sell in each price range. For this month, the median sales price is at $165,000, truly a reflection of the short sales and foreclosures that populate our current market.
The average sales price increased again in June and is currently at about $238,000. This is a 14.6% increase over last month, but still a 13.5% decrease over last year. Again, this is to be expected when you consider which homes are selling fastest (those under $200,000). However, when this number begins to rise consistently, it will be another indicator that health is returning to our market as homes in all price brackets will begin selling well.
Pending Contracts
If you read my market reports regularly, you know that I focus a lot on pending contracts as an indicator of where are market is headed. If pending contracts continue to increase while active listings stay the same, then we have a situation where inventory is being cleared. On the other hand, if pending contracts lag, we may be looking at a market that is slowing.
June’s pending contracts showed a 10% increase over the month before and a whopping 50.6% increase over last June’s numbers!!! This is really good news. 1,432 homes went pending in June. It is also noteworthy to see that while pending sales fell off last June, this year they continued to show a strong in crease even over May’s numbers.
Active Listings and New Listings
New listings are still increasing, but the active listings continue to decline. We are currently (June 2009) at 6,261 for active listings in the Tucson MLS. This is 1,000 less than we had 3 months ago. In terms of home supply, we have a 5.5 month supply of homes on the market. We’re jammin’ folks. If this continues over the next several months, talk of a bad real estate market in Tucson will be behind us.
On the Streets
As mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I have been incredibly busy the past 3 months. Not only have I been working on my short sale listings, but I have been blessed to work with multiple buyers as well. Speaking with most agents in my office, they have been experiencing an uptick in business as well. It is still sometimes tedious because of the amount of time that short sales take. However, they do get approved and people are still buying homes.
How about you?
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