Maricopa County December Market Update

THE MARKET
BOTTOM LINE: Just when we thought the market might be cooling a bit and headed towards more balance, the indexes show that our market is quickly heating again and moving further in the direction of sellers. In large this is due to such low supply of available homes, coupled with a strong demand. We should expect a continuation of rising prices, high appreciation percentages, and likely increased buyer competition.

• SALES PRICES: This month showed a slight reduction in sales price, however year over year increase is still 23%.
  
• ANNUAL APPRECIATION: Believe it or not, we are still seeing a 27% appreciation rate!! This is measured using a monthly average price/sf.
  
• HIGH TRANSACTION VOLUME: This was the 2nd highest volume of any November next to 2020!
  
• SELLERS MARKET: The entire Valley remains a SELLER MARKET. As of today, the Cromford Market Index (CMI) is 383 and quickly trending towards sellers again. Hang on. We are back to the territory we experienced in the early summer of this year. A balanced market of supply vrs demand is a CMI of 100.
  
• INVENTORY SHORTAGE: Nothing new here, but active listings remain unhealthily low with no change in sight for new listings.
  
• NEW CONTRACTS:  Even with such low supply, the contracts keep coming! Essentially we are seeing a scenario where anything that goes on the market is going under contract. Sales volume will remain strong in coming months.
  
• CLOSINGS OVER LIST PRICE: This has been slowly declining for the last 6 months which peaked in June. Currently for December, we are seeing 42% of all homes being sold at OVER list price! And with these new market conditions, it wouldn’t surprise me if this trends back up again. The price point with the highest percentage of sales over list price (52%) is $300-400k.
  
• iBUYER ACTIVITY:  The institutional buyers continue to buy aggressively. In November their combined average purchase price was $424,494.