Pending Sales – What’s On The Horizon – Update #1

On February 12^th, I posted about the year-to-date Pending Sales numbers; noticing in both the data as well as the activity on our listings that the real estate market had some increased activity since the first of the year. I wanted to update the charts with the past four weeks of data which show that we are still trending in the right direction. As I mentioned in the previous post, the increase in the Pending Sales numbers will, within 30-60 days, show in an increase in the Sold numbers as well, and that is exactly what has happened. The sales numbers for February increased by almost 19% over the previous month. That's good news!!










As you can see the trend has continued, with a minor blip in last week's numbers for some reason. The good news is that in looking at the numbers from this week (3/10/08), it looks like we may have overcome whatever caused the decreased numbers from last week and will hopefully remain on an upward trend.

As I've mentioned before, we are far from recovered. Currently we have a little over 56,000 total listings in the MLS as a whole, and just under 40,000 single family detached homes in Maricopa County alone. With that being said, using current sales numbers from February, we have 16.29 months of inventory in the MLS, and 15.74 months of single family detached inventory in Maricopa County. In a normal market, where supply and demand are somewhat balanced and we see a slight but steady increase in values, we would be seeing about 3-4 months of inventory.

I will anxiously be keeping an eye on these numbers, as well as the rest of the data, and will relay the information that I see to be relevant as it appears.

*All information provided by Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service believed to be accurate but not guaranteed.


-Steve Nicks


[tags] market analysis, phoenix real estate market, MLS data, desert ridge real estate [/tags]