The Supply and Demand Seesaw
The spring buying season is now underway and the current numbers seem to confirm the early signals of 2017. New listings to market are tracking almost exactly with 2016. While this would seem to be good news for supply starved buyers – after all it is 6% more supply than 2015 – is likely to…
How to give up Equity (or what not to do as a Seller)
The market is remarkably stable at this time despite some headlines in the past few months implying otherwise. The “Most Improved†award goes to the luxury market – with Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Carefree all posting great improvements thanks to higher demand and lower supply (quite a reversal from the 2nd quarter). No matter how…
September Market Update
As we enter the last quarter of the year, we begin reflecting on how 2016 has compared to 2015. It has been a remarkably similar year to 2015 – with only some minor variations. The biggest challenge of the 2016 market has been the intensely low inventory in the $175,000 and under market. The situation…
Home Values
As we have discussed in previous articles, the 2016 market has fragmented in to 3 very distinct markets – based almost exclusively on price. Understanding the supply/demand equation in each of these price points will guide savvy sellers and agents as to the strategies best suited to that market. Not surprisingly, the appreciation is equally…
Market at a Glance
The trends that were forming in the first quarter of 2016, now are affirmed. As usual, the two most important laws of economics – the laws of supply and demand – are the driving force behind the trends.  Demand – the more fluid and fickle of the two- is up. In fact demand has returned…
The Tale of Two (or perhaps three?) Markets
The spring buying season is now underway (sadly accompanied by the flu season) and trends are now becoming observable. Supply is up – 8.5% over 2015, 3.3% higher than 2014, and 13.2% more than in 2013. This would be good news for buyers, except the mix of the new listings in not matching the mix…
Supply Shifts
February showed some signs of life for homes going under contract after surprisingly lackluster activity levels in January. But as we warned, trends take time to form, and so a good or bad month does not make a year. 2016 had been heralded by most to be a likely breakout year. Demand was expected to…
Market Clues
December 2015 ended with a bang – with higher levels of activity and demand than is typical for December. This of course would lead most to believe that if December was that strong, then surely January would follow suit.  Ever the contrarian, the market started 2016 with the whimper typical of most Januaries. This left…
Happy 2016!
We hope your holiday season was wonderful. With the season now behind us, we can see what Santa brought the real estate market. A cooling trend that began in August of 2015 quieted by November and by the end of December stabilized. Neither supply nor demand showed up in any great strength in December, so…
Market Notes
As we approach the last quarter, we have a few benchmarks that reveal market trends this year. Rather than trying to sweep this in to one cohesive thought – we simply offer you some observations in no particular order of importance. Much like our weather, the real estate market has “seasonal patterns’. Keep this in…