The ”First Quarter Market Overview Presentation” took place this morning (4/24). RL Brown presented his coveted data with his partner Greg Burger.
Greg began by presenting some statistics for the “Metropolitan Phoenix Market Place”. There were a lot of figures presented in a half (here are the numbers) and half (buy our product so you can have this data at your fingertips) format. Some of my scribbles include…
• 1,890 new home closings in March (4,200 resales)
• Largest segments of new home sales – Mesa/Gilbert and the “southwest”
• 55% of 1st quarter new home sales were under $249,000
Then RL took over and started speaking more about the challenges, opportunities, and differences with the resale market vs. new home market. When it comes to the resale market, he does not feel we are at or near the bottom. He made the statement that agents bane is going to switch from over-priced listings to REO properties and that the 50+ thousand listings in ARMLS is going to continue to drive prices down. Once the median price drops another $20k then consumers are likely to come out and play, but their motives are going to be changed from preparing for retirement to improving their quality of life.
In his section about new homes, he stated, ”We are at the bottom of the new housing sector (pause) or darn close”. His reasoning for this statement included the stability that both permits and closings have shown; permits leveled out about 6 months ago and closings have been steady for the last 3 months. He continued with the fact that in the last 4 months 60% of new home prices have stayed the same, 9% have gone up and only 30% decreased.
In his conclusion he assumes that everyone knew the hang over was coming, but at least here in Phoenix we’ve already drank our tomato juice and popped our aspirin (hence the title quote). He reminds all participants to treat each local market or neighborhood as its own market and to generalize on a national base has a lack of reality.
April 25, 2008 at 6:01 am |
[...] blog, an overview from the R.L. Brown presentation given today, was posted. The title - “We’re in the beginning stages of feeling better.” RL Brown. From what I read, we are seeing signs of improvement, yet Brown’s projections indicate [...]
April 26, 2008 at 8:42 am |
I am a realtor in Az. I feel the real estate business is at or close to the bottom. I work with condos and condo projects a-lot and your starting to see less options in the realty business to choose from. Only time will tell but we are hopefully in the worst at this time. greg moser
July 9, 2008 at 10:39 am |
[...] Improving Phoenix Real Estate Market Improving indeed. RL Brown said it back in January, the PMI reports confirmed it last week, and here we’ll show you some ARMLS figures that [...]