Phoenix Real Estate Brokerage – John Hall & Associates

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 support it as well.

The quote we’ve repeated a number of times from RL Brown is that here in Phoenix we’ve already drank our tomato juice and popped our aspirin.  Of course he is referring to getting rid of the hang over from the real estate party of 2005.  His report showed that 70% of the new home prices had remained the same or went UP over the 4 months prior to his report.  He also discussed the stability of new home permits over the 6 months prior. 

Jay Thompson wrote a nice summary of the latest PMI report that indicates even though our numbers aren’t anything to write home about, they are among the few in the country that are moving in the right direction.  85% of the areas studied got lower scores compared to the last time the report was done - Q4 2007.  Phoenix was among the 15% that have improved.

ARMLS has reported sales volume increases every month since the beginning of the year.  The news got even better last month when June ‘08 outperformed June ’07.  It was the first time we have had a year over year sales volume increase in nearly three years. 

When we split the ARMLS numbers into 2 groups – above and below $350,000 – we have found that there is a normal market for the lesser priced bracket.  In fact, there were more than 4,700 sales last month under $350,000.  Compare that to the 35,000 active listings in the same bracket and that’s a 7 month supply.  Something tells us the FHA loan limit has A LOT to do with this.

So between RL saying the new home market has recovered, more than half of the market that ARMLS serves getting back to a normal inventory level, and our PMI risk factor going down, we’re starting to look much better my friend.