John Hall & Associates - Phoenix Real Estate Brokerage

We made the list!  The Phoenix Business Journal recently published their 2008 Book of Lists.  They rank practically every category of business in Phoenix.  In their most recent Book, John Hall & Associates is ranked 4th for Local Residential Sales Volume.  We have been holding strong in that position, coming in 4th last year as well. 

The List reports that John Hall & Associates had 1.36 billion dollars of sales volume in 3,821 transactions done by 741 real estate agents working out of 4 branch offices where a total of 35 management and/or support staff work… just in case you missed it.  And, although we didn’t submit to the REALTOR® Magazine list, we’re happy to know we would have ranked 83rd in the country for sales volume.

Not bad for our locally owned brokerage.

On June 1st, Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) sent out annual bills to over 36,000 members.  They gave all the recipients until July 8th to get their payment in before shutting them off.  Even with over a month to pay, last Tuesday evening ARMLS created minor heart attacks across the entire Valley of the Sun. 

Forethoughtfully, Bob Bemis bumped up his call center staff on the following days expecting a barrage of phone calls from agents wondering what had happened.  They were right, on the 9th and 10th ARMLS reinstated 1,358 members and expect to reinstate another 1,300 before the wave passes. 

All in all - they are anticipating a 15% reduction of membership to about 31,000 active members.

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.

Have you ever wondered where our single family residence median sales price would have been with a more normal appreciation? Maybe compared to where the median is currently?

Here’s a graph for you showing them both over the last four years.

UPDATE: And here is a graph showing them both over the last three years.

Here are the initial ARMLS sales figures for May 2008…

Units sold: 5,611

Average Price:  $269,000

Median Price:  $207,000

Active Listings as of June 1:  Below 53,000

This month had the highest sales volume since May of 2007 and this is the first time we have had over 5,000 sales in one month since June of 2007.  We are happy to report May is the fifth month in a row ARMLS has recorded a month over month sales volume increase.  The last time this happened was in the good ole days of 2004.  If that doesn’t light your fire, know that we still have 8,300 pending and AWC’s!  

 If you weren’t at the NAR MidYear Meetings last week in DC, you missed a great session.

2008 NAR President-Elect Charles McMillan and Chief Economist Lawrence Yun provided Midyear Legislative Meetings and Trade Expo attendees with news on the housing market and when we can expect a recovery. Watch the Midyear Housing Market Update Video
Watch the video >

Barbara Freestone
Arizona Association of REALTORS®
VP Professional Development
602-248-7787

***Received: Wed 5.14.08 5:35 PM ***
Phil,
We just hit 7554 pendings and 1446 awc’s for a grand total of 9000 listings under contract.
It’s the highest # of pendings for 2008 so far.
 
The highest pending count in all of 2007 was 7651, so <100 to go.

Leif Swanson, CRS, GRI, ABR
REALTOR
John Hall & Associates
(602) 686-3852
www.LeifSwanson.com

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.

Had I posted this a in March I could of said HOT off the press, but it has cooled off a little.  However, I am still getting requests from our associates for this coveted visual.  So here it is the AZ Republic Home Values by Zip Code chart from March 16.  

Be careful it’s warm…

Did you see this article in the Scottsdale Tribune on Sunday about the Scottsdale real estate market?  It’s the one that Dru Bloomfield is quoted talking about her local market statistics.  You can almost make out the web address on her sign rider!

Well done Dru, congratulations on the recent press!