Tucson MLS Statistics January 2010
February 12, 2010
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The year 2010 is off and moving in Tucson Real Estate. Sales are moving, Pending contracts are moving, New Listings are moving. What does this all mean. Well, it really depends on what direction they are moving. New Listings moved up a bunch; Red Flag? Maybe!
For now let’s take a look at the month to month comparison.
It is interesting to see the relative small changes between December and January. When you consider the huge swings that have taken place on Wall St. in January there was some question if the panic on the street would spill over into the real estate market. Quite the contrary. What we are hearing from people is the continued frustration with the wild panic induced swings in the market. To the point some are putting their money in real estate.
The real estate market is pretty stable. And the only place on this month to month that might raise an eyebrow is the number of Active Listings and New Listings in January. I even took pause when I saw the number of new listings at 2424. Then I remembered it was January. There are a lot of people that simply don’t want the hassle of keeping their home “Ready to Show” during the holidays. They pull their house off the market till January. Once the new year starts and they have had a break from keeping the house clean, the beds made and the odors from last nights dinner removed from the air. They are ready to get back to the business of selling their house.
Every January going back for years on the report reflects this bump in new and active listings. Therefore, no red flag here, simply normal fluctuation in the Tucson real estate market.
The good bump is in the number of Pending Contracts. Always good to see that above 1000 going into the next month. An increase of just over 300 from December is a positive in our plus column for the market.
Year over Year Statistics Comparison
What a difference a year makes. Last year we saw huge decreases in value in both Average Sale Price and Median Sale Price. But we all knew property was over valued. No one wanted “Their” value to go down, but we all knew that property values were not realistic in 07 and 08.
Looking at the year over year figures there is a stability that hasn’t been visible for over a year. Increased units sold and pending contracts going into 2010 are refreshing. Even with the increase in New Listings in January the number of active listings in January this year, were done almost 1000 from the beginning of 2009.
February is moving along. Those pending contracts are now going closed. The 30 and 15 year interest rates are still holding around 5%. Which in any other time of our economy would be remarkable. But credit remains amazingly tight. Not much is or has been done to loosen it.
Yes, I’m also not one that favored the big bank bailouts or the way it was handled. I’m even less enthusiastic about the way the government has literally failed to in this last year get substantial help to home owners needed mortgage adjustments to stay in their homes.
All this by way of closing commentary on where we are in Tucson. Compared to many parts of the country (Even other parts of AZ) we are doing pretty good. The rest of the country has faced a terrible winter. We on the other hand have received much needed moisture in January and so far in February. The spring looks to bloom with some amazing color in the desert.
Finally, yes, there are buyers in the market. They are finding some really good deals. Some are seeing those deals but don’t realize what they are looking at. They will look back in a couple of years say, “Geez, I really should have bought back in 2010″.
The full January Tucson MLS Statistics report is linked to under Documents in the sidebar.
Post Tags: tucson mls statistics January 2010
Rainy Time in Tucson
February 8, 2010
The Green one is for Sunday
You would think the monsoon of last summer finally arrived in Tucson. It was a long hot dry summer last year. Not once during the Monsoon season did we see any roads around us closed. The fall wasn’t much better. But January was the 8th wettest on record. February is turning out to be very wet.
It isn’t hard to know how many days of rain there have been in a week. All you have to do is see how many newspaper bags are in the recycle bin.
As you can see we had one Sunday that was very wet. (Yesterday was another but I had already taken this picture).
One of my better images don't you think
Yesterday was supposed to be a slight chance of rain. It was more like a slight chance of flooding. Our entire back yard was underwater and stayed that way till late afternoon.
The rest of this week is supposed to be wet, wet, followed by more wet.
But here’s the good thing. We aren’t complaining about it. Saturday was a beautiful day here. I could have worn shorts (could have, but didn’t). Much of the rest of the country was still being buried or digging out of a massive blizzard and we had a bright sunny day.
All this rain is going to lead to a beautiful spring in the desert. The Arizona Daily Star even made it front page news last week one day so we know it’s going to happen, Right?
The annuals are iffy. The rains came so late there is no way of knowing if they will germinate or not. But the perennials will soak up this moisture and paint our desert with color in 6 to 8 weeks.
Blue Palo verde bloom Yellow. Go figure
Post Tags: blue-palo-verde , spring wildflowers , wet tucson
