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Tucson MLS Statistics for April 2007

May 17, 2007

Post Tags: Tucson-Housing-Market-2007 , Tucson-Real-Estate-Trends

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The Tucson Real Estate Market statistics from the Tucson MLS came out on May 16, 2007. I have anticipated these number now for almost a week. There has been alot of reporting about the Tucson real estate market in the papers the past couple of weeks from 51% increase in Foreclosures in Pima County for the first quarter of 2007 over first quarter of 2006. Just before that we had the Tucson Record Number of Unsold Homes Flood the Market on the front page of the Sunday May 6th “Arizona Daily Star“.

It all sounded like a dramatic downturn in the Tucson Real Estate Market until you read the fine print and all the details as outlined in the posts above.

Last night I got the first glimpse of these figures and today have been looking them over.

A Christmas Present of Socks

The numbers in April are not much different from the numbers in March. This indicates that in spite of all the spin in the news on the market things haven’t changed dramatically.

Now to the summaries and the analysis.

Tucson MLS Statistics Mar 07 - Apr 07 Summary

For the most part we are looking at a stable month for April with slight movement some up some down, but nothing to indicate a major shift.

Average Sale Price Down $60. When we consider we are talking about an average around $275,000 per house, $60 is insignificant.

*Total Units Sold This is a surprise, not because it is less than last month by -73, but because what was reported last month wasn’t 1353 it was 1246 an increase of 107 properties sold over what was in last months report. But the Average Sale Price wasn’t adjusted. We have an increase of solds from 1246 to 1280 of +34 over what was reported last month but with the adjustment to the March figures it looks like a decrease of 73. Up tick or Down tick, I guess we are all left to chose.

Median Sale Price The middle of the market, dropped slightly by $1,228. More homes below the middle price sold than above the middle price but a month over month swing this small is not an indicator of any trends in the market taken by itself.

Average Days on Market It slipped back to Feb. 2007 level of 65 day average. 35.1% of the homes on the market sold in the first 30 days. 24.5% sold from 31 - 60 days. 59.6% sold in the 60 day span.

Anytime you have numbers involved there are some things that can skew the outcome significantly. Included in the ADOM figure are two areas with very high DOM averages. The area designated PE has an average of 144 days with only 12 homes on the market in this area. The area CPI average is 123 there are 100 homes in that area on the market. So 112 homes out of 10,387 are skewing the DOM figure up. But in Tucson the DOM figure is easy to circumvent by taking a house off the market and getting a new listing number starting the DOM clock all over again. We’ve talked about this before in the posts:

• Days on Market not a good guage of anything
• Tucson Days on Market

Pending Contracts increased again by +25, not significant but good to see more contracts in April than March especially since March over Feb saw an increase of 98.

Active Listings up to 10,387 an increase of 202 over March. There are plenty of homes to chose from. This is a little more than double the number in what is considered a “normal” market. We haven’t seen a normal market in Tucson since 2000. The Tucson real estate market in 2005 and much of 2006 was frantic and flooded with speculators. Now we have a “Buyers” market with the speculators gone.

Further reading on this part of the market and the effect can be read in these posts:

• Tucson Housing Market 05 06 Run-away Auction
• Tucson Foreclosures and The Subprime Buyers

New Construction saw a decrease in the average sale price by 7,401, but an increase in the actual number of units sold for the month of 115 over 89 in March.

Tucson MLS Statistics Apr 06 - Apr 07 Summary

April 2007 compared to April 2006 shows a decrease in average sale price but only by $650. While the median sale price increased by $2,222 over last April. Time to sell a home is up pending contracts are down, new listings up and number of New Constructions homes sold is up from 83 in April of 06 to 115 in 07. The average sale price of NC is the one significant number in the figures showing a decrease in the sale price by $82,350.

For the Residential Resale market this is a reality to be faced. There was no way a residential resale can compete with new construction when the builders are selling brand new homes for less than the person trying to sell their home in that subdivision paid more.

Every month I provide this link to the Tucson MLS Statistics April 2007 for those that want to get the entire picture of the data available. There is always a link in the right navigation under the heading “Documents” to these stats and they can be found on your website Tucson Community page.

While there isn’t much here to jump up and down about, there is no reason for panic, the market is correcting itself from the flotsam and jetsam of 05 and 06. Of course if you want doom and gloom, you can create it without data to back it up.

We received this in the email this week about the DOM report being up by 2 days in March:

“Are you kidding me? A 3 day increase in only one month, annualized over a year, equates to over a 50% increase in average days on the market. Please put some more thought into your Realtor.com messages. Your half truths only lessen your credibility.”

Like I make this stuff up. It was actually down by 2 days in April back to Febuary’s average. Annualized over a year . . . are you kidding me?

Yep, a box of socks, nothing to get excited about here. But at least there are socks in the box.

Oro Valley MLS Statictics for April 2007 are on our Oro Valley Real Estate site.

No Responses to “Tucson MLS Statistics for April 2007”

1. bobby joe Says:
   May 18th, 2007 at 8:49 am

   Thanks for posting the numbers…

   Looks like April was just “there” for Tucson, as in nothing really happened one way or the other according to the numbers. However, I thought we were supposed to have a Spring sales bounce? Most of the NAR and NAHB press releases in Q4 of 2006 said the spring time is when we’ll see things get back to “normal”.

   If this is a “normal” market we are in deeper than I thought…

2. Keith Jeppson (9 comments.) Says:
   June 12th, 2007 at 7:35 am

   Great presentation of your market Dave. Tuscon looks similar to Salt Lake. Not much going on. We are seeing some strength in the under $250k market, but above that things are slow and steady.

   Curious about your tables? Do you use a WP plugin or code it all in html?

3. Dave (60 comments.) Says:
   June 12th, 2007 at 10:16 am

   Keith,

   I create the tables in Dreamweaver, then remove the cellpadding statements which aren’t w3c compliant and import them into the post using the code tab.

   I usually have to tweek them a little further once imported for text placement and to remove a space or return that WP seems to like to throw in when doing the initial save.

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