Tucson MLS Statistics for April 2009
May 5, 2009
Post Tags: tucson-housing-market-April-2009 , tucson-mls-statistics-April-2009 , Tucson-real-estate-April-2009
I’m posting late in the day on May 5, 2009. I knew the stats data for April was scheduled to be pulled this morning. I even wrote a post about it last night that never made it to the publisher.
Trends are not made by one or two months, but I had a feeling one might have begun last month when the stats report from the Tucson MLS was released the afternoon of the data pull last month. Not only bowled over but a big ATA Boy went out to the Tucson MLS for giving agents and the public the data as quickly as possible for the previous month. (I even got a note from “Stats Guy” )
Well Stats Guy ATA BOY. A trend is established and we all have the report with a new feature at the end showing in graph form the closing of the gap between Inventory and Pending Contracts.
Inventory to Pending Contracts
I’ll call this “Closing the Gap” Yeah I know it looks like like a big fish getting ready to swallow up some little ones. But it isn’t. It is actually the window of opportunity on supply and demand closing as these two lines come closer together. That narrow part back there a couple of years ago, That was the “Frantic Market” time. Trust me, no one wants to go back there.
Could there be a housing shortage in 2009 in Tucson
Might sound like a silly question. I know a lot of eye browse raised when Rosie Koberlein said it back in January of this year. What prompted this statement wasn’t Rosie Colored Glasses or a CEO painting a Rosie picture for a bunch of REATORS(copywritethingygoeshere). It was the lack of building permits being asked for by builders meaning there were no new properties going into the pipeline.
It was also the knowledge that the investors were back in the market and they know a bargain when they see it. No Look, look, look, and sit on the fence. They know what they are after and they buy it. They are buying up the foreclosure properties, even the highly vandalized ones which clears them off the books and out of the inventory.
She also pointed out that builders can’t ramp up production in weeks or even months. When the supply drops as it is now, and the financial institutions are now over zealous in lending requirements meaning there isn’t available capitol to builders this could and might lead to a shortage.
Now Lets Do the Numbers
The charts pretty much speak for themselves. The average and Median sale price are down. We have talked about this before. The inclusion of short sale and foreclosure properties in these stats will reflect a decrease in these areas till that part of the inventory is reduced enough that it doesn’t cause this kind of inordinate skewing of the number.
The plus side is the reduced number of active and new listings are reduced while there is a healthy increase in pending sales. Total Units sold show only a 10 difference but that isn’t true. The number in the system right now for March is 922 not 882.
Year over Year
The numbers for year over year show very similar indicators. Active listing and new listing are down. While pending sales show less than last year we still have our * in place indicating we aren’t quite to an apples to apples comparison. Last year in April we were still counting All Pending contracts even if they were pending for several months. Last summer the MLS made the change to count only sales that went Pending during the month. The fact we are withing 200 of this number means we are equal to or better than last year, even though there were 1015 compared to the 882 for this year.
I’ll have the Absorption Rates for April posted tomorrow.
In the navigation to the right there is a link to the entire monthly report. It is a PDF document and you can view and save for a good view of all the detail.
