Tucson Housing Slump Accelerated in Fourth Quarter

“The Arizona Daily Star” Business section carried under the fold the article titled “Housing slump accelerated in forth quarter”  

If you have never taken time to look around this blog at the features in the right sidebar navigation you should take a minute to look.  Almost at the bottom you will find  a series of links under the heading “Tucson in the News”   When I find an article pertaining to Tucson real estate, or national real estate with a Tucson angle I place the link under this heading for your convenience of reading.

Sometimes I comment on the article like this one, sometimes I just place the link.

We need to go back to the basics again and remind ourselves of the context of the article.  

1. First it is a national article not a local article.
2. The context:  total number of sales are down.

Yes the number of solds were down for the year in Tucson, but and pardon the pun here is a big but. The average sale price for homes in Tucson, month by month, were higher every month except December 2006.

Here are the numbers.

The increase slowed as the year progressed and December 2006 was down, but can you see a “2006 Housing Slump” in these numbers?

One reason the number of sales were down for 2006 is the unreasonable pricing of home coupled with the increased number of homes available on the market.   Decembers numbers seem to indicate the asking prices are coming back to the market.   This has needed to happen for much of the 2006 year.

January for us has seen an increase in traffic.   The actual statistics have not been released for January 2007 yet from the Tucson Association of Realtors.   As soon as they are I’ll provide access and analysis of the January figures.   The general consensus is 2007 is a better year all around.