Welcome to the Scottsdale real estate report. We are here to talk about supply, demand and prices. So what do we got here Jeff? Jeff?
Oh, hello! There has been a lot of speak out there right now about “growing inventory.” So I kind of wanted to show people how last year at this time we had 19,000 homes on the market and now we have 26,000 homes on the market. Each one of these cups represents about 1,000 homes on the market. Some of the analysts out there are getting a little wild and think that we should move all this, remember 2008 when all this inventory came over? We’re not going there because that inventory is no longer in existence.
So what you’re saying is that this is today’s inventory and it is up a little bit compared to last year? But this was all inventory in 2008 at this time?
Yeah, right, because people are getting excited about demand because demand was off in January, we sold 4,700 homes, it was 20% less. Well, it would matter more if we had to sell all of these homes.
Right. So we are not even close to being back where we were. This is good news for buyers. They have more inventory to choose from, the inventory is on the market a little longer instead of being snapped up in the first 24 hours, so it gives people a chance to get the house that they want and the interest rates are still low.
So what you’re saying is now is that sellers need to get ready for the dance?
They do. Instead of heading straight from the gym to the dance and getting plenty of people to dance with, they now have to gussy up a little, shine their shoes, comb their hair and wear some deodorant.
Yeah, so it’s a little more competitive out there, but we are seeing UCBs (Under Contract Backups) and pendings climb to 9,500 so demand is coming back.
And UCB is actually pending.
So to sum it up, you said demand is a little bit off and you gave the reasons why. So the demand is a little bit off, so what about prices? Prices went up about 18% last year, but about 16% of that was in the first 9 months. Well, now we are starting to see it flatten out.
So a little more balance.
I still think prices will go upward by about 35% throughout the year.
