It is striking just how weak the closing numbers were for re-sale homes in Maricopa County during August.

First of all, August had the maximum number of working days (23) for title companies to close escrows. This is 15% more than July which only had 20 working days. So all other things being equal we could have expected 15% more closings than July, which gave us a feeble 5,920 re-sale transactions. Instead August saw just 5,784 re-sales, down 2.3%. So instead of a 15% increase we got a 2.3% decrease.

And this is comparing with a month that was already dismal. Comparisons with a strong month like August 2021 are far worse.

August 2022 had a 4.5% advantage over August 2021, having 23 working days to 22 last year. But closings dropped 38.3% year over year for re-sales. So sales per working day fell from 426 a year ago to 251 last month, a drop of 41%.

Things were far brighter in the new home segment. Here there were 1,635 closings, up 30.2% from July and up 7.5% from August 2021.

I cannot recall ever seeing a month like this before, with strong growth for new home closings and a collapse in re-sales.

Market insights provided by The Cromford Report.