Tuesday, November 22, 2022 / by Bryan Baylon
The supply of homes for sale is dropping now and no doubt this trend will continue until the start of 2023, at least. However the supply of homes for rent remains on a strong upward trend.
Active rental listings in the ARMLS database, excluding short-term rentals, now number over 4,000 for the first time since January 2015. This is 123% higher than the same time last year.
All dwelling types are affected by the huge increase in homes listed for rent, for example:
single-family detached are up 128%
townhomes are up 122%
gemini/twin homes are up 110%
apartment-style homes are up 99%
patio homes are up 75%
With all this competition, the rents being asked have been falling for many months, which will please the Federal Reserve, but displease landlords. The average rent being asked for a single-family detached home is now $1.43 per square foot per month, down from $1.76 per square foot per month one year ago, a fall of 19%.
Apartments rents are much higher, because they tend to be . ...
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Monday, November 21, 2022 / by Bryan Baylon
With mortgage rates stabilizing for a while at a rate around 6.6% to 6.7% for a 30 year fixed loan, demand for homes has also stabilized, though at a very low level.
Listings under contract, measured daily, look like this:
After plunging in October, there are signs of a slight recovery for demand in November as buyers get accustomed to interest rates that would have seem horrible 3 months ago, but look reasonable after a period when they exceeded 7% by a comfortable margin.
Even so, we have fewer than 7,000 listings under contract across all areas and types and we really should be well over 9,000 in a normal market. We almost achieved 9,000 in late August but the Federal Reserve took an ax to chop that down.
Market insights provided by the Cromford Report. ...
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Saturday, November 19, 2022 / by Bryan Baylon
The weakness of demand has been highlighted in the media but there has been relatively little discussion about the weakness of housing supply.
When we look at new listings arriving into the ARMLS database, we see a startling drop off in all the numbers. The column chart below shows the new listing counts for the first two weeks of November since 2005.
We can regard something around 4,250 new listings as normal, but in 2022 sellers have come up with fewer than 3,000.
Coming soon listings are also far below this time last year with around 400 which compares with over 600 in November 2021.
Back in 2005, when we experienced a rapid cooling of demand during the second half of the year, this brought on a lot of listings from people trying to exit the market before prices fell. There were large numbers of empty homes that had been purchased for speculative reasons. The situation now is completely different. A far higher percentage of homes are occupied and the high mortgage rates means . ...
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Thursday, November 17, 2022 / by Bryan Baylon
Here is our latest table of Cromford® Market Index values for the single-family markets in the 17 largest cities
Surprise is living up to its name by delivering a 3% improvement in its CMI over the past month. The other 16 cities, not so much. Paradise Valley declined 34% and appears to be rapidly heading towards a buyer's market. However the decline has slowed over the last week and it may yet stay in the balanced zone instead. Fountain Hills is now in a league of its own and only declined 3% over the last month. Conditions there have started to improve. Cave Creek is also pulling out of its decline and may see stability in the balanced zone pretty soon.
The deterioration for sellers is starting to decelerate with an average change in CMI of -9.8%, an improvement over -10.8% last week. Gilbert is one area where prospects for sellers and starting to improve slightly as supply declines.
Some of the secondary cities are also starting to improve, including Laveen and Tolleson.
M. ...
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Tuesday, November 15, 2022 / by Bryan Baylon
We all know that demand is extremely low at the moment so you could be forgiven for thinking this would lead to a pile up of unsold active listings. It may therefore surprise you to learn that the active listing counts are now in a declining trend. It seems that sellers are even more discouraged than buyers and new listings are coming to market too slowly to meet demand.
This time of year we usually see active listings fairly stable followed by a decline between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. In 2022, the decline has started early and the numbers are falling at a faster rate than usual. We are going through unusual times, so I would hesitate to read too much into this, but for those looking for silver linings, this is a good one. It is something that should limit the downside risk to home prices.
Market insights provided by the Cromford Report. ...
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