10% Value Increase in 3 months! - March 2022 Phoenix Market Update #76

Hello everyone and welcome to a new edition of Merrill's Monday morning market madness just coming at you today with an update regarding the housing market in the Phoenix metro area. Today we're going to take a look at you know average prices in Phoenix and what they have been doing over the past couple of months to a year and talking about rising interest rates and how we think that might affect the market moving forward and just a little bit of projections a little bit of a look ahead and what we expect to see in the coming months.

So, as always I'd like to start with a look at our you know current stats so, right now active in our entire MLS there are 4,844 listings which are pretty similar to where we have been for the past couple of weeks. There are 12,231 listings that are pending or under contract and there are 8,998 homes that have closed in the past 30 days so, we take you to know gives us an absorption rate number if we take the number of active listings divided by how many homes we're selling every 30 days it gives us an idea of you know no new homes came on the market how long would it take before everything is sold and right now we're at a 0.54 month supply of inventory in other words if no news were to come on the market at the current pace which homes are selling everything would be gone in two weeks.

A balanced market would have a month's supply of inventory of somewhere around four or five months and so we still are dealing with a very very severe supply and demand problem where the demand is actually normal we're selling about the same number of homes that we sell every February and every March like the total number of homes selling at a given month is about what we've been seeing over the last several years in fact slightly lower in many cases than what sold the same time last year so the total number of home selling is the demand is relatively normal the issue is that and you're probably sick of hearing this but the issue is that there's just not a lot of options there's not a lot of stale inventory meaning there's of the homes that are on the market there are buyers don't have a lot of options.

So, if you're a buyer and you're looking for a home right now oftentimes there's you know seven or eight other buyers who are competing on the same property just because there's not a lot available.  So, I wanted to look at average prices for single-family homes just in Maricopa and Pinal county because sometimes our MLS does get homes listed there that are all over Arizona. So, I narrowed it down to look at like let's just look at single-family homes because I sell condos here and there but I mostly deal with single-family homes um and so I think most of my audience is probably single-family home uh owners or buyers considering single-family homes

So, if we look at single-family homes in Maricopa and Pinal county last year this same time last year the average price for those single-family homes was $520,083 okay well by December of 2021 the average price for of those homes had reached um $579,783 in other words from March of 2021 to December of 2021 average prices increase over that what six seven month period average prices had increased by about $60,000 well by January that same thing was $600,000 by February it was $620,000 and so far in March the average price for single-family homes in Maricopa and Pinal county is $639,358 in other words since December so just from December 1st to December 31st again the average price was $579,000 and then so far in March $639,358.

So, in a three-month span we've seen the average prices increase for single-family homes by about 60 thousand dollars in other words you're you know average homeowners are gaining you know 15 to 20 000 a month in equity in their properties right now every single month absolutely bananas and the crazy part about that is that there's that it's going to continue to rise you know that there is again so little inventory multiple offers on everything buyers paying way above list price on many properties waiving the appraisal contingencies and just kind of some craziness going on out there right now.

Now, the biggest argument I suppose against why you know a lot of people are kind of waiting for the market to settle down and for values to drop, and one of the main things that people keep pointing to as to oh my gosh this is definitely going to cause a slowdown in the market is interest rates and I'm going to share my screen here with you really quick and show you a slide here this is Freddie Mac has a website that publishes average rates um and this blue line is the one I want you to particularly pay attention to this is the one the blue line is a one year history of what average mortgage rates have done over the past year sorry I kind of said that twice so as you can see since  Christmas average rates have increased by over one percent from December until today oh well March 17th.  So, a couple of four days ago average rates are now at 4.16 for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and that is a pretty steep incline over just a three or four-month period but again we're still seeing over that time period we're still seeing average prices have increased by you know despite those rising prices despite those rising rates average prices have still increased by $60,000 over that period of time and I think that there's a couple of big reasons for that. 

Number one supply there's just there's not a lot of options and buyers who have to move don't have a choice they've got to buy something and there's not a lot of options out there for them and when they do find something they like they're having to pay you to know way over the list price because of the level of competition on these homes but the other factor is and this is something I don't think a lot of people consider.

Rising rates are actually going to hurt our supply because let's just say that you are in a home currently and you've got a 3% rate or a 2.85%  rate and you would really maybe like to move you maybe get something bigger or something smaller but you don't want to buy a new house at four point something percent so you might just decide you're going to stick it out and stay you're not going to move because you don't want to lose your 2.7% mortgage so we're actually going to see fewer homes coming on the market because a lot of people are not going to want to let go of those incredible mortgages that they have I mean you know that's just a thought you know and one thing that we're seeing right now that's really interesting average rents in the Phoenix area increased by 21% in the year 2021.

But, so far this year they seem to have stabilized average rents are not skyrocketing like they were partial because we had so many investors and hedge funds coming in buying up properties, we're seeing a huge increase in available properties to rent particularly single-family homes apartments and townhomes are still really really tight and not seeing a lot of growth i know that seems crazy you see apartments being built everywhere the number of apartments available to rent at a given time has not really increased the number of single-family homes available to rent is increasing and that's giving renters more options and that's causing rents to stabilize and so prices are still skyrocketing but rents are not there may be more people who choose to rent because on the short term it seems like it might be more affordable to rent  but the thing is that i like to tell everyone you know if we go back to that mortgage that mortgage slide renting a home is like having you know the best part about buying a home even if it feels really expensive right now is that you get to lock in that mortgage for the next 30 years so whatever that payment is today 30 years from now that's going to feel like a really inexpensive payment because of inflation right if you could go back 30 years ago and buy a house in the Phoenix area for whatever the average price was 30 years ago $120,000 or something like that that payment even at a higher interest rate is going to feel really affordable in today's money for that kind of for that kind of a property and  when you rent you're basically  it's almost like buying a house with an adjustable rate mortgage that adjusts every single year and it's almost guaranteed to go up every single year.

So even if buying a home feels expensive it's still way better than renting because you get to lock in that payment over the next 30 years versus renting the payment might feel affordable today but three years from now after the landlord has raised the rent three or four times suddenly it's not going to feel as affordable anymore so anyway those are my thoughts for this week I hope you found this helpful you know as I mentioned supply is still desperately low we've been seeing average prices increase $15,000 - $20,000 a month for singing family homes I expect that trend will continue throughout the rest of March, April, May, and June by June I think just seasonality that's very normal in our market by June and July the market starts to slow down a little bit and values will probably stabilize and stop you know skyrocketing they might still continue to increase we'll have to see what happens but historically the Phoenix area sees its greatest gains its highest increases in the spring to early summer and then by the beginning of summer it just kind of levels out and stays level for the rest of the year and then takes off again in spring of 2023 so we'll see what happens I don't want to predict that far ahead but at the moment prices are despite rates prices are still climbing at a very rapid pace and we do expect that to continue.

So, hope you all have a great week and if you have any questions you want to know anything about the value of your home or more specifically any stats about what the market's doing in your area please let me know I'd be happy to help thanks and have a great day

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