Is the PHX housing market shifting?  - Market Update May 2022

Hello and welcome to a new edition of Merrill's Market Madness. I'm coming at you today working from home just due to some car shuffling situations in our family but wanted to give you an update regarding the Phoenix housing market we're going to look specifically at rising levels of inventory and rising interest rates and you know talk about the shift that is happening in the market because there definitely is a shift but how far is it going to go and what is it going to mean for you.

As always I like to start off by looking at our month's supply of inventory number. So right now in the Phoenix area well basically in our MLS there are 10,265 active listings now at our low point there were about 4,000 active listings so, we have increased by more than 200% or more than doubled right more than doubled the number of homes available for sale at a given moment, there are 10,298 homes that are currently pending. So there are about an even number of active listings and pending listings currently in the past we had sometimes 12,13,000 pending listings with only 4,000 active listings, so we were at a point where there were three times more pending listings at any given time than there were active listings now there's it's about equal so when you're driving around and you're seeing signs in the yard you know maybe half of those are actually still available and half of them are pending. 

In the past 30 days we've seen 8,257 closings so just the month's supply of inventory is we just take the active listings and divide by the number of homes that have sold in the past 30 days to give us a month's supply of inventory of 1.24% which means basically if no new homes were to come on the market at the pace of 8,257 homes closing per month, how long would it take before everything would be sold and currently it would be 1.24 months which you know we were as low as about a 0.4 month supply of inventory that was the lowest level that we hit now we're at a 1.24 which feels very high compared to where we have been for the past two years however it is still based on the month supply of inventory metric still a very strong seller's market, we have said in the past that we probably need a five-month supply of inventory or greater to enter into a buyer's market where we would expect to see home values actually falling. What's happening right now, is we're just moving closer towards balance at the moment let's take a look at the numbers for may because of course we're you know we're a week into June so I wanted to give you a look at what happened in the month of May.

So in May, we had 8,748 closings the average price of those closings was $592,167. The average days on market were 26 days and the average sold-to-list price ratio was 102 so for the homes that closed in May those 8,700 homes that closed in May, they still sold very fast and they still sold for an average 2% above the list price. However, I mean the caveat that I would add to that is that the homes that closed in May typically went under this very few homes that closed in May went under contract in May right. Many of those homes went under contract in March and April and then closed in May. I  think as we start to look one we start to see the June and July numbers we're going to see that sold to list price ratio fall because buyers who are actively out there making offers right now it's very obvious most homes not all homes right there are some homes that are still having multiple offers particularly the homes that are like gorgeous and totally updated and the Instagram that's what I call them Instagram houses the Instagram worthy houses are still seeing a good competition especially if they're priced right and there are still some agents who price the homes intentionally low to try to get bidding wars right but as a whole the average houses suddenly there's some more negotiation happening on a lot of these houses and not as many homes going above list price I think in the next month or two we'll probably see the average sold to list price ratio drop to around 100% maybe even 99%. I don't think it's going below 99 anytime soon.

Now, let's compare that to April so those were the main numbers April we saw 9,300 closings, so the total number of homes that closed in May dropped from about  500 fewer homes sold in May it doesn't seem like a lot but it's a little atypical usually May sees more homes sell than April so the fact that dipped is a little bit of a sign of the slow down that we are seeing in the market, the other interesting thing is that the average sales price in April was also $592,000. So even though homes were still going a little above list price the actual average price of the homes that sold in may do not increase from the average price of what sold in April, the reason why that's significant is that it's the first month all year really where we have not seen an increase in the average sales price it seems like every month the average sales price was going up $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 every single month for the past two years and this is really the first time where we've seen the average sales price basically stabilized from April to May.

The days on market were about the same 27 days in April and the sold to list price ratio was also about the same at 102 by the way, if you're watching live and if you want to make a comment I might be able to see your comment and answer it live on the show so if you have a question comment concern anything like that please feel free to post it and as long as it comes through on my thing here I'll see it and I will do my best to answer it live and then if we compare it to May of 2021 so looking back one year there were 9,700 homes that sold in May of 2021 so essentially a thousand fewer homes sold in May of 2022 as compared to 2021 but the average sales price was only $506,338 so, the average sales price from may of 2021 to May of 22 increased by I didn't get the dollar amount but it was almost $90,000, percentage-wise it was 17%  an increase of 17%.

Now, I want to dive in real quick and just touch on a couple of other little things I'm going to share my screen here with you real quick. The first one is,  interest rates so again this is I've shared this multiple times but this is Freddie Mac's a page on mortgage interest rates and as you can see you know rates have been rising pretty steadily since the beginning of the year as we expected them to we, did see a little dip though you know they hit a high point of 5.3% on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and now they dipped to 5.09% they only update this once a week on Thursdays so this was done last Thursday almost a week ago now I'm told by friends in the mortgage industry that those that dip has now been erased and we're now back up to about five and a quarter so but hopefully rates are maybe going to stabilize at that five and a quarter I do understand that the fed is scheduled to meet next week June 14th and 15th. I believe and we'll see what they decide but I believe no economist here but I believe if they don't feel that there has been enough movement in inflation improvement meaning, certainly they can I'm sure they're very smart people they know that the economy is slowing down obviously Americans are feeling it at the grocery store and at the gas pump and on the home prices but certainly they are likely to raise rates again if they feel that inflation is still higher than where they want it to be. 

So, be on the lookout for that fed may be raising rates again, and keep in mind the fed rate is not directly tied to mortgage rates but they're somewhat linked right when the fed raises rates mortgage rates tend to rise so there's a correlation that's the word I'm looking for. Now, we look at this report that's put out by a company called the cromford report and they have actually let me show you a different screen they have these different indices that point to us about what the temperature of the market is and they have a supply index and a demand index and then the market index as a whole kind of combines those numbers so, the supply is still extremely low obviously it's rising but it's still extremely low they consider this normal level would the number would be between 90 and 110 so supply is still extremely low, demand is actually not too far off of normal if 100 was perfectly normal we're at a 94.4  and then somehow they're I mean obviously they're not added together I don't know exactly how the market index is calculated but essentially the market index is a combination of the supply and the demand to give us an overall temperature of the market and you know really anywhere where it's green they're going to be calling that a seller's market where they're expecting values to continue to rise.

Now, they give us this graph that shows us the market index as compared to graph right and we peaked out at about 474 and since that time it has been falling very fast they have it at a 261 that's the last time they plug they update this once a week, they added a 261 on here but you go here they have actually got it at a 254 so it's actually fallen another seven points from when they last plotted it on this particular graph so without a doubt the market is moving down very fast. The question is where is it going to level off?  Obviously, if this trend continues if homes continue being listed at a dramatically faster pace than they're being bought and demand maybe stays where it's at or even fall slightly and supply continues to increase at such a dramatic rate eventually we will hit a point where there is so much inventory that prices could fall. Personally, I just don't think that's very likely you know I think that it's going to level out at some point people are going to realize that the market is slowing down and people who don't need to move are going to not sell and suddenly supply will probably even out at some point but certainly we are in a more balanced market, we're no longer at this point where every house is a bidding war and every house is going for $50,000 over list price those days are basically over now. 

This obviously looks horrible and scary, okay but I do want to go back so 2020 and 2021 the market was insane, okay, so we are basically below if  I plot those years on this graph we're actually slightly above where we were at the same time 2020 we're way below where we were at in 2021 but go back to some of the more normal years where home prices were still rising okay, home prices were rising in all of these years 2014,2013, 2012.  You see the market index in all of these years was 130,140,150,170 heck in 2014 they had it at 96,97. So we're still way above and  Tina Tambor who kind of is the spokesperson for the Cromford report basically came out and said listen to its sort of like and I'm gonna stop sharing my screen here it's sort of like you were speeding and you were driving 400 miles an hour right and now you've slowed down to 250 miles an hour right but we're still speeding and at the moment we're still in a seller's market but the pace it's slowing down and so we're so used to a 400 miles an hour that now 200 miles an hour feels slow but it's not really slow it's still a hotter market than usual but we are moving closer and closer every day towards a more balanced market.

So, my prediction, I really don't believe we're going to see a drop in home values at this point that's what a ton of people are kind of waiting for the problem with that is there's no distressed inventory, not a lot of people who are desperate and who are going to give their house away to the point where they're selling it so far below market value that we're going to suddenly see a trend of home values falling, people have too much equity in their homes and too much too stable. So I think what we're going to see it balance out and home values will probably stabilize,  probably won't see a significant increase in home prices in the Phoenix market for the rest of the year and it'll be relatively flat and then we'll see what happens then I'll keep you posted and continue to bring you new episodes and continue to keep you up to date with what the market is doing and if my opinion on that changes I'll let you know but that's where I'm at with it right now, so hope you found this information helpful if you have any questions or concerns please let me know and I hope you guys all have a great day!

What does this mean to you? If you're even a little bit interested in learning more about participating in the Phoenix housing market as a seller, buyer, or investor... you NEED to know this stuff! Or at least work with someone who is obsessed with the market stats. Reach out to me today so we can start working on making your real estate dreams a reality!