The Phoenix Housing Market is Slowing down!

Hello, good morning everybody and welcome to a new episode of Merrill's Monday morning market madness coming at you with a very different episode today than what you've probably seen in previous years because the market is finally slowing down. 

So, I'm gonna jump into the numbers with you on that and talk to you about what I expect to see moving forward so let's dive in right now active on the market in the Phoenix area MLS we have 6.605 active listings 11,057 homes that are currently pending are under contract 8,885 homes that have sold in the past 30 days if you take the number of active listings divided by the number of homes that have sold in the past 30 days that give us a month's supply of inventory number which is 0.74 and a balanced market would be expected to have closer to like a four or five months supply of inventory a buyer's market would be expected to have six months or more supply of inventory so 0.74 is still extremely low and most people would expect that and by the way, if anyone has any questions please feel free to post your questions and I'll do my best to answer them while we're live on the video if I can't answer them live I will go back in later and answer them in the comments.

So, 0.74 is still an extreme seller's market from the monthly supply of inventory standpoint but the challenge is that we're kind of moving in the wrong direction the monthly supply of inventory was as low as 0.4 just two months ago right so it is increasing and it's increasing fast and also it's a little bit of a lagging indicator because the number of homes that have closed in the past 30 days is how we measure that right compared to how many active listings there are well it's looking more and more like we'll see even fewer homes close over the next 30 days so demand is kind of falling the number of homes selling is falling so and inventory is increasing so we're going to continue to see that month supply of inventory number increase pretty rapidly.

In my opinion, the reason why this all matters is because right now May and June historically May and June are the two months of the year where we see the most homes close in the Phoenix market and so we're supposed to be at the peak of our frenzy we're supposed to be at the peak of like the busiest selling season that we have all year is in May and June and it's going the wrong way so despite the fact that we're in our seasonal you know seasonal peak you know inventory is still increasing that means once we get out of the seasonal peak it will probably increase even more so give you an idea again i mentioned there are 6,605 active listings as of this morning just two weeks ago today so two weeks ago on Monday there were 5,566 active listings that is an increase in just two weeks of 1,039 active listings.

So another way of looking at that is a thousand more homes have been listed in the past two weeks than what have sold obviously there are some houses that might be there are some houses that might be coming back on the market and you know that stuff as well so 19 increase in active inventory in just two weeks so  the other number here is the pending so with only 11,057 pending listings that's the fewest number of pending listings we have seen since January 24th so the total number of pending listings is really low which is an indication that we're going to see a huge drop in the number of homes that are selling over a 30-day period and you probably know maybe you do maybe don't know this already but the federal reserve is meeting again this week i believe they're supposed to be meeting on Wednesday to announce whether or not they are expect whether they're going to raise rates again now of course mortgage rates are not the same as the federal funds rate like when one you know however they have a trickle down effect if the fed raises rates it is almost certainly going to affect an increase in mortgage rates as well it's all kind of tied together 

So if the federal reserve comes out and raises rates again that could continue to negatively impact demand even farther than where we are at right now most people speculate that the federal reserve will be raising rates and the reason why is because inflation is still completely rampant and out of control so they have to do something to help with the inflation issue so they're probably going to raise rates but it's a tough situation for them double-edged swords raise rates to try to fix inflation don't raise the bet but when you do that hurts the economy as a whole and hurts the housing market and it also hurts a lot of other factors so I'm glad I'm not in that position where I've got to make those very difficult decisions.

So here's what i expect to look you know looking ahead right i mean no one's got a crystal ball no one knows for sure but based on you know all the data that i collect and look at on a regular basis i think i can make a fairly accurate like a few things that i expect to see happen in the next couple of weeks number one inventory will continue to rise as home sellers are gonna you know see the market slowing and a lot of people are gonna rush and try to get their home on the market to try to catch the tail end of this so we'll continue to see a surge in active listings i believe that the very high end part of our market will continue to do quite well you know two million dollars in up type properties because those are sold mostly to cash buyers so mortgage rates don't affect them as dramatically although the stock market does affect them very dramatically because a lot of people are raising money by selling off stocks and that kind of thing so i'm not not trying to say that they're going to be completely out of the but they're not going to be hit as hard at least initially as other parts of the market because of the cash buyers the low end will continue to do really well because people still have to live somewhere, right?

So, if you maybe you previously qualified for a $600,000 mortgage now you're still going to buy but you're only going to be able to get a $500,000 mortgage just as an example,so that's going to put more pressure on the lower end and then i think the mid-range will probably get hit the hardest the fastest but i want to be really really clear like i do not we're inventory is still low enough again we're still at 0.74 month supply of inventory inventory is still low enough that that i don't expect home values to fall you know everyone always thinks so this is a bubble because prices have risen so much this is nothing like 2008 when home you know when home prices fail dramatically the big difference here is that almost everyone has a 30-year fixed rate mortgage that they can actually afford we don't we're not dealing with you know interest only and negative amortization and balloon payment type loans almost ever those even adjustable rate mortgages are quite rare and so there's not going to be all these people who suddenly can't afford to keep their houses and most people have more than 50 percent equity in their house so the values would have to just you know completely plummet before they would be upside down in the house.

So i think wha i'm saying here is that i expect home values average sales prices as a whole are going to stabilize and you know we've been seeing an increase this year alone we've seen average prices increase by about 10 last year we saw average prices increase by 25 what i'm saying is i think we've kind of hit the peak and it's just going to kind of flatten out from here it might go up a few more percent here and there just to you know maintain pace with inflation but that is what i expect to see happen over the next uh you know the next couple of months so we'll continue to keep an eye on it and keep you posted but i do really believe that the extreme sellers market that we've been in over the last you know a couple of years is winding down we're still in a seller's market though like you're not gonna be able to go in and get fifty thousand dollars off of the list price on house we are still in a seller's market but buyers are gonna start to have more choices buyers are gonna start to be able to negotiate slightly buyers are going to start to not have 80 offers on every single house and and might even have a few options to choose from and the market's really going to level out so that is my prediction i hope you found this helpful let me know if you have any questions 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!

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