What is the best Phoenix suburb to invest in real estate? Phoenix Housing Market Update 8/13/2021

Hello everyone and welcome to a new edition of  Merrill's Market Madness I usually do this on Mondays but obviously today is not a Monday but I missed the show or this week so I decided I needed to get one in because there's a lot of interesting things happening in the market right now and I really wanted to get everyone updated  with the trends and what we're seeing and  what's happening so if you've watched any of  my previous episodes I always start by looking  at a metric called months supply of inventory  it's kind of a saturation rate if no new homes were to come on the market how long would it  take for everything that's currently for sale to be gone based on the pace at which homes are  currently selling.

So today right before recording this video I look these numbers up we have 7,233 active listings in our MLS 12, 000 homes are  currently pending so we still have significantly more pendings than we do have active listings  8,988 homes have closed in the past 30 days  and that gives us a month's supply of inventory number of 0.8 which is the highest month  supply of inventory we've had in quite a while  

 We have been at one point as low as 0.4 on our  month's supply of inventory so we've doubled but it is still desperately low  so if you're waiting for the market to shift  he pace at which we're currently  gaining homes it will take a couple of years before we transition into a buyer's market I  think  i believe what is still happening is you know it's somewhat seasonal right there  are a lot of people who had already planned on moving heading into the summer  you know have  already bought so the the absolute buying frenzy has calmed down a little bit but  we're still selling you know we're still probably gonna sell somewhere around somewhere between  eight and nine thousand ohms in the month of August which is a very high number so they're  still you know unless not called a very high  number it's a typical number we're selling about  the same number of homes in this August as we do  a typical august 2020 was a little funky because  of covid the the the normal annual sales cycle  got a little bit messed up but you know if you look back at 2019 and 2018 you know  selling 8,500 homes is probably pretty typical for  in August so demand seems to be about normal  but supply is still really really low i am  going to go ahead and share my screen with you  because i want to show you a piece of data  put out by the national association of realtors hopefully you guys can all see this but this  actually measures the month supply of inventory nationally okay so according to their metric a neutral market would have six to seven months  supply you know i think it could maybe be  as little as a five-month supply as little as a five-month supply might be a balanced market then  you see in you know 2008  2010 you know basically from 2006 to 2012  or so nationally we had over a six-month supply of inventory or over a seven month supply of  inventory essentially creating a buyer's market and driving home prices down and ever since then  we have been in this situation where inventory  kept falling and falling and falling and now we're  finally at this point where it has started to move  up a little tiny bit but keep in mind if you  look at this graph this has us nationally at a month's supply of inventory of what two and  a half well you know i just shared with you our numbers here in phoenix are still 0.8 so we have  a very very long way to go and as you can see  it's not abnormal to have an annual sales cycle where you know every year right the inventory drops and then it goes  up again drops then it goes up again draw so this could just be a hump on the camel's back so not necessarily something that i'm expecting  you know home values to absolutely switch  i think that home values are going to continue  to rise we've seen something somewhere around in  the Phoenix metro area average sales prices have  increased year over year by around 40  and with  inventory finally starting to rise a little bit i don't think we're going to see another increase of  40 over the next year but i do think that  home values are going to continue to rise based on  how low inventory is i wouldn't even be remotely  surprised to see inventory you know average  sales prices increase somewhere in the 10 to  15 percent for the next year so if you're one of  those people who's been waiting for the market to  crash please know my opinion is that is not  going to be happening anytime soon the inventory  situation is still so incredibly dire now the  other thing that i wanted to share really quickly  is freddie mac i share this a lot of the times  they have kind of an average interest rate chart  and you see average rates are lower than they  have been if you missed the vote on refinancing and you thought rates were still up here in the  the mid threes right now 2.87 on a 30-year fix so average rates are super super low they were 2.7  la 2.77 last week 2.87 this week of course there's  a little bit of normal fluctuation that happens  now on to our main topic for this week's episode i wanted to look at let me explain this chart  for you because probably not very easy to read  but you know i've been working with more and  more investors and and i wanted to talk about the numbers in terms of you know a lot  of times people come to me and want to know  where is the best place to invest and i've looked  at these numbers before but it's been probably  a year since i ran them so i decided to do an  update in this week's episode i'm only looking  at east valley cities next week i'll take a look  at west valley cities and i'll incorporate them  into this chart so we can compare all pretty much  the whole phoenix metro area but but basically  what i'm doing here is i'm looking at the average  sales price for a very typical investment type  property three bedroom two bath single story  two car garage no pool 1200 to 1800 square feet not furnished not in a 55 plus community okay so take all those parameters and said okay what was the average sales price of that home over the  last 30 days in chandler and it was 428 102. well,what was the average rent for the same parameters  over the past 30 days and in chandler was 2 127 so if you bought that home and rented  it out you would basically be receiving  one half of one percent of the purchase price back  in rent every single month okay and i did this for it for every single city and you know so we've  got Gilbert in the east valley well i probably missed i didn't do gold canyon i didn't do apache  junction but i'm sorry i tried to hit some of the bigger ones so if there's a city  that i didn't do and you really want me to see it let me know i'm i'd love to run the numbers  for you but Gilbert is at 0.52 Queen Creek 0.53 San Tan Valley 0.52 and then Florence  and Coolidge the clear winners at 0.65 and so if you own if you bought one of  those homes and rented it out in other words the rent is higher on average compared to the sales  price and that's typically what we see is where homes are less expensive the rents are lower as well right so if  you take Coolidge the average rent is only 1500  compared to Chandler and Gilbert it's 21 2200. but the sales price is so much lower that the  ratio is better in florence and Coolidge you're getting a much better rent to sales price ratio you would make your if the market was flat right and home values weren't going to go  up and you were never going to sell the house  

You would make your money back faster in Florence  and Coolidge than you would in Chandler and  Gilbert based on these current numbers and then  you can see the rest of the numbers Mesa casagram is doing quite well as well as 0.61 and then  Maricopa, Tempe, Phoenix and then the worst place to invest currently in this type of home would be  Scottsdale with an average sales price of 588 000 average rent only 2500 so the home  is significantly more expensive  not receiving significantly more rent so  if you're thinking about investing you know maybe you have a ton of equity in your house  and you'd like to put that to work for you start building some wealth. i would love to  share some ideas and some opportunities with you  i've been helping a lot of investors recently  to buy properties in Casa Grande and Coolidge where they're getting really really nice  cash flow on even brand new houses you  know so i'd love to have that conversation  with you and see if it might be a good fit  and you know let me know  if you have any questions. I hope you found this information helpful  and hope you 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!