For a minute, the market seemed as if it were slowing down; however, there are clear signs that parts of the county are ramping back up. Let’s take a look at our Phoenix metro real estate report for October 2021.
Last month there were approximately 7200 homes for sale across Maricopa County–as of October 31, there are 7865 actively listed properties–this represents a nine percent increase. There are 12,688 properties under contract–very similar to the amount last month at this same time. There are 620 “coming soon” properties.
The average days on market for recently sold properties has gone up slightly from 28 to 30. Since October 1, there have been 7874 sales–almost identical to last month. The list to sale price ratio remains steady at 1.01–this means that on average homes are selling for a little more than list price.
In September, we felt a pause in the market, but certain parts of the valley are heating up again. Sellers should not think that all properties are flying off the shelves as this is not the case–it really depends upon the community, location, property condition, etc. In some areas, there is more than enough inventory to satisfy demand while in other areas, inventory is scant.
The chart below shows how the active average list price has changed over the past two years:
One telling metric of any real estate market is the total months’ supply of homes. The chart below shows how the total months’ supply of inventory has changed since October of 2019–you can see we reached an all-time low in March of this year. Currently, there is less than one month of housing inventory across the county.
There continues to be talk of a bubble, but experts in the arena of real estate analysis believe that we’ll continue to see strong demand coupled with lower-than-normal levels of inventory. Large residential home builders are starting to purchase land again–a trend that had stopped pre-pandemic. While housing starts are down by a percentage or two, we have seen an increase in housing starts year over year. Mortgage defaults are up a few percentage points across the country, but in our county, there are only 28 distressed sales on the market–this represents .004 percent of total active inventory.
We expect inventory to rise a little over the next two months, but given attractive mortgage rates and the positive net migration of folks moving to Arizona, demand will remain strong. Thank you for checking out our Phoenix metro real estate report for October 2021. If you have a real estate need or question, reach out anytime.
