The Housechick Blog

When you sell your home in Tucson, there’s a spot in the MLS where you get to tell other agents the rules about showing your home.  Can they give you a 30 minute heads up call and then go show it?  What if they call and get voicemail?  Can they leave a message and just go?  How much notice do you need?

It’s really up to you, the seller, to decide what kind of notice you need, but understand that the more difficult you make it to show your home, the fewer agents will show it.

Pretty typical around here is a 30 minute courtesy call, and if the agent gets voicemail, they leave a message and then they just go.  As an agent, if you want me to call a home and a work number, I’m more than happy to do so, as long as if I don’t reach anyone, I can just leave messages and go show your home.

I wanted to show a home the other day that said we could come between 10:30 and 2pm on weekdays.  Except my client has a full-time job, so we are only out looking nights and weekends.

There was a house I wanted to show last month where I could only show the house by appointment on weekends, but my clients were only in town from Monday through Thursday to buy a home.  With cash. 

With so much inventory on the market right now, you can’t afford to make your house difficult to show.  I realize it can be inconvenient at times to allow showings with short notice, but if we are to sell your home, we’ve got to make it easy for people to see it!

The overview via the voice of Kelley:

Download Tucson Market Stats for March 2008 here (MP3)

And the straight numbers:

• Single Family Home Average Sales Price: $291,590
• Single Family Home Median Sales Price: $220,000
• Single Family Home Units Sold: 647
• Single Family Home Months of Inventory: 11.0

• Townhouse Average Sales Price: $194,530
• Townhouse Median Sales Price: $168,750
• Townhouse Units Sold: 64
• Townhouse Months of Inventory: 11.4

• Condo Average Sales Price: $144,721
• Condo Median Sales Price: $129650
• Condo Units Sold: 46
• Condo Months of Inventory: 12.2

• Citywide Average Sales Price: $274,460
• Citywide Median Sales Price: $210,500
• Citywide Units Sold: 757
• Citywide Months of Inventory: 11.1

Remember to check out the individual areas in the link at the top of the page.  Click on Tucson Market Stats, and you’ll see the 9 areas of Tucson as links underneath. I’ve compiled all that data, and the individual area links should be updated by tonight.

And if I set this up correctly, you can subscribe to future Tucson market reports by subscribing to my podcast.

Data gathered from the Tucson MLS and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.  Figures quoted here include only single family homes, townhomes, and condos in the 9 areas that make up the Greater Tucson Area: NW, N, NE, W, C, E, SW, S, and SE.

Selected scenes from Pima Canyon, a Tucson neighborhood. Such a nice, peaceful place.

And some yellow flowers, just for fun.

Home Buyers always ask me: how much should I offer?

I like to ask them how they prefer to negotiate.  Are you a low-baller?  Or more of a "this is my firm and best offer" sort of person? 

Personally, I like to craft offers that I think are just below their threshold of acceptance, to put something in front of a home seller that is just low enough that they aren’t sure they want to take it, but just high enough that it’s tempting for them to just accept it and have it done with, if you know what I mean.

But - as a person buying a home - you need to negotiate in a style that is most comfortable to you, so that regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, you’re satisfied with the process.  As an agent who’s worked with many buyers and sellers, I’ve seen all kinds of tactics and strategies.  And at one point or another, those strategies have all worked and they’ve all failed.  Everyone’s different.

So - what’s your negotiating style?

March Market stats should be coming out soon from the Tucson MLS, and I’ll be calculating my own here shortly.  I was curious though: since there are fewer sales than are typical, which price brackets are selling?

This is March sales from 2007 and 2008, single family homes only.  You can see the bulk of home sales are in the couple of brackets just on either side of $200,000-$250,000 price range, which would be expected given our average sales price and the typical Tucson home.

Look at those high end sales though.  Not much difference between this year and last.

The big difference is right at that $200k-$250k mark.  That’s the biggest change, where fewer homes are selling this year compared to last.

Which is what you’d expect, right?  With the recent financing changes making money a little tighter for the average person, you’d expect the average home price to be where fewer homes will sell.  The people buying high end homes probably have cash to do so, or a large down payment. 

Interesting.  The market hasn’t scaled down evenly overall.  That’s something I knew intuitively by being in the market, but seeing real numbers to back it up is interesting.

There was an article about loft projects in Tucson today in the Arizona Daily Star (will go behind registration wall soon, but registering is free).

There’s always a lot of talk about loft projects, especially in the downtown Tucson area.  I often get calls from people in other states, looking to purchase a little loft downtown, especially as a vacation home.  They want to live in a low maintenance place, where they can get to a grocery store and restaurants and other shops within easy walking distance.  Some are ecologically minded, wanting to use a car less, some are just drawn by convenience.

All, however, want something affordable.  Which is a little harder to find.

In general, I see interest in loft projects, but not at the current pricing.  And I think that’s reflected in the number of loft projects that have stalled.

Take a look at the article, it has a list of "lofts in limbo" and "lofts pending."

Among the pending lofts is the Post Lofts, at 56 E Congress.  The developer has promised to start construction, but they’re already well behind schedule.  These lofts went into MLS for a short period of time and then were all withdrawn.  Units started in the high $200s.

44 Broadway is under construction, but as far as I know, there is an interest list but no reservations or sales taken yet.  And no pricing that I can see.

The Ice House lofts started much earlier, and sold out in 2005, while the Academy Lofts started in 2006, I believe, are partially rental units due to the agreement when the place converted, but of the 11 units that could be sold, only 6 have.

Did Tucson hit the loft market too late?  There’s certainly still interest in living downtown, but the timing - is there enough downtown to keep people living there right now?  Will there be if and when some of these loft projects finish?  You need people downtown to support downtown businesses, but you need the businesses there to draw the people.

Something to keep an eye on.  If prices were lower, I’d be more interested, personally.

I’ve talked about range pricing effectiveness earlier here, and then again here when we learned the Tucson MLS doesn’t dictate the stated list price when range pricing a home, other than to say the list price must be within the range somewhere.

I’m always curious to see what sort of marketing works best.  After all, the point is to sell homes quickly and for a good price.  Knowing what works and what doesn’t is valuable to me and my Sellers.

So we peek one more time at range pricing.  As the market changes, so must our marketing.  Check out the previous results, then read on.

Over the past 6 months, single family homes only, greater Tucson area:

• 271 out of 3261 homes that sold were range priced, roughly 8%.
• 43% sold for greater than the list price - typically the low end of the range
• Average range between list price and top of range: $21,585
• Average Sales Price for Ranged Priced Homes: $255,841
• Average Sales Price for Non Ranged Priced Homes: $304,122

Let’s look at a smaller area.  Central Tucson had roughly 10% of the sold homes over the last 6 months range priced.

There’s a handful of high end sales in there though, so let’s just look at the under $500k crowd for a second:

I think it is interesting that range priced homes go for 99% of the listed price, while traditionally priced homes go for 95% of list.  Some sellers build in a bit of negotiating room in their price, so perhaps they are expecting to come down a bit, while the range pricers state their estimated negotiating range up front so that offers come in closer to their range.  However, average sales prices and price per square feet is lower across the board for range priced homes.

Last time, when we looked at the Northwest, the range priced homes did better in terms of price per square foot and sales price to list price.  Here we see Central is just the opposite. 

Ultimately, I think range pricing is a marketing tactic, and like any marketing tactic, it requires judicious use.  I don’t believe every marketing technique is appropriate for every home, and certainly that applies to every marketplace as well.  Given current Buyer expectations and our current Tucson real estate market, it would seem range pricing isn’t the best pricing strategy at this time.

Been perusing Northern Tucson over by Sabino Canyon recently, and spent some time in Sabino Mountain today.  Such lovely views from some of those homes.

This is the view from one of the spare bedroom windows, overlooking the pool with the waterfall and the dramatic Catalina mountains as a backdrop.

And here’s overlooking the city, looking more or less South, from the backyard.  I bet they get magnificent sunset and city lights.

Sabino Mountain is near Snyder and Sabino Canyon Roads in North Tucson, with roughly 300 homes and huge protected desert areas.  There are high end custom homes here, as well as a few smaller production builder homes.  Today, prices start in the low $400ks and head up quickly from there.