The Housechick Blog

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.

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.

I’m late with the market report for February, and I apologize.  I am frustrated with the manner in which I must generate these numbers.  It’s incredibly cumbersome.  There’s just got to be a better way.

But on with the show, eh? 

For the Tucson Area, as calculated today:

• Average Single Family Home Sales Price: $292,441
• Median Single Family Home Sales Price: $219,000
• Single Family Homes Sold: 519
• Single Family Homes for sale: 7241
• Single Family Homes Months of Inventory: 13.95

• Average Town Home Sales Price: $198,340
• Median Town Home Sales Price: $170,625
• Town Homes Sold: 48
• Town Homes for sale: 831
• Town Home Months of Inventory: 17.3

• Average Condo Sales Price: $129,462
• Median Condo Sales Price: $126,700
• Condos Sold: 30
• Condos for sale: 585
• Condo Months of Inventory: 19.5

Which means Citywide:

• Average Sales Price: $276,685
• Median Sales Price: $205,000
• Units Sold: 597
• Active Units: 8657 units
• Months of Inventory: 14.5 months

I’ve pulled city stats as well as the individual area metrics and updated all of those files, which you can - and should - check out by clicking on “Tucson Market Stats” at the top of the page here, and then you can click on the individual areas to see how your side of town is faring.

I also split the average and median sales prices for the individual areas, as it was getting too crowded having 2006, 2007, and 2008 average and median lines all on a single chart.

Stats include only the 9 major areas of Tucson, for single family, town home, and condos only.

Tucson MLS released their residential real estate market report this week for January 2008.  I prefer to pull my own.  As I don’t work in the more remote reaches of the large area encompassed by our MLS, I like to see stats for the areas and types of properties that I actually work with.

I’ll be working on some more detailed numbers over the weekend, updating the individual areas and graphs that you can find from the Stats link at the top of the page.  For now, the short, hard numbers:

As calculated today:

• Average Single Family Home Sales Price: $299,866
• Median Single Family Home Sales Price: $218,000
• Single Family Homes Sold: 435 units
• Average Town Home Sales Price: $205,756
• Median Town Home Sales Price: $180,000
• Town Homes Sold: 49 units
• Average Condo Sales Price: $157,194
• Median Condo Sales Price: $140,947
• Condos Sold: 34 units

Which means Citywide:

• Average Sales Price: $281,600
• Median Sales Price: $210,000
• Units Sold: 518

Please remember that I calculate stats from only the 9 major areas of Tucson: North, Northwest, Northeast, West, Central, East, South, Southeast, and Southwest.  I include only homes, townhomes, and condos.

Okay.  I went back through and pulled new numbers because of the large number of sales that weren’t reported on time.  Good news is that average and median sales prices were largely unaffected when you break those numbers down by area.  The changes I found were all pretty insignificant in those metrics.  The biggest impact was on the months of inventory figures (also called absorption rate).  I’m not saying any miracles occurred in the market, but in some cases, the figure changed from 13 months of inventory to 10.  Still not good by any definition, but at least it is more accurate.

So let’s get on with this show.

Unit sales comes in at 743 units for December 2007 which is slightly fewer than in November.  Seasonally and historically, those two months are usually either very similar, or December is a tad higher than November.  We’ll be keeping a close eye on this figure in the coming months.

Average sales price citywide is at $272,228, as calculated last night.  Remember that I don’t consider outlying areas or manufactured/mobile homes in average and median calculations, as those aren’t areas and types that are in the market I service.  That’s not quite the lowest point this year, but close, coming off a high of $307k in June 2007.

The median weighs in at $224,900.  The median has been bouncing in this range for quite some time.

Citywide, we’re at 11.7 months of inventory.  There are individual areas of Tucson doing better and worse - the East seems to be doing the best here, at 8.8 months of inventory. 

Active listings were down a bit from November, coming in at 8708 units.  This is typical - fewer people want to list their home over the holidays.

As always, you can look at the performance of the individual areas of town by clicking on Tucson Market Stats at the top of the page, and then on any of the 9 major areas of town, which will appear underneath that Tucson Market Stats link once you click on it.

Stats are out for the Tucson Real Estate Market for December 2007 from the Tucson Association of Realtors MLS. 

But first:

Agents reporting sales later than allowed is this month’s complaint.  There’s a new threat on MLS of up to a $15,000 fine for those turning in status changes more than 48 hours late.  We’ll see if that has any effect or not.

Seeing that warning made me go back and look at the closed sales figures pulled today from MLS compared to what was reported.  In some cases, I found nearly 100 more sales, and in a month where there were only 700 sales or so, that’s pretty significant.  I’ve updated the citywide files, and will go back through each area and recalculate.  It may take a day or two, and I’ll give you a heads-up when I’m done.  That many more sales can impact average sales prices, months of inventory, medians, all kinds of data that I track and report here.  I think the new policy will be to calculate the past two months worth of information every time, so that we stay as accurate as possible.  Given that, consider this info for December to be “preliminary.”  (sigh.)

We’ll put the MLS reported figures in parenthesis, and the figures calculated with today’s data in bold.  You see why these reports irk me?  I like exactness.

• Average Sales Price Single Family Home: ($289,254) $284,839
• Median Sales Price Single Family Home: ($236,000) $230,000
• Average Sales Price Townhome: ($199,032) $202,121
• Median Sales Price Townhome: ($175,000) $175,000
• Average Sales Price Condo: ($143,281) $142,438
• Median Sales Price Condo: ($135,000) $130,000
• Number of Active Listings: 8708 listings
• Number of Sold Units: (682 units) 743 units
• Months of Inventory, or Absorption Rate: (12.8 months) 11.7 months

I’m going to hold off drawing any conclusions about what those numbers mean until I’ve finished updating the rest of the data.  My apologies, I knew the reported sales would be at least a bit off, but I never expected them to be off by 10%. 

In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves.  Here, I’ll give you a topic: The peanut is neither a pea, nor a nut.  Discuss.

I’ve been showing some first time buyers homes in a neighborhood called Country Club Manor.  It’s a decent sized neighborhood, about 860 properties or so, and is often attractive to first time buyers on a budget.  The homes were built in the early 1950s, and are usually 2-3 bedrooms, with a single bathroom.  Average prices run in the mid $160s. 

Because these are classic “starter homes,” the turnover is a bit high, at 2.97 years on average.  Typical turnover for Tucson is somewhere between 4-6 years, I’m told.

My Buyer is a bit concerned that high turnover means low appreciation.  Instead of guessing, let’s look at some actual numbers.

Here’s a chart of price per square foot for single family homes from 2000 to present.  The black line is a smoothed trendline for Country Club Manor only, the red line is for all of Central Tucson.

To my eye, Country Club Manor appreciates just as well as the average home in Central. You can see it lagged a little in early 2005, but quickly caught back up.  It’s a little cheaper to purchase a Country Club Manor house than the average Central house - but we knew that already!  That’s why we’re shopping in the area. 

An interesting exercise, nonetheless.  Perhaps we’ll compare rates for the other neighborhoods with contending properties.  I looked for a large Central neighborhood in a similar price range with a lower turnover rate, but didn’t have much luck.  In that price range, homes just change owners more frequently.

As expected due to the season, unit sales dropped a bit in November. MLS stats report 759 sales, but searching today yields 776 closed transactions for November 2007. Typically, we’ll see this number hold fairly steady until March.

Average sales price, citywide, is at $269,968, which - again - hasn’t moved significantly since about mid-2005. We’ve been wavering between the low $260,000’s and the high $270,000’s for quite some time. If you look at average sales price by area, you’ll see some areas that have taken local hits, notably the Southwest and the Southeast. No big surprise as there is a good amount of new construction in these areas, who are undercutting resale homes.

The median sales price for Tucson is $213,000 this month. We’ve been wavering up and down here as well - same story as the average sales price. It’s up a small $3000 tick from last month.

We’re at roughly 12 months of inventory for November, but this varies by area.  Northwest Tucson wins this month’s largest months of inventory award, at 14 months.  The Southeast records the lowest months of inventory of the major areas of Tucson for November at 10.2, but this is a month and a half increase of inventory over October, which would indicate things are worse in that area, and not better.

Pending sales typically peak around April, and fall slowly towards the end of the year. Peak this year was June, and we’ve been slowly falling off since then. The peak shifted, but the pattern remains the same, for now.

Units sold are still a little low for my tastes, but traditionally level off in the last few months of the year. Another item to keep an eye on.

Active listings ticked down slightly from last month. I anticipate the same trend for December, and another ramp up in January.

As always, you can see the most recent stats by area by clicking on the Tucson Market Stats link at the top, and than on any of the 9 major regions of Tucson. 

Stats were released by Tucson Association of REALTORS MLS a couple days ago for October 2007.

For your everyday viewing pleasure, there’s a new page for statistics, where you can see current market information, also broken down by area.  See that link at the top that says Tucson Market Stats?  And then all the 9 areas underneath once you select that link?  Click away, my friends.

The quick rundown:

• Average Sales Price: $262,251
• Median Sales Price: $210,000
• # Units Sold: 790 units
• # Active Listings: 9313 units
• # Pending Listings: 993 units
• Months of Inventory (Absorption Rate): 11.8 months

Interpreting the Data:

Unit sales typically take a hit in October, but we were up a little from an admittedly measly number of sales in September.  Typically, according to our seasonality, we’ll see sales drop a bit in November, and hold fairly steady until March.  Only way to know if we’ll see that this year is to wait.

Average sales price, citywide, hasn’t moved significantly since, oh, mid-2005.  We’ve been wavering between the low $260,000’s and the high $270,000’s for quite some time.  If you look at average sales price by area, you’ll see some areas that have taken local hits, notably the Southwest and the Southeast.  No big surprise as there is a good amount of new construction in these areas, who are undercutting resale homes.

The median sales price, at $210,000, is the same as last September.  We’ve been wavering up and down here as well - same story as the average sales price.  There’s been a downward trend for two months here that we’ll keep an eye on.

Pending sales typically peak around April, and fall slowly towards the end of the year.  Peak this year was June, and we’ve been slowly falling off since then.  The peak shifted, but the pattern remains the same, for now.

Units sold are still a little low for my tastes, but traditionally level off in the last few months of the year.  Another item to keep an eye on.

Active listings ticked up slightly from last month, but the hope is that the number will taper off a bit as we hit the holiday season.  Some years, we have a little drop at the end of the year, some years we don’t.

So there you go!  Remember - You can always find the latest market data in those links at the top of the blog. 

Holy September, Batman!

Little crowded on the chart, but this is Months of Inventory for September 2007 in Tucson, broken down by area. The number of closed sales in September took a pretty sharp drop while the number of listings stayed relatively the same - hence the spike in months of inventory. As anyone with a listing on the Southwest side of town can attest, it was a rough month out there.