Home sales up a touch for December, house listings down
House sales for December went up a touch over November of this year. However, sales are down compared to last year. New listings on the market showed a decrease compared to November of this year, but stayed in-line with the decrease in new listings last year.
House sales went up a touch from November of this year where we saw 7,152 houses sold in the Arizona MLS. December of this year had 7,764 home sales in comparison. That’s 612 more homes sold in December over November. However, is a decrease in home sales compared to December of last year, where there were 8,242 houses sold in the Arizona MLS. This is 1090 fewer houses sold compared to last year.
Inventory is still *way* down for the year. Last year there were 44,868 houses available on the market in December, with 9,751 new listings. This year, there was a total of 26,105 homes available, with only 7,551 new listings. That’s 58% fewer homes available this year compared to last yea There was also a slight drop in the number of new listings compared to November of this year, which had 8,749 new homes on the market. This is about normal for the time of year though, as more people are concerned with parties, gifts, and the holidays than with selling their house.
It’s the 58% decrease in the number of houses available that is really hurting the market. I hear stories all the time of houses with 20 – 30 offers on them, and see houses all the time that are on the market for less than a week before they are under contract. Most of the buyers currently seem to be investors. The investors are pushing hard to acquire properties before prices start to go up. This combined with a lack of REO houses hitting the market is creating the reduced supply available.
Now, will this reduced supply raise prices in the coming months? Possibly. Will the increase in price cause the investors to not want to purchase as many houses? Probably. Another possibility is that the banks will increase the numbers of foreclosures through their pipelines, and the supply will increase due to this. I’ve been hearing this rumor for a few months now.
Seeing is believing though, and if I could really predict what the market would do in the future, I would be writing this from a much more exotic location. What do you think will happen to the market in the coming year?
