Foreclosures Remain Hot Topic January and February have been filled with forecasting events in Southern Arizona. Foreclosures continue to be the HOT TOPIC for the real estate and financial industries. “Foreclosure Looms” is no longer a noteworthy headline for advertising a property whose owner needs a quick sale. Nor are foreclosures limited to residential properties – commercial, land, and industrial real estate are all affected with foreclosures streaming into the market. “Both new and resale will be competing with foreclosures for the next four years,” predicts John Strobeck of Bright Future Business Consultants. Yet to be known: the potential impact of the recently approved Stimulus Package!
There were 955 foreclosure filings in
Pima County in January according to RealtyTrac,
one in every 455 housing units. “Builders are not really competing with other builders or resale,” states Strobeck in his latest newsletter, “but with foreclosures”. R.L Brown, Housing Market Consultant from Phoenix noted in his remarks at the recent New Construction Forecast held in Tucson this month that the New Home builder must build to meet the competition of the foreclosure market which makes up 30%-40% of the residential market. We can say the same for resale sellers! An important trend to watch will be homebuilders creating new products that are significantly different in order to compete against foreclosures.
January statistics for TAR/MLS were published Wednesday, February 11, 2009 with the bright spot being an
increase in pending sales – up 53% over December ’08. The number of new listings and active listings increased, but only slightly. Worth watching very closely.
In TAR/MLS Home Units Sold decreased 24.13% from December to January and Home Sales Volume decreased 21.07%. January’s Home Sales Units of 588 was a drop from the previous year’s figure of 621 and down from December’s number of 788. However, pending contracts increased 53.76% from 612 in December to 941 in January. That’s still down from last January’s number of 1,079.
Active Listings were up only slightly at .88% from December and were down considerably by 16.08% from January 2008. Total number of residential Active Listings is 7,694.
Average days on market crept up to 84, breaking a four month down cycle.
The Median Sales Price dropped, from $167,900 in December to $163,250 in January. January’s drop is 19.58% from January 2008 and 2.77% from December008. Average Sales Price for January 2009 decreased in January 2008 by 21.51% at $208,133 – off from $265,178 from last year.
Foreclosures will continue to impact both the new home market and the resale market in Southern Arizona. Strobeck’s January Housing Market Letter reports 224 foreclosure home closings in January, up from 84 closings in January 2008. SFR permits were down from 215 in January ’08 to 102 in January ’09. There were 146 new construction closings in January ’09, down from 257 in January ’08. The median sales price for new construction was $215,000 for January ’09, down from $226,577 in January ‘08.
# posted by
Anna-Lise Troup @ 10:45 AM
