For Buyers: Greater Phoenix has a population of approximately 4.8 million people and 1.4 million single family homes, condos and townhomes in total inventory. As of July 8th, only 8,579 of these units were available for sale through the Arizona Regional MLS. If that number doesn’t cause you to gasp, then this might: only 1,023 are single family homes under $300,000 and that number is diminishing every day. The last month has seen a surge of buyer activity, but it was not met with an equivalent surge of new listings. New listings overall compared to last year were down 7.8% while contracts in escrow soared 24% higher. For buyers under $300K however, new listings were down 22% in June compa
The market is becoming so lop-sided it is approaching absurdity. Demand has recovered and is now close to normal in most areas. The bizarre situation is all to do with supply. New listings remain stubbornly low, especially in the price ranges that are most popular with buyers. Only during a brief period in 2005 at the height of the housing bubble have we seen the supply indexes this low, but some ZIP codes have it worse than others. If we compare the number of active listings for single-family homes without a contract with this time last year, the following are the ZIP codes with the largest percentage decline in homes for sale: Chandler 85224 - down 91% Glendale 85306 - down 88% El Mirage
