Phoenix Monthly Sales Report by Cromfrord report

May 2017  Report  from the Cromford Report

May 31 -The Cromford report shows attached homes have been gaining popularity and market share over detached homes in 2017. This is a fairly new trend but one which is becoming firmly established and appears to be quite significant. You can see this is the ARMLS numbers, but it is even more obvious in the public record data we store in the Cromford® Public site. (The reason is that new homes are included in the public records but only a small percentage of new homes hit the MLS).

First, let us take a look at the ARMLS data. The year-to-date sales for May 28 is compared with the same period in 2016

Single-family detached homes still dominate the market, unlike most large conurbations in the USA. However attached homes, mainly townhomes and condominiums but also including a few duplex, triplex and four-plex units, are growing sales faster. Sales are up almost 13% compared with single family sales up by just over 8%. Mobile homes lag behind at under 4% growth.

The growing demand for attached homes is also reflected in pricing

Not so long ago (2014), the average price per sq. ft. for attached homes was 2.3% lower than for attached homes. Now a significant gap has opened up. The gap first appeared in 2015 where we can see attached homes with a 1.4% pricing advantage for the same sq. ft. In 2016 this stayed roughly the same at 1.3%. But in 2017 so far, this gap has widened to 6.8% and is causing me to take more notice.

Some of this trend is due to the introduction of more luxury condos into the market, sometimes selling at very high $/SF, especially for the upper floors and most particularly for the top floor. However this would not be reflected in the numbers above if buyers were not responding enthusiastically. We see baby boomers in particular losing enthusiasm for large and remote detached homes and opting to move closer to the city centers and to properties with more shared facilities that they do not have to manage themselves.

Because the trend in favor of attached homes is reflected in both unit volumes and pricing, we are seeing an even stronger result when we look at dollar volumes:

All segments are expanding, but attached homes are achieving almost twice the growth rate of detached homes in terms of dollars spent.

We should point out that single-family detached homes still represent an impressive 87.5% of the total dollar volume. However, this has declined from the 89.1% we saw in YTD 2014

Mid Month Pricing Update and Forecast

May 19 – Despite generally strong pricing the monthly median sales price for single-family homes in Phoenix is currently lower at $235,000 in mid May then it was at $240,000 at the end of May last year. You can see this in the weekly chart here. This illustrates that even for a large city like Phoenix, the monthly median sales price can be volatile and give strange results. For a more reliable view of the pricing trends, the annual median is a better guide. It can still be measured weekly, as it is here. We then see a consistent picture of increasing prices with the most recent being $234,000, up from $219,900 last year.

Here is a table raking the cities by the change in their annual median sales price for single-family homes over the past 12 months: