You need to know. You need to know what’s happening locally in our Metro Phoenix real estate market. Everyone wants to know if it's a good time to buy. Is it a good time to sell? It can be so confusing with all the news that’s both positive and negative. Who should you believe? What’s the best choice? I get it. I’m in the industry and have been for over 15 years, and I even find myself a little bit anxious. But let’s look at the data and see what’s really happening so that we can make an educated decision.
First of all, according to real estate experts and advisors, anytime you have an inventory level, meaning the number of active homes on the market, that are at least six months of inventory or below, we’re in a seller’s market. Anytime we have inventory levels in excess of that, in other words above six months, then we’re in a buyer’s market. It’s sort of like the supply and demand theory. Where there’s a lot of supply of something and it’s easy to get, you can’t sell it for more money. More often than not, you’ll have to lower the price in order to compete with all the competition. But when there is limited supply, then prices go up. It’s kind of like when people were selling toilet paper or hand sanitizer for 10 times what it was worth, because they knew we were going to need to, well, we need toilet paper. That wouldn’t be good if we didn’t have any. So, let’s see what inventory levels are doing here locally.
Is it a good time to sell here in Metro Phoenix and North Phoenix? Well, let’s begin by looking at what happened in the month of October. In Metro Phoenix we currently, as of the time of this video, have 5,692 homes active and on the market. Now this is historically low. Traditionally during this time, there are many more homes available. 5,692 is a very low number. In fact, we normally have over 25,000. The average time to sell is only 36 days, so we only have about one month’s worth of inventory, confirming we’re in a very strong seller’s market. Now you may be wondering if it’s a good time to sell in Metro Phoenix or North Phoenix. The active homes on the market in November are 5,692, we’ve sold 8,596. That means we are selling inventory faster than we’re getting it. Again, a seller’s market. Because we have less than one month’s worth of inventory, inventory is only at 66%, we’re selling 1/3 more homes than we have available. It’s a very strong seller’s market. So here in all areas of Maricopa County, we have very low inventory and a strong buyer demand. It’s a great time to sell as we’re experiencing bidding wars and homes being sold above list price in almost every case. That shouldn’t discourage you from getting a home, just be aware….it MAY take some persistence.