The Arizona Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) can provide us with an up to the minute snapshot of what’s going on in the real estate market. Combine that with the recently released census data and you can use it to extract some clues about the state of the market.
Scottsdale Real Estate Market Snapshot (July 19th 2011)
Active Homes For Sale: 2,481
Active With Contingencies: 611
Pending Sale: 816
Temp Off Market: 234
Looking at those numbers you can see why demand in Scottsdale is picking up. Only 2,481 homes are active for sale in Scottsdale and 1,427 are under contract. That means 1 in every 2.7 Scottsdale homes listed for sale is under contract right now.
Next I looked at the census data. Go here for information on the General Housing Characteristics: 2010 Data For Scottsdale.
Total Number of Homes: 124,001 (I couldn’t bring myself to use the official term which is “housing units”)
So that’s only 2% of Scottsdale homes active for sale currently.
Next I examined the vacancy status in the census. This gives us some truly interesting information.
This data really paints a picture of the change from 2010 to today. Firstly there were 3,216 reported as empty for sale properties. That’s just the vacant ones, today we only have 3,909 listed for sale in total. Think of how many of those are owner occupied while on the market, ARMLS say it’s 1,178 occupied today.
An interesting stat that 54% of the vacant units are seasonal or 2nd homes.
The last clue I am looking for that Scottsdale may be different than other areas of the valley is what is known as shadow inventory. Shadow inventory is foreclosed properties that the banks already own but are keeping off the market so they don’t flood the market.
I could be wrong here but I feel shadow inventory would be classified as ‘other’ in the census. If that if a fairly accurate statement then even in 2010 the shadow inventory was only 2,313 in total.
In the month of June, according to ARMLS statistics, there were 222 new Lender Owned Properties listed for sale but there were 205 Lender Owned Properties sold. Basically this means that assuming the foreclosure rate is slowing down as seems to be being reported for Arizona that means Scottsdale is steadily depleting the shadow inventory.
To me this looks like supply is no longer far greater than supply for Scottsdale. In real estate they say location, location, location. That applies for individual homes but also for individual markets. Don’t get fooled into believing that Scottsdale is the same as Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler etc. that is just not the case.
This post may be the longest ever snapshot article. Sorry. When I get into real estate statistics I just can’t stop digging.