Show Menu

Diary of The Great Real Estate Bust – September 2006

 I’m trying and figure out what the hell happened during The Great Real Estate Bust so I’m going back over my old posts here in this blog to see what I was thinking at the time and to find the clues about the future that I missed. It’s sort of therapy for an economist. September 2006 For the Arizona housing market it’s a race between housing inventory and economic growth. As long as the economy stays strong, the housing market can work it’s way through the huge overhang of unsold homes. If the economy tanks before the inventory gets into line, then we would enter an economic slowdown with an…

Read more

Another Possible Reason for Low Supply of Homes for Sale?

 Chatting with a real estate agent friend who’s with a large national franchise, I found out that a lot of their “listings” are promoted internally as “Coming Soon” listings and are sold before they ever hit the MLS. The friend said some luxury listings are sometimes in “Coming Soon” status for months. It’s a great way for large brokerages to capture both sides of the sale, they represent (make money from) both the seller and the buyer. I think this is a long term trend. I’m promoting “Coming Soon” more myself but not so I can get both sides of the commission but to improve the odds the seller can cut…

Read more

Tutorial and Phoenix Market Update

 Watch full-size on YouTube. Phoenix Real Estate Market Update Supply is down and prices are up. That’s the story. Bye bye. Why supply is low is a bit of a mystery. But home buyers and sellers just need to know that for the metro Phoenix real estate market as a whole, prices are increasing and…

Read more

New Retro Design for This Blog

 I changed the look of this blog once again. I had just changed it to a fancy modern theme last summer but decided last week to switched back to an updated version of a theme I used way back in the Dark Ages, 2008-2011. It’s called Thesis. Does the retro look bother you? Since 2011, I’ve changed the theme of this website 3 times, now 4 times. I’m never happy with it. But on the other hand, some of the biggest websites on the internet are retro as hell like Craigslist and Reddit. So maybe I should just focus on researching and writing stuff. Here’s why I changed Simpler navigation. It’s old school…

Read more

Diary of The Great Real Estate Bust – Summer 2006

 I’m going through the first posts I wrote on this blog back in 2006 and it’s pretty humbling. I had NO idea that home prices would fall as much as they eventually did. I thought the towns on the outskirts like Queen Creek, Maricopa and Buckeye would be hit first and hardest but I had no idea how hard. My operating theory in the summer of 2006 seems to be that home prices would stagnate for several years and that real inflation-adjusted home values in metro Phoenix would decline slowly and orderly. I hadn’t yet learned about the huge lag times in real estate. I thought that because the number of…

Read more

2016 Phoenix Real Estate Market (Non) Forecast

 Okay I just updated the Phoenix Real Estate Market at a Glance graph and I’m kind of confused and kind of worried. Last year I underestimated how much prices were going to increase this year. Last year I expected 2015 to be a “normal” year with price increases in the 3% to 4% range, max 5%. So far this year, however, the Phoenix median home price is up 8%. If you look at my graph for inflation-adjusted home prices, it shows prices are now a little high, at least on an inflation-adjusted basis. Prices are where they were in 2004 which seems a little bit high to me. Of Mice…

Read more

ARMLS Stat Report – October 2015

 “Our unsold listings have 130 days on market on average whereas the average closed listing in September had 71 days on market… We expect a higher DOM for unsold listings, but it is surprising that we have so many long-haul listings in such a DOM sensitive market. In fact, there are a few listings that have been on the market for more than eight years.” – Tom Ruff, ARMLS

Read more

John Burns on Phoenix Home Prices in Outlying Areas

 John Burns Real Estate Consulting works with a lot of home builders. Their economic analysis is usually very good. In a recent e-newsletter, John said; “… we expect more price appreciation in outlying areas than in better locations.” His thesis is that the better locations have already recovered in price and that outlying locations tend to be slower to recover. There’s a lot of truth to that but on the other hand during the bubble home prices increased the most in the outlying locations. Using peak prices as a baseline for actual value, isn’t a good idea. Maricopa Story Say you bought a new home in Maricopa and then the builder increased…

Read more