Median Price – Up 6%

  • That 6% (April 2018 to April 2019) is very good but price increases are slowing down. Prices were up 9% the previous 12 months, April 2017 to April 2018.

Number of Houses Sold – Up 7%

  • This was a surprisingly strong bounce-back because the number of houses sold had been running lower than 12-months earlier numbers since last August.

Forecast

  • Solds and prices will be strong in May but I’m expecting the Phoenix real estate market will slow again after the high season ends. The rest of the year will probably look more like 2017 or 2016 than 2018. Both those years, 2017 and 2016, were hot markets, just not as hot as 2018.

Watch Out For…

  • Prices didn’t fall last fall and winter because the number of new listings hitting the market fell at the same time the number of houses sold fell. If the number of new listings starts to increase, that would increase the supply of houses for sale and that would put more serious downward pressure on prices.

Real West Coast Prices Fell

Inflation-adjusted home prices on the West Coast have actually fallen slightly, at least according to Case-Shiller data for March.

San Diego-0.6%
Los Angeles-0.5%
San Francisco-0.5%
Seattle-0.2%

I’m not sure why real house prices are essentially flat in those cities but it makes me worry there’s a real risk that whatever happened to them could spread to us.

Recession Watch

The soft sales from August through March makes me think the next recession could hit house prices pretty hard – S&L bubble hard, not Great Real Estate Bubble hard.

Full, interactive version of the chart here.

There is no recession imminent. Q4 at the earliest.

Employment continues to grow, year over year, at around 1%. Although it’s slowed down a bit in recent months, employment is still growing at a decent clip.

Charts

Interactive versions of these 2 charts, here.


Months Supply looked like it was headed toward the normal range for a few months there but now it’s back down to 2.4 months which is super tight.


What are you seeing in your neighborhood? Let me know. Leave a comment.