See the interactive graphs HERE.

Most Popular Charts on Phoenix Real Estate (?)

The most amazing thing this month is the three “Phoenix Real Estate Market at a Glance Charts” now have over 150,000 views, at least, according to Tableau. Wow!

I’ve been updating the charts every month but I haven’t even written a post about the charts here on this blog since last May!

I wonder where all the views are coming from. They’re not coming from this website. I’m getting 1/10th the number of visitors I used to get to this website so only a small part of those 150,000 views are coming from this website. Are people finding the charts directly on Tableau’s website? I wonder if people have embedded the charts on other websites? (Which is fine with me, my name is on the bottom of every chart.) I just wonder where all those views are coming from.

I only started publishing them using Tableau in 2012. Before that (2007-2012), I published the charts as static images (.jpg and .png) created in Excel.

Anyway, I’m very grateful the charts are useful to people.

Hey, tell your friends about the charts!

Back to the Phoenix Real Estate Market

Note: When this post was first published in April 2015, the graph only had sales data through March 2015.

Explainer

I don’t have a good feel for what’s happening in the market.

I didn’t expect prices to increase as much in 2015 as in 2014 but through March the median home price increase is similar to last year’s.

Sales. The price increase is being driven by a “high” number of sales. Home sales in March were up 17% from March 2014. That’s a lot.

Lending standards have eased a bit. That’s gotta help a bit. Is that why sales are up?

Are people feeling more confident about their income?

Are more Millennials buying their first homes?

Is it just a one month fluke? Nah. The number of home sales has been higher every month this year versus last.

Inventory. The number of homes hitting the market each month is running less this year than last and that also helps keep inventory down and prices strong.

On the other hand, coming into 2014 we had huge upward momentum in home prices in Phoenix. The median price had increased over 50% over the previous two years.

This year the market had a lot less upward momentum going in. Prices “only” increased 6% in 2014.

Conclusion. Last fall I thought the price increases this year would be lower than in 2014 and that was the conventional wisdom.

Now with tighter supplies of homes for sale being counterbalanced to some degree by less upward price momentum coming into 2015, I’ll say we’ll see price increases this year similar to last, in the 6% ballpark but with higher than 6% more likely than lower because of the tight inventory.

On the other hand, I’m a little worried that the inflation-adjusted price is getting too high. That’s bad for buyers and market stability.

What do you see? What’s happening around you? Please leave a comment.