1/27 In The Bag
All Sub-Markets Improve, Demand Increase Drastically, Mortgage Rates Stay Steady
This newsletter is 513 words and should take about 3 minutes to read.
Read last week’s newsletter here →"1/27 Ride The Wave"
The US GDP grew by 3.3% last quarter. Chipotle wants to hire in new workers for burrito season (didn’t know that was a thing). Netflix acquired WWE’s rights and Vince McMahon got in hot water all in the same week. Jon Stewart is returning to the Today Show. Chuck Schumer wants to crack down on Zyn (Big Tobacco has entered the chat). A Chinese runner was disqualified due to smoking while he was competing. And an American aviation taxi company Archer launches it's first flying ride-share service.
tl;dr
Phoenix’s market contiunes to increase in competativness
The average mortgage rate is 6.9%
Pretty short one this week! Nothing too crazy happening on a macro level of large real estate industry news.
Phoenix
Yet another all-green chart with 17 cities showing an increase in their increase over the past month.
There has been an average increase of 12.4% in the CMI for the 17 cities, a strong rise but down slightly from 12.6% we recorded last week. The drop in interest rates that started in October is bringing more offers for homes listed for sale. However there are also far more new listings arriving on the market than this time last year, which is stopping the market from heating up too fast. Year to date we have seen 7,467 new listings. This is up more than 22% from 2023 and even up 13% from 2022 and 10% from 2021.
Demand is improving even faster, with 7,428 listings under contract, up 41% compared with the beginning of 2024. The monthly sales rate is still stuck around 4k because that depends on contracts signed during December which were unusually weak. We should start to see improving closing volumes in February.
The average price per square foot of active listings just hit a new all-time high of $366.43 yesterday. This surpassed previous peaks set in May 2022 and June 2023.
Active listings are arriving in much larger numbers than last year, when they were unusually scarce. The new listing arrival rate is back to normal, but the seller's expectations seem to be unusually positive, judging by the asking prices. The average $/SF has risen 2.1% in just the last two weeks. These figures are averaged across all areas & dwelling types
The Cromford Market Index is a gauge of Phoenix’s Supply and demand metrics. 100 is considered a balanced market. Anything higher than the 100-point benchmark is considered a seller’s market. Anything below 100 is considered a buyer’s market.
As of January 26th, 2024, the CMI has increased to 116.9. Up 1.2 points from 7 days ago.
Supply has decreased by 4 basis points and demand has increased by 1.3 points..
Rates
7-Day rate change: -2 basis points
YoY change: +72 basis points
Average interest rate: 6.90%
S&p500 vibe check
Meme, tweet, & fact of the week
You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.