Today we take another look at the single family markets in the largest 17 cities and examine how the Cromford® Market Index has changed over the past month:
Overall, the market continues the recent improving trend for sellers with 11 out 17 cities seeing an increase in their CMI. Many of them are up 5% or more, including Maricopa, Surprise, Avondale, Goodyear, Buckeye, Peoria, Mesa, and Chandler.
Fountain Hills, Paradise Valley and Tempe are the main weakening spots for sellers, though Tempe is still in the seller's market zone over 100. Paradise Valley and Fountain Hills are firmly in buyer's market territory now.
Once again, Maricopa is the faster improving market and managed to rise from 17th to 16th place.
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Decoding the above. The green button arrow trend is good for sellers; the red button trend is good for buyers.
An Index of 100 is a balanced market in terms of supply and demand. Over 100 means the market favors sellers (more demand than inventory); under 100 means the market favors buyers (more inventory than demand).
The Cromford Market Index or CMI tends to be a good short term predictor of the market.
The above graph and commentary once again reinforces the story so far this season, which is an improving market generally; relatively balanced; but with the low end on fire and the high end a bit sluggish as new listings outpace new sales.
To be sure, it's not that we don't have higher-end market sales, it's just that there are disproportionately more new listings than sales - a trend, that, as it continues, has to mean softer prices for all but the most desirable properties.
These graphs tell the tale in the higher-end ($800K plus).
Bottom line for the higher end buyer: You have great choices right now, albeit keep in mind there's always competition for the best.
Bottom line for the higher end sellers: You need to really take an objective look at the properties your competing against and position yourself as the next best one to get top dollar. Time is not on your side (competitive positioning).
Bottom line for the mid-to-lower end market: In most of the rest of the market, as evidenced in the city CMI graph above, we see demand generally increasing relative to supply - especially right now as the pace of new listings is slowing down. And of course as the average price point lowers, particularly below $400K, the demand heats up accordingly.
For your general conversations about market conditions those are the key talking points.