Christmas Market Update

The last few weeks have continued to tilt hard toward sellers. Demand is picking up across most segments while inventory keeps shrinking.

Just like last week green circles are overwhelming red ones by a 15 to 3 margin. The average CMI change over the past month is now up 10.1 percent. That is a noticeable jump from 8.6 percent last week.

The strongest shifts toward sellers are in Peoria Gilbert Queen Creek Tempe Goodyear Fountain Hills Chandler Cave Creek Phoenix and Glendale. The only three cities not showing a clear monthly move toward sellers are Paradise Valley Surprise and Avondale and even there the improvement for buyers is minimal.

We now have nine cities solidly in seller territory including the three largest markets Phoenix Scottsdale and Mesa. That puts half of our 18 major cities in seller markets. The rest break down into three balanced and six still favoring buyers.

Only six large cities remain below a CMI of 100. Overall this picture is far more seller-friendly than we expected just a month ago.

Some improvement for sellers...as normal this time of year.

Over the last week the market has shifted hard in favor of sellers. Demand is up, supply is dropping faster than it normally does this time of year, and the numbers show it. We’re sitting at 15 green cities and only 3 red, with Scottsdale and San Tan Valley both flipping from red to green since last week.

CMI movement is accelerating too. The average change over the last month is +6.4 percent, up from +3.6 percent just a week ago.

Fountain Hills and Chandler are still leading for sellers, but Queen Creek, Peoria, Maricopa and Tempe all jumped more than 10 percent. On the flip side, Paradise Valley still favors buyers over the past month, but even PV improved for sellers when you only look at the last seven days. The other buyer-leaning cities softened only slightly, at three percent or less. Avondale also reversed course this week, and Surprise is now the only city still trending toward buyers.

The biggest positive sign this week: even the three weakest cities are now moving solidly toward sellers.

Right now the breakdown sits at 8 seller’s markets, 4 balanced markets, and 6 buyer’s markets.