Tempe Real Estate Market Update + Client Escape Room Event Invite

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Grab your ball and chain and join the fun in our next client appreciation event: an Escape Room!

Space is Limited!!! Reply to RSVP today!!

Tempe from the perspective of the Economic Development Department.

As a Realtor, I get invited to all sorts of awesome Economic Development Department meetings. I have a full slide deck that I can pass along to anyone interested in learning some more about Tempe. Simply reply and I'll send it right over.

• This page is for North Tempe and includes specific areas the city is focused on for development. Since there is so little actual land left, expect future projects to build vertically.

• Population is young, the median age is 28, and very educated. (Thank you ASU!)

• Most walkable city in the nation and only going to get better. They are focused on better transportation south of the 60.

• Diverse workforce and industries.

  • Finance, Insurance and Real Estate is the largest sector.

  • Education is #2. (I bet you wouldn't have guessed that order, huh?)

• Apache Corridor - Cul De Sac is the first car-free community.

  • 700+ apartments. (No condos I'm sad to report for those wanting more affordable housing.)

  • 4k sf of retail and amenities.

  • 2+ miles of bike and foot paths.

  • Residents will have access to $3k per year for mobility benefits.

• A couple other focuses of the ED, not already mentioned, is more workforce housing and heat resilience. (Yeah for more trees!)

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Tempe, and the Valley, from a buyer's perspective.

• In Tempe, we have 60% less inventory than "normal," and 46% less demand than "normal." When supply is less than demand, expect prices to increase over time. However, for the final months of the year expect housing prices to move modestly up in most areas of the Metro, and to be flat/slight decrease to the outskirts.

• Chandler is the hottest market in the Metro. Queen Creek is a balanced market and Maricopa is just about there at this point. Gas prices can have an impact for those who have to commute into the cities.

• Seasonally, we should expect demand to start slowing down about Halloween and be the slowest in December. Buyers tend to have the most negotiating power near the Holidays as sellers are oftentimes more desperate to close around that time of year.

• We are seeing a small uptick in supply as of a week ago, though one week's worth of data is not meaningful. I'll let you know how it proceeds, of course.

To start your home-buying journey, click here!

Is the market shifting? Yep, but you already knew that from what I wrote above.

• Fun Fact the news will report wrong:stats show a sudden drop in the new home median between July and August. It came in for houses below $500,000 for the first time since April last year. There was a company who just closed escrow on an entire subdivison of 133 homes, at less than $400,000 per home to make into rentals. This is 8.3% of all the new homes that closed in Maricopa County during August and it dragged the median down from $522,490 to $499,990.This is an outlier event and not actually prices going down.

• Chandler is the hottest market in the Metro. Queen Creek is a balanced market and Maricopa is just about balanced.

• The entire Metro market is slowing down, expect it to continue to cool off a bit more about the rest of the year.

• Sellers are also scarce. Some simplistic commentators (aka uneducated drama seekers) are obsessed with imaginary bubbles and assume that if demand is weaker then prices will fall. Not the case. The fact that so many people think we are in a bubble is conclusive evidence that we are not in a bubble.

• Supply has been low for several years apart from the brief surge in the summer of last year. This was caused by panic among iBuyers and speculators, both trying to exit the market in too much of a hurry. At the moment supply is down more than demand is down, so prices are firm.

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Awesome chart you haven't seen before. (I've increased my subscription fees for more Cromford toys.)

• The real estate market continues to be in poor shape. (If you listen closely enough to this email, you'll hear crying sounds from oodles of REALTORS(R) across the Valley.

• We can see that demand is very weak with listings under contract down 16% from this time last year. The August closing count offers some relief from the gloom, rising 5.5% from last month, but with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate still north of 7%, qualified buyers are thin on the ground.

• It might seem that prices are weakening given that the median sales price is $435,000, having been $443,000 two months ago. This is a drop of 1.8%. In addition to the aforementioned 133-home subdivision pulling prices down; luxury home sales are relatively scarce in July and August. As we can see evidence of this from the fall in the average home size between June and August. This dropped almost 3% from 2,022 to 1,965 over the same two months, so median prices falling less than 2% tells us the underlying trend is still positive.

• The luxury home market share and average home size will no doubt bounce back in October and we should be able to see the upward trend reasserting itself more visibly.

• Let's talk about future housing values. The volume of owner occupied buyers is back to 2015-2019 levels. Owners fight to keep the roof over their heads and their credit intact when something goes wrong; unlike their investor counterparts who dump and run. Homeowners are the stability of our housing market.

• In the above chart, the medium blue is owner occupied purchases, light blue is 2nd home buyers, pink is investors (those who add value to distressed homes), and iBuyers (who put lipstick on a pig and just increase prices without adding value).

If you would like to chat about down payment assistance, credit, home warranty options or if now is a good time to buy for your situation, please either reply to this email or call/text me at 602-730-2143.

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for all sorts of real estate content and some weird randomness thrown in for fun.

In fact, I've started doing different series specifically tailored to for Buyers, Sellers, and Renters, We'll cover topics such as negotiation techniques, home improvement, credit scores, escrow hurdles, market updates, recent news articles, and so much more.

If you see which social media logo has been added to this newsletter, let me know and I'll send you a $5 gift card to the business of your choice.

Nancy Wittenberg