Buyers Gain, Sellers Lose

Welcome, welcome to the Rick Alps real estate show where this time of the week we recap what the week was like in Arizona in the real estate market and show you some numbers coming up on holiday time. So some of the numbers mean something some really don't. So we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive into that and see what we can glean out of it and stick around. I've got some personal information I want to share with you at the end of the video. And so stick around for that. But one of the things that we're seeing first and foremost from the Cromford market report is the fact that the market index is now down below it's 86.9. Now, if you don't know what the market index is, it's proprietary measurement with the Cromford people that show the supply and demand as an index. So anything below 100 is considered a buyer's market. And anything above it is you're around 100 is considered balanced. Anything above 110 is considered advantage for sellers, which we've seen a lot. We have hardly ever been in a buyer's market in the Phoenix market just a few times. And when we are it's a very short journey averaging about four months. See what happens this time. Right now you can see where we are in relationship to the last time we've seen a buyer's market. You can see we're barely below there. Let me go pull out my handy dandy magnifying glass right there. And then again here in that's right when interest rates took their big jump 2022. And then you can see again, we kind of skirted there around 2014. And then the wheels fell off the wagon here in 2006, seven and eight. Great bargains out there for buyers, but buyers couldn't get a mortgage. So they couldn't play in that sandbox. Active listings. Now I've been saying that active listings are going to start going down. I've been surprised for a couple weeks, but I have been redeemed today. In that here we go, folks. We're going to start doing this. I don't have to be Nostradamus to tell you that this is what's going to happen. It just happens every time over the holidays. Active listings dip. It was a little bit of a different ride this year because of the election. Now I will tell you that in tracking my seven day moving average as I'm showing you these numbers that are advantage for buyers and disadvantage for sellers. It's not that great of an advantage of buyers. I mean, there are more homes on the market. But there aren't a lot of bargains being offered. There's a few out there. Which means sellers now's the time not to price and use the term. I think I can get this. You need to price it at a price that says I know I can get this. And you know the difference. I think I might get 510. Well, you know what? You know, you're going to get 49. So if you're going to sell your house, I would price it closer to what you know, not what you think you might get, because the I think I might get are sitting out there. That's not an actual real estate term. I just now made it up. Listings under contract, you can see here and you're free to borrow that. They've gone down. But again, it's seasonal, they go down every year, as we get into Thanksgiving and Christmas and there's no surprise this year it's happening again. Listing success rate and this is what I want to talk to you on a seven day moving average for just a moment. Bear with me. It's sitting here at 70%. Which means you listed it. Did you get a contract? Well, 70% of you did. Historically, it's low. It's not dire, but it's low. It was pretty bad back when interest rates popped up right here. And that's when the iBuyer started dumping your inventory. And of course, we know it doesn't get any worse than this 2008-2009. But just putting it in perspective for you. This is also sales price to list ratio, kind of the same thing shows you about the same thing sitting here at 98%. List price by sales price shows you a different way to look at it. When it sticks there. List price and sales price per square foot. This one isn't meaning too much to me $2.99 list price $2.93 is the actual sales price. I can't glean a lot out of that. That's a snapshot. We're not going to dip into that one. Let me talk to you a little bit about our seven day moving average. I've been tracking consistently that the new listings that are coming on have been kind of hanging in around, oh, I want to say about 2700 to 2900 new listings coming up. And now we're sitting at about 2400, which is considerably lower, which I showed you on the chart earlier. Not alarming going into Thanksgiving. So shoot, I'm just gonna wait till after the holidays. I'm not going to listen now. But our listings under contract have gone from a low of 2200 during the presidential election week, back up to 2419. We are staying consistently 2400 to 2500 homes, week after week after week, for at least six months. That it's amazing to me that there's a number out there of contracts that are going to be written that stays that close every week, wouldn't you think it would be up a week down a week up, you know that it wouldn't just be that consistent template of buyers yet. There we are. So it's pretty easy to say, well, where where are we at this week in relationship to last week? Well, the same. It's slow and it's been slow. Heard from someone that spoke to a leasing agent in over 55 market this weekend, that said they were told they're having a problem filling long term leases. They have a glut of them, which year after year has never been a problem. Snowbirds coming down and they're even having problems with some of the short term listings. I can't put a finger on why that is. Except I did say you know what, Phoenix got hit pretty hard with heat this summer we made national news. Another heat record another heat record. Maybe people said I'm not going to go there this year it might be too warm. Although the temperature is beautiful now it's 75 degrees 80 degrees but I don't know I can't put a finger on it maybe. Maybe people are trying to sell their homes in the Midwest before they come out here and lease for a few months. I know that the difference in the Canadian dollar is making a huge difference. The dollar is not worth as much so maybe the Canadian visitors coming down has dipped I just haven't dug into that data yet to find out what's going on but not only are sales low I guess I'm trying to tell you rentals slowing down as well. All of this bodes well for buyers but but not right away. You know we still have an affordability problem people are waiting for that to shake out. And we are looking at interest rates that have not budged they haven't moved at all. There's a bit of what we call bond market vigilantism going on out there. We're sitting there at 7.03 I think it was 7.01 earlier. Despite what the central bank's doing the bond traders are saying no we are we want a higher yield. We're we're on strike here because there has to be so much so many treasury bills issued to pay for our national debt which now today crossed the 36 trillion and we have one trillion in interest payments that we have to make that has to be funded. And so it can only be funded by the sale of treasuries to which the bond market is saying I'm going to have to get a bigger yield. It's finally happened to where the national debt is now starting to affect interest rates. So is that going to go away anytime soon. Not until they see an indication that the debt's going to be dealt with. Right now we just came out of campaign season. They didn't even bring it up. Neither party. So they're waiting to see if there's any actions coming in the next administration that gives them confidence that somebody is going to deal with this debt crisis. Until then expect interest rates to stay where they're at. I've already seen MBS mortgage business highway mortgage business news reset their forecast into 2025 and there they were they were saying low sixes now they're saying mid sixes to high sixes all year. That's their forecast. Now we all know how accurate forecasts have been. They've been dismal. And you're also going to see the businessmen in suits getting on TV telling you well here's what's going to happen. They're not going to be any better than the next guy. But it looks like today that interest rates just aren't going to see that dip down no matter what the central bank does. Now central banks not going to start doing quantitative easing where they start buying the treasuries and holding them on their books unless we see a recession. We could doesn't look like we're going to see one anytime soon but it's always on the horizon. And that's when you can expect rates to go down. So if you're waiting for some cataclysmic event that's going to lower house prices. We don't see that on the horizon yet either. And I know I say that week after week but that's why we look at the numbers every week and that's why I look at the seven day moving average see if anything jumps out. What we're seeing now is quite simply seasonal. Saw it coming. It's happening slow. It's going to be slow. Those of us in the industry have plenty of time to finish our continuing education which I did this week. Got my last three credits in and Christmas shopping. So but there are some realtors out there I got to tell you they are busy, busy, busy and we've had a busy couple of weeks here at the brokerage so I'm not I'm not complaining. Now I said I had some personal news. Let me share this with you. I thought long and hard about whether or not I really wanted to delve into this because I have cancer. It's not alarming cancer and I want to speak specifically to men over 50. I have prostate cancer and they found another problem while investigating the prostate cancer which is very curable early stages. I'm going to tell you how I found it. And they found the tumor in my kidney. Oh, I guess I got a BOGO buy one get one free. It's so and that's very terrible as well. Men over 50 monitor your PSA annually your PSA will establish a baseline. Mine was 3.9 stayed at 3.9 went up to four went up to 4.2. That's a very tiny move gentlemen. Very tiny. Most people look at it ignore it. I was fortunate enough I had switched doctors because of an insurance change and he said well let's let's send it to a urologist and let's get it checked out. You know he says it's still pretty low. I don't think we have anything to worry about. They did an MRI and they go we think we see something. They did a biopsy and they go Yeah, now there's two cancer spots. Sent it off what's called the genome score, which says okay, what kind of growth is this? How fast moving is it? And there's different scales and stuff and one's a four one's a seven. So seven is kind of high. But they're not progressing. They're not dangerous. They're small, they're going to be pretty easy to get rid of. So as the final step, my radiation oncologist says, Well, I want to do a PET scan. I want to make sure that your tumors and your prostate don't have any tentacles. So that's getting into your thyroid. So they did a PET scan. And they go, no, those look fine. They're not spreading not good. However, over here, we found another tumor. I'm like, Oh, you gotta be kidding me. So went in got an MRI. I've been laying in a lot of machines lately. This all been going on since August. Got another MRI and they said, Yeah, it's there. But it's not spreading. He doesn't have any tumors anywhere else. Everything's fine. If they put in this, in the PET scan, they put in this liquid. And it attracts to any cell that's got a high PSA level. So it lit up this spot like a Roman candle. And then the MRI just verifies how big it is, how far down it is. I'm waiting for the doctors to call me back this week and tell me what they're going to do about that. But I implore you, if you're over 50 men, you know, we talked now about Thanksgiving's coming, what are you going to be thankful for? I'm thankful I got these great doctors. Because we found this early, very, very early, simply because I had a baseline for my PSA account. And it went up, it went up slightly. Most men wait and they see a PSA of like nine or 11, they go in, you got problems at that point. These guys are saving my life. Because we found a number that ticked up slightly. It didn't get out of control. It's going to be easy to fix. And I can move on. You don't feel a thing when you have this stuff going on. You really don't. And I told my oncologist, not my oncologist, my urologist the other day, I looked at him, I smiled, I go, well, if we hadn't found the prostate ones, we certainly wouldn't be talking about the kidney, would we? And he goes, No, we're in the weeds. Now, Rick, he's a great guy. He's out in Mesa. So I just wanted to share that with you guys just for just to implore you men, please, please establish your baseline in your PSA. Don't let this stuff go. Catch it while it's early and live a long and fruitful life. And if you have any questions, as usual, shoot me an email at rick at rickhelps.com. Thank you. Take care.