Market Update: 10/14/2024

The majority of people thought mortgage rates would drop after the Federal Reserve cut the base rate 3 weeks ago. Unfortunately, for the most part we haven't seen that happen. Last Friday's job report suggested that the USA's economy was stronger than expected and added more upward momentum to mortgage interest rates.

We now are seeing the highest rates in 2 months with the 30 year fixed at around 6.62%.

Meanwhile, active housing supply increased 3.7% over the past week, so buyer's have more homes to choose from. The market trend in most areas is still favoring buyers over sellers.

The affidavits of value have been counted and analyzed for Maricopa County's September filings and here's where we are:

There were 5,584 closed transactions, down 5.3% from 5,896 in September 2023 and down 6.4% from August.

There were 1,441 closed new homes, down 11.3% from 1,624 in September 2023 and down 0.8% from August.

There were 4,143 closed re-sale transactions, down 3.0% from 4,272 in September 2023 and down 8.2% from August.

There were 21 working days in September 2024 versus 20 in September 2023, so the 5.3% drop in closings is actually worse than it looks. We would expect a 5.0% increase if the same closing rate per day were applied.

The overall median sales price in September was $471,995, up 4.9% from September 2023 and up 0.4% from August.

The re-sale median sales price was $450,000, up 2.3% from September 2023 but unchanged from August.

The new home median sales price was $518,792, up 8.3% from September 2023 and up 1.0% from August.

New home closings fell harder year over year with a drop of 11.3%, while resales fell only 0.8%. However closing volumes were poor across the board in September.

New home market share rose to a strong 25.8% in September 2024, but this is down from 27.5% a year ago.

Prices bounced back a little compared with August. The combined peak remains at $490,000 so we remain 3.7% below that level achieved in May 2022.

The general picture is of low volumes but stable pricing. The outlook is for volume to improve a bit and for prices to remain stable with a slight downward tendency due to the slight excess of supply over demand.

These numbers are for single family and townhouse / condo homes.