Market Statistics for August 2019

As we transition from our busy summer Real Estate season and into our slower winter season, we will start to see a decline in home sales through the next months.

Tom Ruff from ARMLS (Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service) says, “This is the time of year sales slow. It’s simply the seasonality of our market… Demand almost always subsides every year between July and January… When judging your bushels of apples, you want to view the year-over-year trend. Sales in August were 8.6% higher than a year ago, which understates the real year-over-year improvement. There was one more business day last year, which brings our real improvement closer to 13%. This August accounted for the third highest sales volume in ARMLS reporting history, surpassed only by 2004 and 2005, with only 266 fewer sales than ‘04. With 690 more sales this year than last, 2019 sales year-to-date have now surpassed 2018. Looking ahead to how the year might end, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say the prognosticators were wrong back in January (I may or may not have been one of them). 2019 sales will surpass 2018 in both sales volume and price.”

Therefore, even though the graphs below show a slowing market, it isn’t cause for concern. Not only is this normal for this time of year, as stated above, but we are still doing better than proceeding years.