By Frank May, Real Estate Agent

I read through my last month’s article before writing this one, as I like to be reminded of what I was ‘saying’ 30 days ago. I was writing about our low inventory over the holidays, which was normal and how we would see the inventory start to rise in January.

Well, the inventory kept going down! We had around 17,700 homes available and a month later we are almost down to 16,000. Digging a little deeper, I’m seeing another stat that is great! The number of homes that are under contract is going up! So, we are seeing more buyers over the past few weeks as inventory is going down. This means more stability for our prices. Our average price had dropped quite a bit over the last half of 2022 and most people thought it would keep going down. Now we are seeing signs that those prices might not be continuing down (or at least not dropping near as fast).

The local market of 85383 is similar, as we have seen inventory dropping a little and the homes under contract going up. We had a low of 72 homes under contract back around Dec. 6 and currently we have 96 homes under contract. That’s a pretty good increase of buyers in our local market and a good sign for our home prices.

I’ve shown the stats. Now I’ll tell you some stories. In the past two weeks, my team had four homes that we put offers in on that had multiple offers. One had been for sale for over six months, and they dropped the price to the point where buyers wanted it! There were two other homes that we couldn’t even see because they were under contract in the first two days and our buyers’ schedule didn’t allow them to see them that quickly.
On the listing side, we put two homes on the market in the past couple of weeks that had multiple offers come in. This kind of competition has not happened to us in about seven months! We are feeling a change, as we must, once again, compete against other buyers for a home (and we are loving it!).

Now some practical advice if you are looking to buy a home. It is so important to get pre-qualified before you start looking. Some people are hesitant to have their credit run and go through the steps before they go looking. They think they are fine and don’t want to talk to a lender until they find a home they love. Over the years we’ve had this backfire enough to require our buyers get pre-qualified before we will take them out.

We have had buyers find things on their credit that they didn’t know about. We have had great buyers who found their dream home only to lose it because it was sold by the time they found all of their W2s, bank statements, pay stubs, etc. It is the wise thing to get done and if we keep heading in the direction of multiple offers it is going to give you the best chance of getting that dream home!

If you ever need a referral to a great lender, please feel free to contact me. If you ever need a referral for anything let me know. I’ve worked with most every trade out there over the years so I probably have someone great and if I don’t, I will find someone.

I’m hoping you are finding these articles helpful, and I hope you are enjoying the start to your 2023 year! If you ever have real estate questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. Talk to you again in March!

Frank May grew up in the Valley, graduating from Northwest Christian School and Northern Arizona University. He is a real estate agent with RE/MAX Fine Properties and has been helping both buyers and sellers for over 20 years. He has been a Dave Ramsey Endorsed Local Provider (ELP) since 2003. Learn more at mayteam.com.