Tucson Market Statistics - December 2009
| Dec 08 | Dec 09 | % change | |
| Home Sales Volume | $161,044,358 | $179,304,898 |  11.34% |
| Home Sales Units | 802 | 886 | 10.47% |
| Average Sales Price | $200,803 | $202,376 | 0.78% |
| Median Sales Price | $168,000 | $154,262 |  8.18% |
| Pending Contracts* | 612 | 848 | 38.56 |
| Active Listings | 7627 | 6130 | 19.63% |
| New Listings |
1501 | 1353 | 9.86% |
*Has not yet closed escrow. | |||
| Information provided by Tucson Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service | |||
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Additional information and a complete run down of the Tucson real estate market is available HERE. This MLS report is sent to all Realtors in Tucson, and is complete with color graphs and charts to help potential clients get a better understanding of the underlying real estate market conditions. Michael assists potential clients in this manner with NO COST to them! | |||
| ARCHIVED STATISTICS | |||
Market Recap: By Michael Oliver
The Tucson real estate market is getting healthier month by month. Homes are selling faster and for prices closer to their listed price as sellers have become much more realistic in initial listing price. The high end is still almost nonexistent, as only 6 such homes have sold since the beginning of December. Of those 6 estates, 2 of them were short sales. Of those 2 closed distress home sales, the discounts averaged 18.6% BELOW ASKING PRICE! That's a steep but realistic discount for distress property in the high end (over $1 million) right now. For buyers who are thinking they want to buy a home in the $1 million plus price range, short sales and foreclosures should be heavily considered. With negotiation, the banks should be very willing to work with you on a great price. The bank's options are very limited with that segment of the market, which is short on buyer demand right now.
The other end of the market, the first-time buyer market in Tucson (200k and under), is still moving well. It is a much different market than last year when buyer demand was low to the point of being almost nonexistent. The December MLS stats show this as pending sales are up almost 40% from last December when the real estate market started its rapid cool down as the general economy started to show serious problems.
One item worth noting is that towards the end of 2008, I predicted that the Tucson real estate market would start to show a rise in prices by the end of 2009 — and it did, with a 0.78% INCREASE! While this increase is very small and the median percentage is still down, I think the worst is behind the Tucson real estate market. The 2008-2009 market was a lot more difficult than anticipated because of the financial meltdown, however, Tucson housing is cheap by any metric used and the buyers know it. I believe 2010 will be the best year for housing in the past 4 or 5 since the boom years. The only things that can slow it down are the high number of foreclosures being held back by lenders and the pullback by the federal government from buying MBS's and offering tax credit incentives. This will in turn drive interest rates up, which rose .25% in the past few weeks. Anything under 6.0% for the 30yr can easily be absorbed by buyers, but higher rates will slow down the first-time buyer market which presently accounts for roughly 55% of the Tucson market. By this spring, the Tucson real estate market will be able to absorb those pullbacks. Those incentives were only designed to stabilize the market, and to my mind, they have worked.
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