Fun Facts About Phoenix Housing Market

One of the benefits of being a Realtor is the information you have access to because of the profession. In this case, I am taking advantage of information provided to me by Fletcher Wilcox of Grand Canyon Title Agency in Phoenix.

I know most people living in the Greater Phoenix area and elsewhere are curious to know how the housing marketing is doing whether it effects a home they own, if they're thinking of purchasing, and, in general, because the housing market is one of the main drivers of our economy.

As I've mentioned before, numbers don't lie (unless they're #4 and an NFL quarterback) so her are some facts about the greater Phoenix area housing market for September, 2009:

September numbers for residential transactions through ARMLS, Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service:

• The number of sales dipped below 8,000 to 7915. June was the best month for sales this year with 9,350 sales.

• There are 25,000 more sales for the first nine months of 2009 then 2008.

• The home sales median price was $130,000, up from $126,000 in August.

• The home sales mean price was $175,000, up from $170,000 in August.

• The number of lender-owned sales went down while the number of short sales stayed about the same.

• 66% of sales were either a lender-owned sale or short sale.

• As the price range goes up, the estimated number of months of supply goes up for most categories.

• Single family detached properties were purchased the following ways: 33% FHA, 32% cash, 29% conventional, 4% VA (Veterans loan).

The "median" price is more or less an average; it's arrived at by taking the total amount of all home sales and dividing it by the number of homes sold. The "mean" is if you took all the homes sold and half of the homes sold were above that number and the other half of the homes sold were below that number. Make sense?

So that's if for September home sales in the greater Phoenix area -- as we near the end of October.

Happy Halloween!