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Phoenix real estate market news: May rocked

I tend not to cover local market news at BloodhoundBlog, but this is big, and I expect it might be replicated across the country. I’ll be writing about it tomorrow for Saturday’s Republic, but it won’t be news-pages news for another ten days or so.

Here’s the news, in any case:

May was a very strong month for clearing bread-and-butter inventory in the Metropolitan Phoenix real estate market. We track sales of newer suburban tract homes, with records going back to January of 2004. May was the strongest month for those homes since May of 2007, with the best month before then being November of 2006.

Price are down, month over month, and not just a little, so May’s results no doubt reflect the sale of a lot of lender-owned properties. But inventories of these same homes are down 7% from April and over 14% from March. The implied absorption rate from May’s results is 5.2 months, down from 8.4 months for April.

The lender/title month ended on a Friday, so it will be Wednesday or Thursday before I’ll be willing to commit to solid numbers. As a matter of anecdotal evidence, I called yesterday about a very market-weary short sale. After months of no activity, three offers came in over the weekend. The seller multiple countered, with the current high-bid being $17,000 over list. We won’t know for sure for two or three months after the fact, but May or June could be the bottom of the market in Phoenix.

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