TheTucsonFoothills

a realistic depiction

The Tucson Association of Realtors® has released the April residential sales statistics for the greater Tucson Metro area. click here to Download april_sales_statistics.pdf

This release is accompanied by an introductory letter from Kimberly Clifton the President of TAR, that summarizes her opinion on the state of the market based on the sales data that follows.
This month she says, " With the first quarter of 2008 behind us, our industry is continuing to show small signs of recovery. No one is denying that the market is certainly not where it was in 2007; although the quarterly statistics for 2008 show a slight but steady
increase month over month" ...
" Some of the factors to look for in a recovering market are active listings, new listings and pending contracts. With an
increase of 27.11% in pending contracts over 2007, a decrease in active listings by 15.20% over 2007 and a decrease in
new listings by 20.87% it would appear that Tucson is headed in the right direction"

Bravo! Looking over the sales data, it seems to me that Kimberly's sober statements accurately depict the current market conditions as well as supporting a guardedly optimistic outlook for the future. So it seems realistic and reliable.

This is very refreshing.
Because at times in the past, before Kimberly Clifton took over as President of TAR, try as I might, I've often had a really hard time making a connection between the (overly sunny) introductory statements & opinions that were expressed and the hard data that followed it. And I've heard from many others that feel the same way. 

And aside from the fact that people don't buy this stuff, and it tends to alienate them toward Realtors® in general, don't the officials of the various local and national Realtor® organizations have a responsibility to provide accurate and realistic guidance and opinions on the state of the market, both to their Realtor® members and to the public.

*Please note that while some statistics are broken down by specific areas of Tucson, North, Northeast, etc, the emphasis of this report is on the Greater Tucson Metro area as a whole.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

quarter 1 housing price data, the national scene vs the Tucson Foothills

There's been a lot of housing news in the news today since the National Association of Realtors® released quarterly sales figures for homes in 149 metro areas. And with an average drop in the median sale price of 7.7%, and 100 of those metro areas reporting a drop in the median sale price, first quarter this year vs last, the news is understandably downbeat.

But before we get on to the NAR report and the national media's slant on it,  I'd like to get this out of the way.
The median sale price in the Tucson Foothills is down just .23% for the 1st quarter of 08 vs 1st quarter of 07. That's not a typo.
.23%. Less than 1/4 of 1% drop in the median sale price in the Tucson Foothills.

That's good news if you're selling your home in the Tucson Foothills, and it's good news if you're buying a home too. Because it indicates that this market has been more resilient to the price swings that are wreaking havoc in those other 100 markets that the National Association of Realtors® cites in their report. The NAR report indicates that the median sale price is down 7.7% nationally, and down 8.8% in the Tucson metro area.
And I'm sure that's true, but of course they don't break out the figures for the Tucson Foothills, so I thought I would, before anyone jumps to conclusions and assumes (it's easy to do with all those headlines coming at you) that prices in the Foothills are also way down. They're not. A .23% drop, from $540,000 in 07, to $538,750 in 08.

From the national media,

The Wall Street Journal -
Losing Cities, and Some Winners, in Q1 Housing Price Data The National Association of Realtors‘ quarterly numbers on home prices in metro areas were out this morning, and they don’t paint a pretty national picture. The Associated Press noted that the price declines in 67% of the areas surveyed in January-March was the largest percentage of declines since the survey started in 1979.
Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville area in California was down 29%, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario was second, with cities such as Lansing, Mich.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, Calif.; Miami and San Diego among those filling out the bottom 10

CNN.com- Home prices continue sharp descent
Single-family home prices dropped 7.7% in the first quarter in the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began reporting prices in 1982.

This one from BusinessWeek is my favorite though.
They use the bleak housing news as a springboard to take a (deserved) swing at National Association of Realtors®.
From BusinessWeek Online- NAR puts a good face on some really ugly housing data It must be be getting tough for the National Association of Realtors to put a positive spin on the real estate market when prices in most of the more than 150 metro areas that it monitors are down and, in many cases, way, way down.
But the group and its optimistic chief economist Lawrence Yun appear to be up for the challenge, judging from the May 13 first-quarter single-family home press release with the title: “Mixed Home Price Performance Continues in Metro Areas, One-Third Show Gains.”

Oh well, apparently the NAR is determined to continue singing their own song, while marginalizing themselves and their members. nevertheless, all real estate is local.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

quick update on the $1,000,000+ home market in the Tucson Foothills

Today there are 159 homes for sale in the Tucson Foothills priced from $1,000,000 up to about $8,000,000, and since January 1st,
22 $1,000,000+ homes have sold in the Foothills, priced from $1,075,000 to $3,100,000.
And with a majority (16) of those homes located in gated communities, it's apparent that buyers of high-end homes continue to show a strong preference for gated communities in the Tucson Foothills.

Of the 16 sold in gated communities- 4 in Pima Canyon, 3 in Ventana Canyon Country Club, 2 in Catalina Foothills Estates 10, 2 in Cobblestone, and 1 each in The Canyons, Skyline Country Club, Ventana Vista, Sabino Mountain and Pinnacle Ridge.

The other 6 are in non-gated communities scattered throughout the Foothills, in Alta Vista, Catalina Foothills Estates, Coronado Foothills Estates and Flecha Caida. But whether they're gated or not, one thing they all have in common is that all 22 are located on good lots in established communities in the Tucson Foothills.

And although there are quite a few $1,000,000+ homes for sale on less desirable, or what I call in-fill lots in the Foothills - almost all of these are  spec homes built in the last couple of years -
not a single one has sold so far this year. 

But that's no surprise. With a large inventory of homes located on good lots in sought after areas throughout the Tucson Foothills,
why would anyone choose to ignore the first rule of real estate,
location, location, ...

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

recent home sales trends in the Tucson Foothills

Because of the constant barrage of real estate news coming at us from all quarters of the US, it's easy to lose sight of what's happening in our own backyards, which is what really matters if you're in the market to buy or sell a home in the Tucson Foothills.
January through June is traditionally our busiest season for home sales in the Tucson Foothills, and despite all the bad news, this year is no exception, as sales in the Foothills have been increasing nicely month over month since January.

For the latest 30 day period 63 homes have sold in the Tucson Foothills. And given the current inventory of 583 homes for sale, that puts us at about 9 months of inventory (583/63 = 9.25)
And that's an improvement from last month (12 months inventory) and the month before (11.5 months inventory).

So what happens now.
Sales should continue to do well through May and start to taper off as June approaches. There will also be fewer New listings, and some home sellers will pull their homes off the market until the fall.
This season was slow in getting started, as buyers held off making a commitment while they waited to see what would happen.
What happened is that prices in the Foothills have only dropped about 2% so far this year vs last year, not the 7, 10 or 12% price drops that we hear about in other cities.



And now, late in the season, instead of dwindling, home buyers are continuing to show up in strong numbers. (currently there are 84 homes under contract in the Tucson Foothills) Maybe the murmurs about an improved outlook for real estate are bringing buyers back to the market. Maybe the consensus is that prices in the Foothills have been very resilient and aren't going to drop much more, if at all, or maybe people are just tired of waiting and they want to buy a home now, because there are some good deals out there, and lots to choose from.

One thing's for sure, no maybe's about it, the increased availability and lower cost of jumbo loans, has gone a long long way toward easing the path for home buyers in the Tucson Foothills. A few days ago Long mortgage was offering Conventional Jumbo 30 year fixed rate loans at 6.875% w/.5 pt, OR 6.625% w/1pt.(update: as of 5/9 jumbo's @ 6.625% w/.5 pt.)  That's roughly equivalent to where jumbo rates were before the credit crunch.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

have you heard, The Housing Crisis Is Over

Today's Wall Street Journal says so,
The Housing Crisis Is Over, so it must be so.
"The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now".

Although there's scant evidence to support it, either in this article or elsewhere, I'm glad we've finally got that cleared up - The Housing Crisis is Over.
We were going to pull out of this sometime, so we might as well get it over with now.

As you might expect, everyone's going to jump on this news as if it were the Holy Grail.
And despite the fact that the article doesn't refer to a particular city, or area, or part of the country where the 'Housing crisis is over', and by the way, whatever happened to 'all real estate is local', it instead seems to predict that as of today the national housing market is on the mend.
How can that be. Is Tucson going to climb back to a normal market in lock-step with Miami, Vegas and Sacramento.
Is the Los Angeles market going to suddenly fall in line so that it's in sync with Salt Lake and Seattle.

Or could this be the national media sensing the need for a change of tune, to keep their almighty drums beating loudly.
Check out your local market, and see if you see signs that the housing crisis is over.
I hope it is.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

teardowns in the Tucson Foothills

Well located build-able lots are an endangered species that are fast becoming a nearly extinct species in the Tucson Foothills.
There are very few good lots available, and those that are, are very expensive.

Some builders/investors have responded to this situation by carving out lots in places where no one would have considered building a home a few years ago. What I call in-fill lots.

Others have gone the teardown route, finding well-located older homes on good lots and starting over. This is a very popular way to go in Skyline country club, which is a guard-gated golf course community in the Tucson Foothills, where many 60's and 70's vintage homes are located on prime lots with great city and mountain views.

The one below was built in 1967, and sold for $480,000 in 2004

And after a massive facelift it's now listed for $1,685,000


Here's the original 60's kitchen

and a couple hundred thousand later, bon appetit

from Ozzie and Harriet in the living room

to surround sound and knock-out views

 

Here's another one, this 3160 sf house was built in 1965,
and sold for $455,000 in 2003

and was reborn as a 5000 sf luxury manse which sold for
$1,875,000 in 2005. It sits on the golf course in Skyline
and has great mountain views too

and a new kitchen

and a new everything

Despite a lack of land, this is how some of the new construction is getting done in the Tucson Foothills, and doing it on a great lot in a place like Skyline Country Club is the way to go, in my opinion.
It's more expensive than building on in-fill lots, but if you're going to build or buy an expensive home, location, location, is the critical criteria. It can't be overlooked, because it can't be changed, while just about everything else about a house can be.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

January - April home sales for the Tucson Foothills

With four months of home sales under our belts during our busiest time of year, I think we can now begin to get a handle on the direction of the market here in the Tucson Foothills for 2008.
The following data is for single family homes sold in the Tucson Foothills from 1/1/08 through 4/30/08 vs the same period in 2007, through the Tucson Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service.

This market has been very resilient to price declines, but it appears that rising inventory and slower sales may be catching up with us,
as evidenced by a drop, albeit small, in the average and median sold prices, for the first time this year. Prior to this they had been up.
And with a large inventory (for the Foothills) of about 580 homes for sale, and summer right around the corner, the near-term outlook would seem to point to yet slower sales and the possibility of further price declines. Here are the numbers,

Price	Jan-April 07 # SOLD	Jan-April 08 # SOLD	+/-%	# For Sale
$0 - $250K	4	5	+25%	7
250 -$500K	81	78	-3.7%	161
500 -$750K	70	55	-21%	161
750 -$1.0m	29	29	0	85
1.0 -$1.5m	12	9	-25%	84
1.5 -$2.0m	13	5	-61.5%	39
$2.0 & UP	3	6	+100%	40
Total Sold	212	187	-11.7%	577
Avg List $	$716,375	$706,442	-1.38%
Avg Sold $	$685,199	$666,258	-2.76%
Median List	$555,000	$550,000	-.90%
Median Sold	$540,000	$535,000	-.92%
$$ Value of Homes Sold	$145,262,179	$124,590,311	-14%

 **these figures were updated on 4/5
I assumed that because of the high days of inventory at the upper-end, that that's where the bulk of the drop in average sold prices was occurring, 

Price	Jan-April 07 Avg Sold Price	Jan-April 08 Avg Sold Price	+/-%
$0 - $500K	$394,238	$374,270	-5%
$500 - $1.0m	$677,064	$692,433	+2%
$1.0 - $1.5m	$1,291,800	$1,240,722	-3.95%
$1.5 - $2.0m	$1,686,615	$1,729,000	+2.5%
$2.0 & UP	$2,431,667	$2,591,667	+6%

But that's not really the case, prices have dropped more at the lower end of the market.
And despite the high days of inventory - about 32 months worth at $1.0 & UP, prices are holding up pretty well. And I think I know why.
Like never before, we now have two classes of high-end homes in the Foothills, based solely on the lot and location.

Before 2005, homes that were priced at about $1.5m and up were built in gated communities or on well located lots in non-gated areas of the Foothills. Since then, good lots have become an endangered species in the Tucson Foothills, and builders have responded by putting up very expensive homes on less desirable in-fill lots, lots that would not have been considered 4 or 5 years ago. And in doing so, they've crossed the line of buyers tolerance. 
Buyers of high-end homes are opting to purchase only those homes that are on good lots in good locations, and bypassing the others. And for those, prices are holding up. location, location, ...

See 2008 Tucson Foothills home sales, so far for Jan-Feb sales,
and, 1st quarter home sales for the Tucson Foothills for Jan-March sales.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

coming soon, accurate days on market figures

In the past I've written about the difficulty of calculating the DOM, days on market figures when showing statistics for a large number of homes that have sold. It's difficult because every time a home gets
re-listed, and many do these days, the DOM figure re-sets to 0.
Let's say a house has been listed for 96 days and hasn't sold. And the listing agent withdraws that listing and re-lists the house 2 minutes later. The DOM figure re-sets to 0. If that house now sells in 11 days, the DOM figure in the statistics will show up as 11 days, instead of 107 days, which of course is what it really is. And when you're trying to calculate DOM for hundreds of homes that have sold, going through each listing and counting up the days individually is too daunting/tedious/insane of a task.

I wrote,
'....Unfortunately TARMLS has not seen fit to devise a system that shows both cumulative days on market & current days on market.
And isn't having accurate DOM stats a key component to a better understanding of what's going on in this market, for Realtors®, for buyers and for sellers...'

Well I hope somebody up there heard me, but whether they did or not, the Tucson Association of Realtors® just made the following announcement.
CDOM IS Coming!
Scheduled to be released May 5th, 2008, CDOM (Cumulative Days On Market) will be included in the information available on the Tucson MLS. CDOM is defined as 'The number of days that a property has been on the market without a 30 day break regardless of any change of agent or brokerage'. This information will be displayed on the grid view, Agent Detail Report, and CMA. Where DOM was displayed on those reports, the new field will be DOM/CDOM.

This is a good very thing for everyone.
Congratulations to the Tucson Association of Realtors for making this change.

see my web site thefoothillsToday.com
to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

what's for sale & sold in Tucson Foothills subdivisions

If you're looking to buy a home in the Tucson Foothills, here's a list of popular subdivisions, both gated & not gated, with basic info on what's for sale and what has sold, and for how much.
The sold figures are for homes sold since 1/1/08 thru 4/28/08.
And if you're selling and live in one of these subdivisions, you can get a quick check on the competition and see how sales are doing.

And while you're at it, you can click any subdivision name and instantly see all the homes that are currently for sale in there,
along with all the pictures, information and details.
**note - the figures below are accurate as of today, 4/28/08-AM.If you pull-up the listings next Tuesday, or a month from now, the number of active listings for any of the subdivisions will likely be different than stated here.

Subdivision	# For Sale	Avg List $	# Sold	Avg Sold $
GATED
Pima Canyon	18	$2,379,778	2	$2,085,000
La Paloma CC	38	$794,869	10	$618,950
Ventana CC	23	$1,395,665	5	$1,610,000
Skyline CC	19	$1,530,316	1	$764,500
Catalina Fthls 10	12	$1,369,354	2	$2,200,000
Sabino Mountain	7	$1,285,700	1	$1,449,000
Hacienda del Sol	3	$1,162,333	1	$725,000
Cobblestone	6	$2,093,833	2	$2,212,500
Foothills ll	3	$2,206,667	0	0
Sin Vacas	3	$885,833	4	$748,750
Bellas Catalinas	4	$1,211,000	2	$742,500
Finisterra	3	$2,798,333	1	$751,000
Pinnacle Ridge	2	$1,012,500	1	$1,000,000
Summit Finger Rock	4	$1,422,250	1	$810,000
Rockcliff	2	$1,189,500	0	0
Eleven Arches	2	$2,499,000	0	0
RiverGate Estates	2	$962,500	1	$625,000
Quail Canyon	7	$586,971	2	$444,950
NOT-GATED
Alta Vista	12	$1,131,242	1	$937,500
Cimarron	11	$830,257	3	$630,500
Coronado Fthls Est	13	$905,446	5	$814,000
Fairfield	18	$522,106	7	$483,286
Flecha Caida Ranch Est	16	$650,919	5	$686,400
Las Alturas	2	$673,500	1	$585,000
Shadow Hills	15	$638,427	5	$714,500
Catalina Fthls Est   1-9	58	$1,263,324	15	$926,553

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to search for and learn more about Tucson Foothills Homes

these guys don't mince words

No data, no statistics, just a tell it like it is Sunday read on the state of the market (in the DC area) by two industry veterans

How does this market compare with others you've seen?
Foster: I've never seen anything like it.

Foster: But this damn thing we're in here now is another one that's giving us hell. I mean, pure hell. We're sweating.

McEnearney: And it has extended for a longer period of time. We've been in this for two years now. I started noticing a decline in the "energy" in the market, if you will, in the fourth quarter of 2005.

McEnearney: If they don't price it right, it's gonna kill 'em.

Foster: You've got to price it right.

McEnearney: I think sellers are getting more accepting about the prices they can get now, but not enough, because homes are still remaining on the market.

Foster: If they've got a real need to sell, they do [accept the lower price]. They have to have a real need to sell, otherwise they don't.

Foster: My pick is the third or fourth quarter, we'll see a little bit of pickup. Next year will be fair. Certainly by 2010 there's gonna be so much damn pent-up demand.

From an interview in the Washington Post with John McEnearney, 81, founder of McEnearney Associates, and P. Wesley Foster Jr., 74, founder of Long & Foster Real Estate
Brokerage Barons See Washington Making a Slow Recovery

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