The OFFICIAL Metro Phoenix Real Estate Market Stats [April 2024]

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It’s the peak Spring buying season in Greater Phoenix, although it may not feel like it for some sellers. The housing market has begun to drift towards another balanced state over the past 4 weeks, which is the result of an accumulating of supply as buyer demand remains weak. Listings under contract are only down 6% compared to last year, but active listings are up 26%. Days prior to an accepted contract would be 3 weeks at this time of year normally, but current conditions are adding an extra week for sellers. Word on the street is resale homes needing to be remodeled or updated are sitting a bit longer as builders are ramping up permits for new homes. In fact, single family permit activity is up 125% year over year for January and February and sales are up 16%, surpassing 2021 (the previous 10-year high mark). The competition isn’t just for the sub $500K market either. Luxury new home sales over $3M are up 79% so far this year and up 28% between $1M-$3M. The struggle for resale listings that need paint, carpet, or significant changes is fewer traditional buyers have the capacity to finance a remodeling project with current rates, or they may not be able to visualize the space any other way, or they may think the cost and time for basic renovations is greater than it is. Despite current challenges, sellers are averaging 97.8% of their last list price at close of escrow so far this month. Seller-paid closing-cost assistance is down to 44% of sales, and the median sales price increased up 6% from last year.

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Beginning with Pre-Approval

If you’re looking to buy a home this fall, there are a few things you need to know. Affordability is tight with today’s mortgage rates and rising home prices. At the same time, there’s a limited number of homes on the market right now and that’s creating some competition among buyers. But, if you’re strategic, there are ways to navigate these waters. The first thing you’ll want to do is get pre-approved for a mortgage. That way you’ll know your numbers and can set yourself up for success from the start of your home search.

What Pre-Approval Does for You

To understand why it’s such an important step, you need to know what pre-approval is. As part of the homebuying process, a lender looks at your finances to determine what they’d be willing to loan you. From there, your lender will give you a pre-approval letter to help you know how much money you can borrow. Freddie Mac explains it like this:

“A pre-approval is an indication from your lender that they are willing to lend you a certain amount of money to buy your future home. . . . Keep in mind that the loan amount in the pre-approval letter is the lender’s maximum offer. Ultimately, you should only borrow an amount you are comfortable repaying.”

Basically, pre-approval gives you critical information about the homebuying process that’ll help you understand how much you may be able to borrow. Why does this help you, especially today? With higher mortgage rates and home prices impacting affordability for many buyers right now, a solid understanding of your numbers is even more important so you can truly wrap your head around your options.

Pre-Approval Helps Show Sellers You’re a Serious Buyer

Let’s face it, there are more buyers looking to buy than there are homes available for sale and that imbalance is creating some competition among homebuyers. That means you could see yourself in a multiple-offer scenario when you make an offer on a home. But getting pre-approved for a mortgage can help you stand out from other hopeful buyers.

As an article from Wall Street Journal (WSJ) says:

“If you plan to use a mortgage for your home purchase, preapproval should be among the first steps in your search process. Not only can getting preapproved help you zero in on the right price range, but it can give you a leg up on other buyers, too.”

Pre-approval shows the seller you’re a serious buyer that’s already undergone a credit and financial check, making it more likely that the sale will move forward without unexpected delays or financial issues.

Bottom Line

Getting pre-approved is an important first step when you’re buying a home. The more prepared you are, the better chance you have of getting the home you want. Connect with a trusted lender so you have the tools you need to purchase a home in today’s market.

5 Questions to Consider When Exploring a Neighborhood or Subdivision

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5 Questions to Consider When Exploring a Neighborhood or Subdivision Are you looking for the perfect neighborhood to call home? Ask yourself these top five questions to make sure the neighborhood or subdivision you're considering is the right fit for you. From checking out the amenities to analyzing the aesthetic, these factors are sure to help you find a place you can call home! #neighborhoodquestions #communitypool #amenities #safety #localentertainment

What factors should I consider when looking at a neighborhood or a subdivision? I like to call this my top five neighborhood questions.

When I'm looking at a neighborhood, I first start and look at the neighborhood itself. Do you like the look of it? Do you have, does it have the amenities? Are you looking for a community pool? Are you looking for it to be gated, etc.? And then the HOA. The majority of our neighborhoods and subdivisions in Arizona have HOAs. So how strict are the HOA? Maybe you're looking to do an Airbnb. Do they allow Airbnbs? Things like that. Two, the schools. Do you have kiddos that want to go to a certain school? Are they ranked well? Are you going to go to a charter school? Do you need to have a certain time frame for commute to go to that charter school? Things like that. Three, is it close to food and shopping? How close is the grocery store? How close is the hospital? Do you need to be close to doctors? Things like that. Four, your commute. If you work outside the home, you are commuting typically Monday through Friday, every day of the week. And you need to have a certain time frame for commute. Do you want to be stuck in traffic? Do you care? Where, what's the longest commute time that you're looking for? Does that fit? And five, things to do. What do you do on your spare time when you're not working? What do you like to do? Or do you like to go hiking? Do you like to go boating? Believe it or not, in Arizona, we do have boating. I, you know. Things like that. All of that matters. Things like that. All that matters when you're trying to pick the right neighborhood for subdivision.

How do your negotiations work in the homebuying process? Negotiations in Home Buying - Learn How to Be One Step Ahead of the Appraiser

How does negotiations work in the home buying process? If you are the buyer and we represent you, we typically run comps and we always want to be one step ahead of the appraisers. We run comps as we're the appraiser. We make an educated offer based on what comps are on any given house and we start there. Typically go back with the seller, changing particular terms once or twice in most cases. Once we're under contract, you have 10 days to do your home inspection, which is typically a professional home inspector going out to the property and also a termite inspector. In some cases, it's additional inspectors on top of that if we're recommended to do so. Then we go back to the seller and we can ask for certain repairs. If there's large ticket repairs, we typically recommend asking the seller for that. That's another negotiation area. Same goes if the house doesn't appraise after the appraiser goes out there. We have to renegotiate the price and come to terms on what the seller is going to sell it for and what you as a buyer are going to buy it for.

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How do you find a good real estate agent?

How do I find a great real estate agent? This is kind of tricky, but with the internet these days, there's some good ways to go about it. We have a huge presence on our Google My Business page. So if you jump online and you Google us, our names, or real estate agent in Gilbert or what other city that you're looking in a Metro Phoenix, we will typically come up and then look at reviews just like anything else. You go to Amazon, you look at reviews. You rent an Airbnb, you look at reviews. Finding a real estate agent is no different. You take a look at reviews, you take a look at what their clients are saying, and you base it off of that. We have a substantial amount of reviews from our past clients that were happy to report that they're all pretty happy to work with us and we'd love to work with you as well.

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Get Pre-Approved for a Mortgage in Minutes!

How do I get pre-approved for a mortgage? Getting pre-approved for a mortgage these days is super simple. You can even do it from sitting on your couch in a matter of 15 minutes. It's all done online or on an app that the lender provides to you and you're going to enter in simple questions like if you're married, divorced, single, your income that appears on your W-2s or your 1099s, and any type of debts that you're aware that will come up on your credit report. Again, they're going to pull your credit so it doesn't really matter if you have it down to the dollar. It literally should take you no more than 15 minutes to fill out. The lender will then give you a call, go over everything on your credit report line by line, and then kind of go over different scenarios on what monthly payments look like and what those monthly payments equal as a purchase price with today's interest rates.

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Post-Possession Agreements Explained

What is a post-possession? It's not uncommon today to do what we call a post possession. A post possession is an agreement prior to closing that allows the seller to stay in the property for an agreed amount of time and for an agreed amount of money to pack and close or find a new home or there's a multitude of reasons that that's necessary. It's not uncommon to give the seller a couple days or a weekend post possession to allow them to pack and move to their new property.

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What happens after we get our offer accepted?

I got my offer accepted. Great, now what? A couple different things that we typically do here in Arizona. Once you get an offer accepted, we want to schedule your home inspection and we want to deliver the earnest money check to the title company. Both of those things right out of the gate are very, very important. A home inspection has to be done within the first 10 days unless you negotiate in the contract to do less than that. The inspector will go to the home, typically takes three, four hours, and then us as the agent representing the buyer and the buyer typically go to the inspection the last half hour to an hour to review the report and any photos that are taken during the inspection. We typically like to say leave the inspector to do their job and do it well without us following them around for those first couple hours.

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Home Inspector Checklist: What to Look For When Buying A Home

What if the home inspector finds something wrong with the home? We want the home inspector to find something wrong with the home. That's what you're paying them for. But we really only care about the bigger ticket items. The roof, the AC, the appliances. Things of that nature. Is the house going to fall down? Do we have mold? There's always, always, always, even on new construction, a tiny list of what we call handyman items. Maybe a switch doesn't work over here, or a light bulb is out over here. Things like that come up all the time and should be expected in an inspection report. But those are typically not items that we ask the seller to repair. But it's for our own knowledge. Reach out to us if you want a list of a couple great home inspectors that we've been using for years.

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How much should I save up for a downpayment?

How much should I save up for a down payment? This question is subjective because a lot of it depends on what you want your monthly payment to be and what type of loan program we're going to get you qualified for through the mortgage lender. There are current programs out there that require no down payment at all. And then there's some government programs that require 3.5% down. There's some conventional programs that still do 3% down. It just all depends. The mortgage lender is going to run different scenarios for you. So it's really, really important to start your home buying process with a mortgage lender. They're going to give you all the different scenarios, explain what type of loan programs, all your different options for down payment and what that equals in a monthly payment with today's interest rates. And then kind of works backwards and gives us a purchase price based on what you want your payment to be or what you can afford your payment to be. And then we start shopping out there based on what that purchase price ends up being. So it's super, super important to start with a mortgage lender and we can give you a great referral. Just contact us.

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