By Mike Sunnucks | Rose Law Group Reporter
The housing market continues to show its strength, according to regional real estate expert Jim Belfiore.
Belfiore, who is president of Belfiore Real Estate Consulting, said new home sales have been at or near 15-year highs in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Low mortgage interest rates and rising rental prices continue to propel demand even with the impacts and coronavirus.
The Phoenix market is also poised to benefit from increased migrations from California, the Pacific Northwest, Chicago and the east coast.
Those regions have all seen social unrest, aggressive COVID restrictions.
The Phoenix market’s strength presents itself in several different metrics, according to Belfiore.
• New home sales per subdivision total 5.5 sales the last 30 days. That is up from 3.4 sales per subdivision a year ago and is more than the double the sales per subdivision in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
• Sales traffic at new homes subdivisions has increased every month since April, according to Belfiore.
• New home sales account for a robust 22% of all sales with the supply of resale / existing homes low in part because of homeowners concerns about COVID-19 and holding open houses.
Low supplies continue to be a challenge, according to Belfiore.
There is only a 1.4-month supply of homes for sale in metro Phoenix and many of the active listings have already sold.
There are 498 active subdivisions in metropolitan Phoenix. That is down 12% from last year, Belfiore said. There were 600 active subdivisions in 2009 when demand was much lower.
Low supplies and high demand are pushing prices higher, Belfiore said.
He projects “same-store” net new build prices could increase by 12% in 2020 and another 7% to 9% in 2021.
That compares to 3.9% price gains in 2019 and 4.5% in 2018.
