Flagstaff's Daily Sun Recent Article on Housing

195727 Resource 178435 178982 178982 1201392565728 1201581468257 Controlled Latest Trends in Flagstaff Home Sales

Flagstaff’s home market no longer in “hibernation” for the winter

The Daily Sun, Flagstaff’s newspaper, does a good job keeping us informed about many things in and around Flagstaff, but they too often treat the Flagstaff real estate market as though it were an on-going sporting event. The catch is, they are reporting last month's scores. Friday’s front page article was a good example. The article was inspired by <a title="NAR Press release January 24, 2008" href="http://www.realtor.org/press_room/news_releases/2008/ehs_jan08_existing_home_sales_down.html" target="_blank">Thursday’s National Association of Realtors’ press release announcing December national real estate market numbers</a>. I gave you my perspective on the national numbers on Thursday: <a title="Existing Home Sales for December fail to add much clarity for those in search of an economic crystal ball." href="public/item/195460" target="_blank">Existing Home Sales for December fail to add much clarity for those in search of an economic crystal ball</a>.Rolling Flagstaff numbers into the national press release, the Daily Sun <a title="Daily Sun real estate article January 25, 2008" href="http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2008/01/25/news/20080125_front%20page_3.txt" target="_blank">called the decline in number of home sales from December 2006 to December 2007 a “plunge” and quoted one real estate agent saying that that Flagstaff homes sales were in “hibernation” during December.</a>   But let’s look at January. As of Friday, with six days to go in the month, there were 762 Flagstaff homes (of all types) for sale, according to the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors® Multiple-Listing-Service, which may not include all sales in the market. As of yesterday, 45 Flagstaff homes have sold and closed with another 95 under contract to sell. By anyone’s definition, that’s not “hibernation.” Statistically, January, overall, is headed toward ending as a “balanced” market – six months supply of available homes – and, perhaps, heading out of buyers’ market territory. Many would-be buyers in Flagstaff are finding that, when they start to look, what they read in the papers about the market is misleading. Unlike a few years ago, there are at least some homes for buyers to choose from, but the selection is not vast, unlimited or necessarily pretty. Buyers who find a really great home have been disappointed that while they are mulling it over, another buyer bought it. What? Two buyers for the same house?!?The reporter for the Sun called to ask me what I thought of the NAR press release and where I thought the market was headed in 2008. My answer: too early to tell, too much economic volatility in sectors other than housing, or, in other words, <a title="My thoughts on current national real estate trends" href="public/item/195460" target="_blank">Existing Home Sales for December fail to add much clarity for those in search of an economic crystal ball</a>. Buyers who need a Flagstaff home in the foreseeable future should remember that the real estate market is like the stock market: Until the prices start heading back up, we don’t know that we’ve passed the bottom of the curve. 9 application/xml false Flagstaff market report Flagstaff real estate Flagstaff real estate issues Flagstaff real estate sales Pricing Flagstaff homes Flagstaff's Daily Sun Recent Article on Housing Here's yesterday's newspaper headline story which inspired this post http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2008/01/25/news/20080125_front%20page_3.txt Retrospective on the last three years in Flagstaff real estate sales Download Team Heitland's Annual Flagstaff Real Esate Market Report http://control.cisdata.net/bin/filelink.php/AR49005/46a93b529400f8f05b55c5f29b412042/ Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aheitland 24.121.32.9 false true false false true 178975 false false true false false false true 178435 blog blogsite/BestFlagstaffHomes/web