Scottsdale

Today’s update comes after a short weekend trip my family took to the Grand Canyon.  For subscribers, and other frequent readers of the blog, expect a few photos from the National Park in upcoming posts.

Across all of Maricopa County, there are currently 36,792 single family homes for sale, down by 102 from last week. There are 5595 sales currently pending, up by 251 from last week. And 4376 homes closed escrow in the last 30 days, down by 81 from last week. As a result, broader Maricopa County now has 8.4 months of inventory, based on this week’s numbers.

It’s nice to see the number of pending sales move up rather significantly.  Perhaps overall July sales will surprise me, and be higher than June. The following are the 10 city-by-city breakdowns I am following:

*All data comes via ARMLS, and is presumed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed. All numbers represent single family detached homes only. Condos, townhouses, timeshares, vacant land lots, and manufactured homes are not represented in these numbers. All sold properties were sold in the last 30 days.

The following trend indicators are relative to the previous week’s update:

Positive move upward Positive move downward

Negative move downward Negative move upward

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I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend.  We enjoyed the extremely cool weather in Pinetop, AZ, where I don’t think the high temp was over 75 degrees.  At just over a 3 hour drive from Phoenix, Pinetop may just be the ideal 2nd home location for those living in Phoenix or Tucson.

Across all of Maricopa County, there are currently 36,894 single family homes for sale, down by 509 from last week. There are 5344 sales currently pending, down by 152 from last week. And 4457 homes closed escrow in the last 30 days, down by 268 from last week. As a result, broader Maricopa County is now at 8.3 months of inventory, based on this week’s numbers.

Recent sales have not kept pace with the decline in inventory, which is moving months of supply upward.  I expect the trend toward an increasing months of supply number, as the general rule, throughout the rest of 2008. The following are the 10 city-by-city breakdowns I am following:

*All data comes via ARMLS, and is presumed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed. All numbers represent single family detached homes only. Condos, townhouses, timeshares, vacant land lots, and manufactured homes are not represented in these numbers. All sold properties were sold in the last 30 days.

The following trend indicators are relative to the previous week’s update:

Positive move upward Positive move downward

Negative move downward Negative move upward

.

Across all of Maricopa County, there are currently 37,403 single family homes for sale, up by 190 from last week. There are 5496 sales currently pending, down by 86 from last week. And 4725 homes closed escrow in the last 30 days, up by 250 from last week. As a result, broader Maricopa County is now at 7.9 months of inventory, based on this week’s numbers.

While there is more inventory, the increased number of sold homes improved the months of supply figure significantly.  The following are the 10 city-by-city breakdowns I am following:

*All data comes via ARMLS, and is presumed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed. All numbers represent single family detached homes only. Condos, townhouses, timeshares, vacant land lots, and manufactured homes are not represented in these numbers. All sold properties were sold in the last 30 days.

The following trend indicators are relative to the previous week’s update:

Positive move upward Positive move downward

Negative move downward Negative move upward

.

Via GeekBrief.tv, which reported they found out about this via TechCrunch, I found out about SpotCrime. SpotCrime has a map based display of crime information, which they are making available for several Arizona cities. The web site allows you to search by reported crime type, which they show on the map, for a given time period. The default display shows crimes from all categories in the last 2 months.

For people that are considering a move to a new neighborhood, this could be one way you are able to gather crime information, to help you in your decision making.

In the Phoenix area, SpotCrime covers Glendale, Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, and of course Phoenix. Surprisingly, Tempe isn’t on their list. FYI, SpotCrime also covers Tucson.

I did some sample searches and found their data seems to only go back to January 1, 2008. My own office building in North Scottsdale was broken into around Thanksgiving of 2007, and for accuracy, was hoping to check to see if that crime would be on the map. Unfortunately, since they don’t have 2007 data, I couldn’t confirm it.

The map displays the 300 most recent data points, which is something to keep in mind, particularly for a large city like Phoenix. Below the map you can see the address and date for every data point, so you do know when the data gets cut off.

Across all of Maricopa County, there are currently 37, 213 single family homes for sale, up by 122 from last week. There are 5582 sales currently pending, down by 110 from last week. And 4475 homes closed escrow in the last 30 days, down by 2 from last week. As a result, broader Maricopa County is now at 8.3 months of inventory, based on this week’s numbers.

The broader Phoenix real estate statistics continue to show that the market is improving toward a balanced market. The following are the 10 city-by-city breakdowns I am following:

*All data comes via ARMLS, and is presumed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed. All numbers represent single family detached homes only. Condos, townhouses, timeshares, vacant land lots, and manufactured homes are not represented in these numbers. All sold properties were sold in the last 30 days.

The following trend indicators are relative to the previous week’s update:

Positive move upward Positive move downward

Negative move downward Negative move upward

.

As promised, today’s big announcement is quite simple. I launched a new blog: Scottsdale Real Estate Blog. As you probably know, I’m a resident of Scottsdale. Since starting Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog, I’ve wanted to have a venue to write exclusively about Scottsdale, but as a business decision I didn’t feel that made the most sense, and thus this blog was born with a wider topic.

PAREB will still be my forum to discuss City, State, and National real estate (and non-real estate) topics, but when it comes to Scottsdale, that will be over on Scottsdale Real Estate Blog. Scottsdale itself is also a big topic, so with regard to real estate I will primarily focus on McDowell Mountain Ranch, DC Ranch, Windgate Ranch, and Silverleaf. Ironwood Village and Greyhawk may get an occasional mention, but the “Ranches” will be my focus. I liken this to Dru Bloomfield’s focus on McCormick Ranch Real Estate (if I could only write as well).

I think the best part of the launch was that I did it during the Arizona Real Estate Blogging Network work group session that I ran this morning. Seven up-and-coming bloggers that are all itching to create their very first blog, saw a guided tour as I set up the domain, installed the theme, installed the plug-ins, and published the very first post. Heather Barr just called me wishing she was there, as it was the perfect topic for someone that is currently on Wordpress.com and wants to use Wordpress.org, as I discussed on the significant difference that the two platforms offer.

Funny enough, Dru Bloomfield, attending in a different session at the same venue received notification about my post via twitter, on her smart phone. She made a mental remark, “I thought Steve was here…how could he be posting right now?” That she found out about the new blog, viewed it, and made a mental note about it, almost real time, shows just some of the awesome power of social networking.

What I had to present wasn’t really something I could do a second time, so I was given a pass for a second session. During the second session, I was able to listen to Jay Thompson talk about writing for a blog and SEO basics. As I listened, I was 100% in agreement with everything Jay said. Nearly every piece of advice Jay had for new bloggers is something I do and would encourage other bloggers to do. For those in attendance, they were treated to pure gold. But that’s not the main reason I’m mentioning Jay right now. Rather, it’s because with 30+ or so people in attendance, Jay mentioned at least 20 times, if he mentioned it once, “and when Steve Belt links to me…”. I’ve linked to Jay’s excellent Phoenix Real Estate Guy Blog in the past, but honestly, not as often as it deserves. There’s little chance that you are reading this and don’t know about Jay’s blog, but if you don’t, it’s absolutely worth the click.

In summary, with this new blog, I now author 4 blogs, and am a contributing author to a 5th blog. That’s a stunning total for somehow that doesn’t consider himself a writer, or even enjoys writing to much degree. I do, however, have a lot to say. Thanks for listening.