April 6, 2009 established a bottom for $/SF sales pricing across the Greater Phoenix area. This does not mean that prices will not go lower in certain areas – they will. But the overall average price per square foot put in a convincing low on April 6 and has been moving sideways to slightly up ever since.

Based on the Cromford Report the cities of Phoenix, Avondale, Gilbert, Mesa, Peoria and Queen Creek are making the best cases for establishing a bottom, while Chandler, Goodyear, Scottsdale, Tempe, Glendale and Surprise still have some work to do. Of course we need to continue to watch to see if the pattern strengthens or fades. The current readings for Pending $/SF suggest more sideways movement in the near term.

Every city showed improvement in April over March with supply falling and demand rising. In some areas the fall in supply was overwhelming. Pending sales rose yet again, actual sales continued their strong advance, and listing success rates climbed. The following Cities have the months worth of supply compared to January’s supply. You can tell how quickly the inventory has declined.

• Avondale 4.4 (was 8.9)
• Chandler 5.7 (was 9.1)
• Gilbert 5.2 (was 7.9)
• Glendale 3.2 (was 9.1)
• Goodyear 3.8 (was 8.6)
• Mesa 4.4 (was 8.9)
• Peoria 4.9 (was 10.3)
• Phoenix 3.4 (was 9.0)
• Queen Creek 2.9 (was 6.1)
• Scottsdale 14.3 (was 19.4)
• Surprise 3.3 (was 7.2)
• Tempe 6.7 (was 8.7)

I would consider an inventory level of 4.5 months as “normal” so we can see 7 out of the 12 major cities can now be called a “seller’s market”. Yes, you heard me, a Seller’s Market (anything under 6 months is usually considered a Seller’s Market)

Let’s look at some basic sales numbers:

• April sales (all types and areas) – 8,500
• Greater Phoenix Lender-owned Property sales – 5,629
• Greater Phoenix Pre-foreclosure & Short Sales – 846
• Greater Phoenix Normal Sales – 1981.

So REOs still dominated the sales figures, but they are not as dominant as they once were. Among the active listings, REOs are declining quite fast – they now comprise about 17% of all listings whereas in early January they comprised 28% of a much bigger number. In fact, considered as a market segment, Greater Phoenix REO listing on ARMLS represent only a 1.3 month supply at their current monthly sales rate.

Pre-foreclosures and short sales are becoming an increasing percentage of both listings and sales, although their listing success rate, having improved from 21% in February to 34% in April, still has a ways to go to rival REOs with their phenomenal listing success rate in April of 86%.

With the numbers telling the story, Phoenix Realtors are looking up and toward the future. We have bounced back much quicker than analysts had projected and are doing considerably better than the other states that were hit hard like us.