According to the Cromford Report, Phoenix’s real estate market is recovering much more rapidly than the rest of the country and April looks to be picking up even more than February and March.

Probably the most surprising statistics are those related to pending sales. Yesterday, Maricopa County recorded the largest ever annual growth in pending sales, for the first time ever it has moved over 100%. Avondale, Glendale, Goodyear, Peoria, Phoenix and Surprise show all-time record highs in pending sales for single family detached homes. This means higher than 2005!

Two thirds of pending sales are foreclosures. The banks are having little difficulty moving foreclosed properties to new buyers. REO average days on market for active listings have fallen from 227 in November to 117 in March.

Our Sales numbers are up as well. Sales are nearly 70% higher than March 2008. The supply of REOs is becoming quite thin in certain spots heavily frequented by bargain hunters. For example, in Queen Creek there were only 79 active (not AWC) single family detached listings for REOs in this ZIP code yesterday, with 165 in escrow. There were 169 active at the beginning of February and only 128 in escrow. So there are 90 fewer active REO listings than 2 months ago and 37 more sales in process. This is a very strong REO market.

What does this mean? I can only take the information I am reading and conclude that we are headed for an upturn. I don’t know how soon this will be but I am seeing many homes have multiple offers, bidding wars and days on market dropping considerably. If you are thinking of buying and don’t know if it has hit the bottom yet, let me tell you I think the bottom is here. Our buying season starts in February and goes til September. The prices usually jump from June til August, so I would recommend you start looking in the real estate market now before the prices are on the upturn and you realize that you missed the bottom.