A common thread from our clients moving to north Scottsdale from outside of Arizona is the thought that it’s going to be easy to find a bank owned home or short sale to buy. I think real estate news about North Scottsdale short sales must take around 12 months to become common thought on the east coast. Last year at this time we had more than twice as many distressed homes. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the market has made significant progress towards returning to what a lot of real estate agents consider “normal”.
This chart shows the decline of both Scottsdale short sales and foreclosures over the last 12 months. You can see bank owned homes in red and short sales in blue.
Since we mainly focus on North Scottsdale, I decided to pull a report from the local MLS (Arizona Regional MLS) to see how many short sales were for sale in just North Scottsdale – defined by the shape below.
I was a little surprised to see this number. My assumption was that south Scottsdale was going to have more than north Scottsdale. However, the split is about 50/50. To give you a visual reference of all the homes for sale in North Scottsdale, take a look at this next graphic.
Just in case you’re not a human calculator like Jeff, that’s about 3%. That’s progress! I remember a few years back, even last year, when the doom and gloomers said short sales were going to be the majority of our market well into the future. I’ll take 3% and declining any day.
Some clients ask about the normal amount of short sale listings in Scottsdale so I pulled this historic chart. This shows new short sale listings on the market broken down by quarter (and by month if you notice the different colors).
So what does this all mean?!
Two things.
First, if you have family, friends, or co-workers in the midwest or further east who are thinking the current Arizona real estate market is ripe with distressed properties, feel free to pass this information along. Knowledge is power and if they are thinking about moving to Scottsdale, at least you can help set more realistic expectations about the current market.
Also, with the decline of distressed properties comes an increase of normal sales. What do you think having more normal transactions does to the valuation of homes?
With fewer short sales and bank owned homes comes an increase in average prices. Remember that A word we used back in the day? A-p-p-r-e-c-i-a-t-i-o-n. This chart shows the percent change of appreciation in Scottsdale over the last two years – based on price per square foot.
Appreciation is not just showing up in charts. We’ve recently helped three different sellers (in McDowell Mountain Ranch, Troon, and Grayhawk) that were upside down on their mortgage sell their home and actually net cash. (One was only a thousand bucks, but it sure beats a short sale.)
If you’ve been thinking about selling, moving, or are just curious about the value of your home – check out our home valuation form. We combine our real estate market knowledge with current MLS data and county tax record data to give you an accurate price someone would pay for your house in North Scottsdale, Arizona. Of course it’s free and comes with no obligation to move. And don’t worry, if you’re not ready to sell we don’t hound with marketing crap you’re not interested in.
Thanks for the read. Until next time…
