The Scottsdale Blog

Updated Pulse of the Market Report!

by John O'Leary

Our Pulse of the Market Report has been updated with March, 2007, sales data from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). 

See the new report here »

Condo in North Scottsdale Sells for over $3M

by John O'Leary

A 3 bedroom, 3.5 bath, 4,480 square foot condo billed as "the ultimate in high-end, vertical living" recently sold for $3,176,101 in the Landmark Condominium project at Kierland in North Scottsdale.  The property was built in 2006 by Butte Landmark.  It was only on the market for 1 day!  No wonder I wasn't able to buy it...

Here is part of the description in the MLS for this property -

"This fabulous unit -with 11 foot ceilings- wraps around the building- offering panoramic golf course and sunset and mountain views! State of the Art kitchen with granite slab counters and Wolf appliances. The finishes for this home have been personally selected by a designer from Est Est Design Group! Ready for occupancy January 2007!  Lots of community amenities-5800 square feet of clubhouse & pool area."

If you want to buy any properties in North Scottsdale for $3 million or more, please call me at 480-313-5955.  I'll be Johnny-on-the-spot to help you...  Heck, I'd even help you if you only wanted one for $2 million.  No, make that $200,000...

Pulse of the Market Report

by John O'Leary

At our website, www.NorthScottsdale.com, we publish a monthly Pulse of the Market Report.  This report highlights the trends in three areas:  the inventory of homes for sale at the end of the month, the median price of homes sold during the month and the number of sales that month.  The charts look back 13 months.  In the past, this report was Flash-based but we have now published it in standard HTML pages.  We encourage you to see the report and you can also sign up to receive our monthly eNewsletter which includes three of the charts each month.

Attracting buyers to your property

by John O'Leary

It is absolutely amazing to find some of the photographs I've seen on the Internet of homes for sale in Scottsdale.  Knowing that Realtors often don't have either photographic experience or high quality cameras and photo-editing software, I can understand why some of the photos come out so poorly.  But I've seen photos of $2 million homes that look so bad that I can't imagine anyone wanting to actually see the real home in person.

Above is an example and it is definitely not one of the worst that I've seen.  This is the main photo on the MLS for a Scottsdale home with an asking price of $1,270,000.  I copied this photo off the Arizona Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and you are looking at the actual size the Realtor used at 260 pixels wide.  This is a really poor photo of this house because of the angle taken, the fact that you can't even see the entire house, the time of day it was taken, etc.  The MLS allows Realtors to upload 640 pixel wide images, rather than this small size used by this Realtor.  But if I click this small photo on the MLS no larger image opens.  What you see is what you get.&npsp; If I was the seller of this home I'd probably be a bit upset that both prospective buyers and Realtors are going to see this as the representation of their home!

As a comparison, click the image above to see what a 640 pixel image size looks like.  This is an image I did for our current featured listing.  This home is priced less than the one above.  If you were a buyer looking on the Internet for homes, which house would you want to see?  When Realtors search for homes to show their buyers they also weed out the listings that don't look good on the MLS.  So the sellers of the house in that top photo aren't going to be having many showings of their property.

Now to put this all into context, there are currently 357 homes for sale in Scottsdale priced from $1,250,000 to $1,500,000.  With that number of homes for sale, you have to have your property stand out from the crowd, not look like it is crowded onto a tiny lot as in the top photo.  The sellers we are representing are thrilled with the way we are marketing their property on the web.  I doubt the sellers of the home in the smaller photo are equally as pleased.

If you have a home to sell and you want a Realtor who will really market your property well, please consider a quick call to discuss it.  Call John at 480-313-5955.

If you are a Realtor reading this, consider at least hiring a professional photographer to take photos of your listings.  Otherwise, do what I've done and invest in a quality digital camera and get very proficient with photo-enhancement software.  Your clients deserve no less.

Ocean-front property in Scottsdale

by John O'Leary

If you were living in the Scottsdale area two years ago you were bombarded daily with this caption in the press:  "When will the bubble burst?"  The bubble that everyone was talking about was the escalating price of real estate in the Valley.  At that time, in early 2005, getting a mortgage didn't require a stellar credit rating or a hefty down-payment to protect the lender's interest in the property - all that was required was a pulse or a small bit of moisture on a mirror held directly under the buyer's nostrils.  Not only was a mortgage loan easy to get, you could finance the entire purchase price and perhaps even add in the closing costs so that there would be no out-of-pockets costs to the buyer.  Have a bankruptcy in your past?  Don't worry, sub prime lenders were there to save the day!

There was another factor going on in the market at that time - people were moving out of rental property and buying homes, often for the first time in their lives.  They were hearing of all the money being made in real estate and when they mentioned they were renters people would look at them with sad eyes.  People would shake their heads in scorn before driving away in their new luxury cars - bought via refinancing their houses which had shot up in value by over 40%.

And to top it off, there were the hordes of investors invading the Valley's real estate market.  Armed with Internet search engines and helpful Realtors, they could find new properties coming on the market in the first five minutes and be there in an hour's time with an offer in hand.  If the offer wasn't accepted because it wasn't enough 'above' the asking price, no problem.  They had offers already placed on four or five other properties and would cherry pick the best and cancel the others during the ten day inspection period.  What heady times for sellers!

That was then and this is now

What a difference a couple years makes.  Now we are seeing the following caption in the market - "Have we hit the bottom yet?"  The bottom being referred to here is the bottom of the pricing curve as properties have gone from appreciating monthly to depreciating.  Rather than a seller seeing four or five offers in the first week they are seeing their homes sit for months if they aren't wiling to sacrifice a bit of the paper gains from the previous run-up in pricing they received during the heyday of the market.

Often, I am personally asked if we have hit bottom.  Not that anyone really believes my crystal ball is any better than all the other prognosticators in the market.  It is just that they want to hear some evidence that other people are seeing positive signs in the market.  Signs such as more buyers out and about looking at homes, less price decreases, shorter days on market for homes, or just an overall feeling that the rough times are behind us.

My answer, and one that I am confident is correct, is that I don't know.  As a Realtor with the largest real estate firm in Arizona, having a partner who has 29 years in the industry, and with my highly evolved intelligence that is actually allowing me to tell when my dog wants to go for a walk, I'm just not sure what is going to happen. 

I can show you our charts and illustrate the trends over the last year with special attention to what has been happening over the last three months.  I can recite the latest statements from RL Brown who scrutinizes statistics from a tower looking not unlike one seen in The Lord of the Rings.  I can point to interest rate trends, national housing news and can point to the impact another 9/11 type of event might have on our national economy (although if it were to occur here in our state all bets are off).  I might even refer to those who believe we are going to see a rise in sea-level with global warming and point out that we will have ocean-front property to sell in South Scottsdale before too many years pass.  But the truth is, I don't know and no one else does either.  Although I do know that Scottsdale has the one major ingredient needed to keep properties sought after for years to come:  Location!

So then, what is a buyer (or seller) to do?  The answer is, buy a home where you want to live and live there.  The best advice a Realtor can give is not worry too much about prices going up and down and worry about things that really matter such as safety for your family, good schools, convenient commutes to work, having a tax shelter (your home), and being close to a major artery so that you can get to where you want to go in less time, using less gas, creating less pollution, which should make your family happy and should keep the ocean levels a bit lower as well.

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When you are ready to buy a home for your family, hopefully without ocean-frontage, give me a call on my cell -  480-313-5955.

Arizona Housing Prices Stand Firm

by John O'Leary

Adam Kress of the Business Journal of Phoenix recently wrote a short article about the "housing bubble" and stated.

More and more it's looking like the housing bubble just isn't going to burst.

According to Arizona State University's latest edition of the Arizona Blue Chip Economic Forecast, the expectation is that sellers may have to have their properties on the market longer before they sell but they shouldn't lose money, especially if they have owned the property for more than a couple of years.

Where the market goes from here is anyone's guess but it is clear that we have a record supply of properties on the market and buyers are currenty skittish about the potential to buy and then see prices drop in the near term.  The graphs we provide in our Pulse of the Market Report highlight the trends vividly, especially in terms of the supply of homes now versus one year ago.  If we look two years back, there were only 6,500 single-family residences for sale in the entire Phoenix area and there are now well over 40,000 for sale.  There are over 3,000 for sale in Scottsdale alone.

Sellers should be very cautious that they don't price their homes too high for current market conditions.  If they don't sell for months and the market drives prices down further, they are going to sell for less than they would if they priced more aggressively now.  And, they won't have to keep their kitchen countertops spic and span for months on end...

Sales of Scottsdale Homes Expected to Climb

by John O'Leary

Sales of single-family residences in Scottsdale increased in February to 300 residences versus 291 in January.  Sales typically will increase monthly between now and the summer months.  Looking back at last year, June sales were 42% higher than January's sales (473 versus 332).

To see graphs showing trends in the Scottsdale and Maricopa County housing market, take a look at our Pulse of the Market Report.

If you are curious about how the housing market trends might impact the value of your existing property, please call Scottsdale Realtors Mike Bodeen or John O'Leary at 480-473-9999.