Is This a Buyer's or Seller's Market?

Here in the metro Phoenix area we are very fortunate to have Michael Orr, founder of The Cromford Report™ and director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, providing us with the most up-to-date information on current market conditions, including the Cromford Market Index™, which is a value that provides a short term forecast for the balance of the market. It is derived from the trends in pending, active and sold listings compared with historical data over the previous four years.  The Cromford Market Index™ can be applied to the whole market or to any subset, provided that subset is large enough to be meaningful.  It compensates for seasonal factors and measures supply and demand based on long term historical trends.  Values below 100 indicate a buyer's market, while values above 100 indicate a seller's market. A value of 100 indicates a balanced market. 


Cromford Observation on November 7 - "We are seeing demand continue to fall but at a decelerating rate now we are well into November. It is possible that October was the worst month for buyer sentiment decline in a long time and things look like they may be starting to moderate now. Here are the latest Cromford Market Index™  values for the single family home markets in various cities, and in parentheses a comparison with the previous month (October 7)":

• Sun Lakes - 166.6 (237.6)
• Sun City West - 153.1 (188.9)
• Arizona City - 145.2 (166.7)
• Glendale 107.6 (129.9)
• Sun City - 116.5 (158.4)
• El Mirage - 109.6 (116.5)
• Cave Creek - 109.3 (124.0)
• Paradise Valley - 108.1 (137.4)
• Chandler 106.3 (115.2)
• Apache Junction - 104.9 (124.3)
• Scottsdale 104.2 (131.1)
• Avondale - 104.0 (132.4)
• Phoenix - 100.4 (120.9)
• Mesa - 98.8 (121.0)
• Goodyear - 96.9 (126.7)
• Peoria - 95.8 (121.1)
• Gilbert - 95.1 (110.8)
• Anthem - 91.6 (99.9)
• Litchfield Park - 88.6 (114.2)
• Laveen - 87.3 (113.3)
• Surprise - 85.7 (110.1)
• Tolleson - 86.1 (91.4)
• Fountain Hills - 81.7 (119.0)
• Gold Canyon - 79.9 (95.2)
• Buckeye - 78.3 (93.1)
• Tempe - 74.9 (94.7)
• Casa Grande - 67.9 (84.8)
• Queen Creek - 66.2 (87.5) - includes San Tan Valley unincorporated area
• Maricopa - 53.9 (67.5)