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Positive Signs for our Real Estate Market

Any time you go through a market like the one we’ve been through the last 15 months, you start to look for any signs that things may be turning around. Locally, three Real Estate companies either shut their doors this week or announced they were shutting their doors. They obviously weren’t nearly as optimistic as I am about the market beginning to turn around, but let me share with you my reasons.

First of all housing traditionally is directly effected by the rate of Unemployment. Nationally and locally unemployment numbers are below 5%, which means most people who can are working for a living and everyone needs a place to call home. Here in Sedona the unemployment numbers will always remain pretty constant, but what I’m really looking at here is what the Phoenix unemployment is like? That picture is still pretty positive although if you read the Arizona Republic you would think that the housing market will single handedly ruin the economy. Since the economy in the Valley appears relatively healthy you can bet that people with money will start looking for bargains.

Which leads me to my second positive sign. In the last month I have had multiple conversations with people who say things like “Man, if I had some money I would snap up four to five properties and just sit on them for a few years.” Now granted, these conversations have been with Realtors who have no money, so at this point it’s just idle chatter. But I have seen this type of talk before and it usually occurs right before people who actually have money see the same thing and start to purchase some of these bargains. When people who have worked in the industry for a long time are seeing some bargains, you can bet they will be able to convince some buyers of that as well. It’s almost like having insider stock tips (not that I have ever done that). Don’t get me wrong, I am not predicting a quick return to a sellers market but I am betting that despite all the negative news in the press about the credit industry, we will see a stronger fall for sales this year than last year. It may just be a hunch but at least it’s an educated hunch. By the way, I almost did this newsletter on the Credit Industry shake up but frankly it won’t really affect the Sedona market real significantly so I just couldn’t see spending a lot of time explaining to you why, once again, the media has magnified a problem beyond belief. I’ll just share this with you, sub prime loans account for less than 10% of the entire amount of loans out there. Of those, about 50% are in trouble and much of that is due to scheduled interest rate adjustments on ARM’s which the industry is already beginning to address to help ease the pain for some consumers. Bottom line; don’t lose any sleep over this one.

Once again, if you need to sell in this market, trust the company who understands and can spot the trends. If you want to buy right now, it may be the best time to purchase Real Estate in Sedona for a long time to come. Either way, the experienced agents at Coldwell Banker First Affiliate armed with the best resources in the industry will be happy to help you make the right decision.

Tod Christensen
Designated Broker
Coldwell Banker First Affiliate