By Rob Hallberg

As a REALTOR®, I have avoided posting articles on Real Estate as I wanted to focus on other areas of interest, and we already have an ad on the same page as our articles. But the Tucson market has had fewer homes for sale in at least the last 15 years and the demand has caused prices to rise at a pace unseen since 2005. And it is time to give my opinion.

Currently there are 1,226 homes for sale in Tucson as compared to a historical low of only 924 homes in March. In April of 2007 there were 10,387 homes available. The lowest I can find is in July of 1999 when 3,784 homes were on the market, over three times what is available today.

The median sales price of homes has risen from $240,000 in November of 2019 to $340,000 in June of this year. That is a 42% increase over the past 19 months!

Clearly this market surpasses anything I have seen. The burning question is, “When will it all end?”

In the past few months, there have been some small signs of a possible market change. For example, the total Days on Market for homes listed was 24 in January, decreasing to 12 in June. But since June the number has stayed at 12 (in the heyday of 2005, Days on Market never dropped below 25).

The median sales price has also declined slightly, from a high of $340,000 in June to $335,000 in August. But there is more.

Buyers have had to make offers higher than list price in order to win the bidding war in this competitive market. In June, homes were selling for an average of 101.8% over the list price. In August, that number has dropped to 101.1%.

And that’s not all. In conversations with other REALTORS®, the consensus is the market is starting to slow down. How quickly we will get to a “balanced” market, when Sellers and Buyers are on equal footing, is anybody’s guess. But at least the signs indicate we are finally moving in that direction.

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