McCormick Ranch Sales Update: A full recap of 2018
A new start and fresh year is one of the best times to take a look at our housing market. 2018 continued to be a very strong year with new recent highs hit throughout the Ranch. All types of homes were up, from condos to single family.
As you can see, the number of sales has been fairly consistent. We were down around 8% from 2017 but it was in line with 2016.
When looking at gains, 2018 was very healthy whether you look at price per square foot or just pure price. Single family, patio homes, and townhomes all grew at 6.3 or 6.4% year over year. Condo price per square foot was up a huge 9.8%
When looking at pure sales prices, single family was up 6.6%, condos up 9.4%, patio homes up 12.1%, and townhomes are up 9.0%. Patio homes had a very lackluster 2017 on paper so this is more just putting them back in line with the rest.
That's a solid year altogether!
Now, looking at the year end, we did see a little bit of softening in December and the 4th quarter. Interestingly enough, when looking at average sales price, the first half of the year was much stronger in price gains than the second half. Price per square foot still shows decent gains for most categories throughout the year, though. The lower number of sales is of more importance.
4th quarter sales totaled just 91 homes in 2018 compared with 126 in the previous year. There are multiple reasons that could be affecting this. First is the election. Elections tend to slow down sales due to the uncertainty. Second is the stock market. It is extremely volatile in the 4th quarter, which also brings uncertainty. Third is the doom and gloom news coming in about real estate all over. Once again, this creates uncertainty about what is going to happen in our local market.
Uncertainty. Uncertainty. Uncertainty.
It will take a little bit of time to see whether or not this will come to fruition and be a long term trend. The spring tends to be the busiest time of the year and this could flip extremely quickly. Interestingly enough, current inventory levels haven't risen much with the lower number of Q4 sales. So many of us are just holding tight and waiting to see what happens.
I'm fairly optimistic that we will continue to see gains into 2019. I expect they will likely be smaller than the previous years and be in the 2-4% range which is still very healthy. There is still a lot of demand coming from other states and Phoenix and Scottsdale population numbers are booming.
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Have a wonderful 2019!