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November 28, 2007 - 1:52PM
New home sales stable for months
Misty Williams, Tribune
The Valley’s new home market continued to show signs of leveling off in October with sales remaining relatively stable for seven months in a row.
Some 3,159 sales of new homes were reported last month, down 29 percent from a year ago, according to analyst RL Brown’s latest Phoenix Housing Market Letter. Sales have ranged between 2,945 and 3,159 per month since April.
Through October, there were 31,825 sales year-to-date, a 23.5 percent drop from the same period in 2006.
Not all regions of the Valley are showing improvement, however.
“The City of Maricopa and other ‘edge’ areas that saw heavy speculator activity and novice investor sales in 2004-2006 will be slower to recover,” the report states.
Sales of new and existing homes have suffered in outlying cities, such as Queen Creek, as foreclosures skyrocketed and sellers failed to compete with new home builders who could offer huge incentives.
New home sales throughout the Valley will continue to be impacted by the resale market, with its more than 50,000 homes for sale, experts say.
Meanwhile, building permits for new homes continued to remain near their lowest point in 15 years at 1,325 in October — suggesting that builders are successfully getting rid of excess speculative homes, according to Brown’s report.
The slow down in building may imply, the study also states, “that there is light at the end of the tunnel for the imbalance of supply versus demand...that has caused far-ranging challenges for local builders.”
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