2011 – The year the Mountain Empire Real Estate Market Hit Bottom?

This real estate downturn has been so long that it is now getting harder and harder to remember what the top was like! Is that good news? Not really, as we need to focus on what should be a prolonged climb back up to normalcy.
This blog may end up being in two or three pieces as I am having an issue with finding the block of time to do all I want. However, the first piece, a verbal summary of last year and how it compared to the previous three follows. A graph of the results and a video commentary will follow later this week.
Even though I was fortunate enough to enjoy a pretty good year relative to the market as a whole, it was still a year of lower income than in 2010. The total residential and land market as compiled from the Tucson Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service was $8,730,620. $7,878,120 represented the housing market and $853,500 represented land and lot sales. What’s interesting is there were 30 homes sold in 2011 versus 26 homes in 2011, but the dollar value was close to the same. The real difference between the two years is the drop in land sales from 12 units to 11 units and a drop of almost $600,000 in sales volume. People were just not interested in land!
Quickly looking back 2 more years, we see that in 2009 the total market was $13,416,320 and in 2008 it was $16,853,758. So, last year’s sales volume was only 1/2 of 2008! Wow!
This year is looking much better as there seem to be more buyers in the market. Not too many of these people are writing contracts, but at least there are more folks looking. The news from Tucson and nationally continues to be better. I am quite optimistic that this year will be a positive one and we will have many more new neighbors and friends.