Before I begin my review of November real estate activity in our area, I just want to say Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Thank You to all our valued customers over the years.

We'd like to express our gratitude to you for your continued support and wish you the safest and merriest of seasons coming up.

Let's dive into some of the numbers. We did see some changes last month that I want to address.

Last month we ended up with 148 total closed escrows. That's about a 33% decrease compared with November 2022.

So what contributed to this? There was a rise in interest rates over 8%. Interestingly enough the number of pending homes in November stayed exactly the same as November last year.

This month the great news to report is that, at the time of recording, interest rates were in the low sevens and last week dipped into the mid sixes which is the lowest we have seen since summer. If you are a buyer who is financing, there is a great opportunity for you right now!

As a result of this, refinance applications are up by about 14% nationwide. So if you bought at a higher rate, you might now want to consider refinancing.

What happened with values? Well they stayed more or less the same. In Prescott we saw a slight decrease of 0.6%, 0.7% in Prescott Valley and 0.3% MLS-wide. Falling interest rates are helping this and we are starting to see increased buyer activity in the marketplace.

Looking at the average number of days a home is on the market before it sells, we did see an increase that I would attribute to interest rate fluctuations to 69 days in Prescott and 63 days MLS-wide, 39 days in Prescott Valley and 69 days in Chino Valley.

As far as inventory is concerned, normally we would see this peaking in either August or September, but we didn't really see that last year until inventory finally dropped in January, with sellers hanging on due to market volatility and uncertainty, and we are seeing the same trend again this year, hovering between 800 and 825/830 total site-built single family homes on the market. We rolled into December with 802 homes on the market.

Those 802 homes are taking about 112 days on the market on average before they sell. Based on current values MLS-wide, these unsold listings are currently marked at a 13% higher average price than those which are selling, contributing to those extending marketing times.

Because we saw 148 homes selling, which was a 33% decrease year-over-year and a decrease on recent months when we've been seeing between 220 and 250 homes selling a month, this has affected our absorption rate in terms of the number of months of supply of homes on the market.

We've been going back and forth between 3 and 3.5 months of inventory, but with the decrease in closings that figure is now approaching about 6 months, which represents a balanced market of between 5 to 7 months, but it's something we've not actually seen for a number of years.

In other news, Fannie Mae has just reduced downpayments to 5% for multi-family owner occupied properties (duplexes, triplexes etc.). Previously the requirement was for between 15% to 25% down, so that is creating a lot of opportunities for a lot of buyers. Reach out to us if you have any questions about that.

That's basically the update for right now so Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Thank You again. I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Have a great day,

Geoff

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