The really good news is that we now have seen mortgage interest rates come down as low as 7.4%, with a slight rebound, and the Federal Reserve making the announcement that they will not be raising rates, at least right now.

So there's been a bit of relief in the mortgage world that has caused an uptick in buyer activity.

We were battling some pretty high rates in October and, comparing it with the same month last year, pending sales were down by about 25%, year-over-year. If we compare October to September, they were down by about 20%. This was right in the peak of the highest rate I think we have seen since 2000, so it wasn't surprising that buyer activity slowed down.

In October we also saw values slip fairly substantially. You may remember that last month we saw a little uptick and speculated that the Fed's announcement at that time that rates were going to continue to climb had spurred a little more buyer activity and usually that causes a bit of a run on the market but eventually causes it to drop back down.

So we have basically erased the gains we saw in September. Last month Prescott came down 7.8%, Prescott Valley actually saw a small uptick of 1% and Chino Valley experienced a decrease of 13%. MLS-wide was down 5.6%.

We will continue to monitor that, but the good news is the lower interest rates which should stimulate some buyer activity.

I took a look at the average number of days a site-built single-family home is one the market for right now and that's still running at 106 days.

With the decrease in value that we've just gone through, if you look at the active inventory relative to the active sold price, MLS-wide, it is now priced 13% higher than closed comps.

The best way to determine the value of your home is to call us to set up an independent listing consultation and we will visit your home and go through its specific nuances. We don't price based on averages, but they are a good trend indicator to give us a broad brush idea of what's going on in the market.

As far as inventory is concerned, it's basically staying stable. Across the country, many agents I network with are starting to report that they have a six-month supply of homes, which is a balanced market. Here, we have about a 3.5 month supply, which is still slanted towards the seller's favor a little bit.

We will keep you posted on inventory. Usually it's starting to drop down at this time, but this year we are seeing it hold constant, kind of mimicking what happened in the 4th quarter of last year.

If you have any specific questions, including what rates are for you or what your home is worth, reach out and call me direct at 928-237-4425 and I'll be happy to answer them.

Have a great day,
Geoff