February Residential Sales Statistics

The Tucson Association of Realtors has released the Residential Sales Statistics for February.

It's looking pretty good. Average sale price was $164,513 and it has increased in four of the last five months. That sure hasn't happened for several years. We are now back to where prices were in 2002.

The really good news is that 1,019 properties were sold, a 16% increase since February 2011, and a most heartening improvement over the pitiful 615 sales in January 2009.

Number of listings are down, too, bringing supply (listings) in balance with demand (sales). With only 4,560 active listings, we are way down from the bad old days of April 2010 when we had 10,387 active listings, in large part due to banks flooding the market with foreclosures. Listing inventory is down a whopping 34% since February 2011.

With 4,560 listings and 1,019 sales, we have a 4.5 month supply of listings. Anything below a six month supply is considered a seller's market. My colleagues and I are seeing multiple offers and bidding wars, but it's mostly in the under $150,000 range, where most of the sales are still concentrated.

Half of the properties were distressed sales. 36% of the sales were foreclosures and 14% of the sales were short sales.