The month of August had just over 8000 homes sold which is slightly down from last month but still showed another increase in average sales price per square foot (just over 3%). Just over half of this month's sold homes were lender owned.

The one area that really stuck out to me, were how many more short sale homes are selling now. This sector has certainly shown a significant increase as over 1500 short sale listings closed through this past month. Banks are becoming more and more open and negotiable to short sales. And buyers are finding these to be some of the best valued deals around. But you will still need to be prepared for a wait as short sales are still taking anywhere from 2-6 months to go through the lender approval process.

The month of July had over 9000 homes sold. The average sold price per square foot rose approximately 4.7% from the month of June, the largest increase we've seen yet. However, we are still seeing a good amount of bank owned listings continue to come on the market as the supply remained quite steady throughout the month of July despite the large amount of homes that are being sold. The demand is still strong.

It is getting more and more competitive to purchase a home now as sales continue to rise. With over 9,300 sales in the month of June, this is the 2nd consecutive month with over 9,000 homes sold just topping the month of May. Here's a statistic you might want to watch out for... the average sold price per square feet was up over 4% in June from the previous month of May. The month of June is the 3rd consecutive month showing an increase in this category and is by far the most significant month as the other two averaged just over a 1% increase at 0.7% and 1.5% respectively. The question now is, how quickly will prices continue to rise?

The buying fury continues for the Phoenix metropolitan area as home sales reached over 9,000 closings for the month of May and hit right around 26,000 closings for the past 90 days from today’s date. The average sales price per square foot was roughly $77 for the month of May which is up about 1.5% from the previous month of April and was also the 2nd straight month showing an increase in this category. It appears the market has hit bottom and is now starting a new upward trend.

The supply of bank owned homes peaked in February nearing 13,000 listings for the Phoenix metropolitan area. Since then, the inventory of these foreclosure listings has continually declined while sales have increased dramatically. The months of March, April and May each had over 5,000 closings for lender owned properties alone.
   
The average sales price per square foot hit bottom in April. The average sold price per square foot for the month of May was up approximately 3% from one month prior. An upward trend in prices now appears to be taking effect.