Here's the latest absorption rate data for Maricopa County, single-family only and data provided by ARMLS. Today's big news ... there's a second city that has become a sellers' market here in the Valley.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton\'s Arizona Homes

Here are the latest numbers from the Phoenix real-estate market, single-family only with data provided by ARMLS. Numbers are through Saturday, though this is posting two days later.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes

Here are the latest numbers with one substantial change.

Rather than including all of the single-family listings in the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, I've eliminated all non-Maricopa County homes from my totals. (While ARMLS is the "Maricopa County" MLS, many out-of-county listings also are in the system courtesy of member agents.) This resulted in the number of active listings declining by approximately 4,000 this week.

Also, I'm eliminating the second chart of active listings with week-over-week percentage change. As I've spent considerable time arguing that the number of active listings is meaningless without some additional perspective, it doesn't make sense for me to continue providing data I don't feel has any statistical utility.

And finally, now that we're several weeks into this, I'll provide some analysis of the data but likely will do so on a separate post in the interest of space.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes

The National Association of REALTORS reported on Wednesday that home sales fell 4.1% in July at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 6.33 million. That rate is 11.2 percent below July 2005's pace of 7.13 million.

In Phoenix, the number of sales in July was just over half what it was a year ago, with 5,545 resales this year compared to 10,200 a year ago. The total was the lowest in July since 5,240 homes were sold in 1999.

The good news for sellers is prices are more or less stable - the median sales price in the Valley in July was $265,000, approximately $10,000 higher than last July. The median is $2,000 lower than the June figure, a drop of seven-tenths of one percent.

NAR said the market softening will help more buyers enter the housing market. The Republic, with their usual lack of perspective, said rising interest rates are cancelling out the drop. The average rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage was 6.76 percent in July, up from 6.68 in June and 5.70 a year ago.

What the Republic didn't mention is rates have dropped over the last couple of weeks; the average last week was 6.52 percent. And each half-percent of difference in the rate on a $250,000 home comes out to about $125 per month - slightly less than the daily cost of the Subway turkey breast combos my daughter has been urging me to eat (or the amount my wife spends on Diet Coke in a given day.)

For the full article, without the benefit of the Republic's Chicken Little routine, click here:

http://www.realtor.org/PublicAffairsWeb.nsf/Pages/EHSJuly07?OpenDocument

And if you question my attitude toward the Republic, remember what Perry White would say: happiness doesn't sell newspapers.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes

Here's this week's updated stats. Single-family homes only, as reported thru ARMLS:

In the next week or so I'm hoping to obtain some back data so I can have trends longer than the five weeks or so I've been tracking. Not that I expect any surprises ... there's a lot of property on the market, and probably will be until some of the builders' inventory disappears. Once those homes (and the attached incentives) are gone, then I believe you'll see a significant dent in the number of actives and a pickup in the sales pace.

And the actives with percentage change:

 (c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes