Two houses, one state, one month.

A fully renovated historic home downtown, listed right around $975,000. It drew a bidding war.

A horse property in San Tan Valley, listed around $650,000. It has been sitting for a hundred and eighty days.

The cheaper house is the one waiting on a more specific buyer.

Every month a number comes out and somebody forwards it to me. The median sale price across Greater Phoenix, right around $450,000. I understand why that figure travels. It is one number, it fits in a headline, and it feels like it tells you something.

Both of those houses live inside that number. Neither of those sellers learned a single useful thing from it.

It is not the price, it is the size of the room

The easy read is that the expensive house sold because Phoenix is hot and the cheaper one is sitting because it is overpriced. That is not what happened.

Nobody is building more historic homes downtown. The supply is fixed, and a fully renovated one means the buyer does not have to imagine anything or fund anything. So the room is full, everyone in it wants the same specific thing, and there are only so many of that thing to go around.

The horse property needs a buyer who wants horses, can carry $650,000, and is willing to live that far out. Take away any one of those three and they are not a buyer.

There are about twenty homes like it on the market right now. Twenty. That is the entire room.

There is nothing wrong with that house. There are simply fewer people standing in it, and when the room is that small, price and condition and patience have to do all the work that competition does everywhere else.

That is the whole lesson, and it is worth more to you than any median. Your house is not competing against Greater Phoenix. It is competing for the attention of a specific, countable group of people, and the first honest question is how many of them exist.

The one thing that is true everywhere

There is a single signal running across the whole market right now, and it is the clearest one I have seen in years.

More than half the closings I am involved in include a seller concession toward the buyer’s closing costs.

Over half. Read that again if you are the one selling.

That is what a buyer’s market actually looks like from the inside. Not a crash. Not falling prices. It looks like sellers routinely covering part of the buyer’s cost of getting in the door, because that is what it currently takes to get to a closing table.

We are in a buyer’s market. I would rather say that to you straight than dress it up, because the people who do well in this one are the people who plan around it.

If you are buying

Ask for the concession. It is not a bold move anymore, it is the going rate, and walking in without asking means leaving money on the table that the seller was already expecting to spend.

Then be thoughtful about where you point it. With rates where they are, a couple of points bought down on your loan usually does more for your monthly payment than the same dollars taken off the price. That is worth twenty minutes with a lender running both versions before you write anything.

And know which room you are standing in before you write anything. If a San Tan Valley horse property is what you want, you are one of a small number of people who want it, and that changes what you can reasonably ask for. If it is the renovated historic home downtown, you are one of many, and walking in expecting a discount will cost you the house. Working out which of those you are is most of what I do before an offer is ever written.

If you are selling

Budget for the concession now, before you list. A seller who has planned for it negotiates from a calm place. A seller who gets surprised by it in week three feels like they are being taken, and that feeling costs people deals they should have made.

Your competition is not Greater Phoenix. It is the short list of houses your particular buyer is also looking at. Sometimes that is four houses within a mile of you. If you are the horse property, it might be three houses spread across two counties, and your buyer is comparing you to those three and nothing else.

And when the room is small, price and condition are the entire game. There is no marketing budget that fixes a number the few buyers who exist for your house have already decided is too high. That is the uncomfortable version, and it is the one I would rather hand you in September than in December when your options have narrowed.

One more thing worth knowing. A wave of new listings tends to come on this month, once people stop waiting out the heat. Whatever your competition looks like today, it will look different in three weeks, and your window of full attention is still the first two weeks after you go live.

What you actually walk away with

So the next time someone sends you a headline about the Phoenix market, the useful response is a question rather than a reaction.

What is actually happening to houses like mine, for buyers like mine?

That is a short conversation, it is specific to you, and it is the one worth having before you list or before you write. It is also free, and I am glad to have it whether you are moving this year or three years from now.

If you want to know what the numbers look like for your house rather than for the valley, you can find me here: jennjenkins.com

Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.

Joyful real estate that feels like home.

WITH JOY,

P.S. What’s Jennuine Living, again?

We’re a gaggle of REALTORS(R), Lenders, and Creatives that makes joyful real estate feel like home.

We bring creativity, peace of mind, and a sense of delight into one of life’s biggest transitions, so that our clients’ experience:

-> More joy, less stress and fewer “oh crap” moments.

-> No guesswork, no surprises, just honest communication.

-> Connection first, here, you are family.

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