The State of the Bubble in Kingman

I've been reading a ton of sites with good and alarming information. There is plenty of stuff online that anyone can find about the real estate bubble and the panic that surrounds it.

I can't control the market, no one can. My hope is that all of you who have bought homes in the recent past (for living in) did so on locked rate mortgages. I've never sold a home to a family for a residence on anything other than a locked rate mortgage. I have had investors use creative financing on their property that they intended for rentals, but I also trust that those investors know what they are doing to a larger degree.

Interest rates are rising again and I read that folks who used a lending program such as an adjustable rate mortgage are now feeling the squeeze as their monthly payments are rising much faster and sooner than they thought they might. Key here is that this is what I'm reading, this is not something that any clients have told me about. Feel free to add your comments if you are experiencing this kind increase in your monthly payment.

On another note, I recently figured out how to do charts on Excel spreadsheets and have put together a chart to share with you. The chart below is a look at single family residence (SFR's) sales monthly going back to January of 2004.



For clarification, the data comes from SFR's that were sold only within the city limits of Kingman with the exeption of the north Kingman area (that includes a popular subdivision called Chaparel Mesa) and Valle Vista that are not within the city limits. These exceptions were included because these area's have many SFR sales each month. The data does not include mobil homes, multi-family homes, commercial property, or land purchases. I run this data set each month and have been doing so since the year 2004.

2004 and 2005 were considered barnburner years in this community. As you can see the number of units seller per month is declining so far this year and now we are below the level of sales compared to the previous two years. It will be interesting to see if in May the numbers start to go back up or not like the trend was in 04 and 05.

I'll update this chart again, and post other charts showing the trends of prices as well in upcoming posts.