Scottsdale, Arizona Housing Inventory Up Like a Giant Sized Er . . .

I know some of you are thinking,

"Can I click on that picture to make that thing bigger?"

Scottsdale, Arizona Housing Inventory Up Like a Cialis Overdoser . . . or Somethin' Somethin'

Just browsing some online content when I came across a short piece in USA Today about Scottsdale, Arizona's inventory of unsold homes for sale.

This is the part which blew my mind:

Some sellers on Scottsdale's tony north side who have homes priced over $1 million are having to shave several hundred thousand dollars off their asking prices, but most are still selling in less than 40 days, says Karina Magana, an agent at Help-U-Sell Desert Vista Properties.

That's impressive, considering there's a record 45,175 single-family homes for sale in this bedroom community of Phoenix. When sales peaked in Scottsdale in March 2005, there were only about 2,900 homes on the market. "We've gone from an all-time low to an all-time high in supply," Deuitch says.

Still, the sales volume at the top end of the market isn't enough to make up for the skidding sales for homes priced below $700,000. Compared with May of last year, single-family-home sales in Scottsdale overall are down nearly 23%.

And I thought Key West's 500% or more inventory growth in the past two years was large? And I thought our Real Estate Cartel was impressive in its Sunny Day Real Estate outlook all the time?

Five things I took away from this short blip on housing news in Scottsdale:

1. Scottsdale's housing inventory has risen 1600% in two years time. Despite this, expensive homes have held steady in the minds of their rose colored sunglass wearing Realtors.
2. Home sellers in Scottsdale's most expensive homes are having to cut prices on their asking prices by a hundred thousand dollars here, a hundred thousand dollars there, just like in Key West. As the article states, most of these expensive homes are taking only 40 days to sell. Why, this is even called "impressive" by an agent at Help-U-Sell Vista Properties. (And you think my Sunny Day Real Estate allusions sound funny?) If this is what Scottsdale Realtors call holding steady . . . i.e. shaving hundreds of thousands of dollars off your home price to make it sell in 40 days . . . then all of them can find work in Key West as spinmeisters for our local NAR.
3. Scottsdale homes in the sub-$700,000 range are the ones selling the slowest. Maybe, just maybe, it will one day enter the minds of potential buyers this is why the "median" home price is flat or rising. What I mean is the wealthy are the last hanging fruit on the Real Estate tree. If more $1,000,000 homes are selling for $750,000, while fewer $750,000 homes are now selling for $600,000, then of course, the median will stay in favor of the NAR spinmeisters who want everyone to believe "There's never been a better time to buy Real Estate."
4. Meanwhile, and this is worth repeating, overall inventory has grown 16 times in two short years. As the president of the Scottsdale Area Association of Realtors said, ""We've gone from an all-time low to an all-time high in supply." But this is no need for alarm, right?
5. Actual home sales for all Scottsdale homes are off 22.7% year over year.

Question to those of you who think for yourselves: What is wrong with this picture of slowing sales, growing giant sized inventory, and the shaving of prickly $100,000 pricing here and there for upper end housing which is keeping the mythical median prices at flat or slowly rising levels?

Answer: It's like having having a giant cactus for an erect penis. You can't spin the outcome into anything good.