Continued Plateau in Flagstaff Housing Market for 2024?
(Published on - 1/23/2024 6:39:42 PM)
~Kessler, Abigail. "Flagstaff broker predicts continued plateau in local housing market for 2024." AZ Daily Sun, Jan. 11, 2024, p. 1.
The rise in Flagstaff home prices slowed in 2023, according to data from the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors (NAAR).
NAAR’s market review for December 2023 shows the median sales price for a residential home in Flagstaff increased 1.3% in 2023 -- to $626,500 from $618,697 in 2022.
Gary Nelson, an associate broker with Realty Executives of Flagstaff, predicted that 2024 would continue the “plateau” seen in the housing market throughout 2023.
The number of houses sold typically decreases by 25% to 30% in the winter, said Nelson, who also sits on the board of both the Arizona and National Realtors associations. He added that a lack of inventory has made this winter slower than usual.
He expects this spring to resume the influx of listings and buyers typical for that time of year.
The above-average snowfall last winter had delayed that influx by a couple of months, he said, as sellers waited for the snow to melt before placing their homes on the market.
“Our home prices aren’t really dropping,” Nelson said. “They’re dropping in some neighborhoods and some price ranges, but it's more sporadic than it is an actual trend, in my opinion. We will continue to see that, I think, through 2024 -- the market plateaued in 2023, and we’re going to see that.”
The 1.3% increase in median sale price is smaller than in previous years. Home prices have risen throughout the 2020s so far, with the median sales price for Flagstaff residential homes increasing 11.8% in 2020, 25.2% in 2021 and 13.6% in 2022.
Graph showing the median sales price of residential homes in Flagstaff each year from 2017 to 2023, using data from NAAR's market review.
The market review for five years prior lists that Flagstaff’s median sales price was
$368,000 at the end of 2018 (and was itself 5.1% higher than 2017’s median sales price).
Flagstaff home prices continued to be higher than 2023 statewide averages, which also rose this year.
The Arizona Association of Realtors housing report for December 2023 shows the state's median home price had increased 8.7% from the previous year to $352,536.
