The following information, real estate high-lights pertaining to Phoenix metro,  is borrowed from The Cromford Report, published by Michael Orr, ASU:

• New listings to market in the Metro area are  “very low and yet the weakness in demand is sufficient to cause active listings to rise. In the last four weeks we saw 10.2% fewer new listings than last year and 7.9% fewer than in 2012.
• Active listings (excluding UCB) rose  only 0.9% between September 2013 to September 2014.
• Very high end luxury homes continue to sell well. Across Greater Phoenix in September we saw 19 closed sales of homes priced over $2,000,000, up from 15 in September 2013.
• Last month we expected to be in a very neutral market with demand and supply in almost exact balance… the trend turned a little more negative for sellers in the last two weeks.
• Sales in September 2013 were unusually weak and at the time we blamed it on the government shutdown. Sales in September 2014 were slightly weaker than last year which reflects the lack of financing available to ordinary homeowners. Tight lending standards, especially for first time home buyers seem to be having a major negative effect on demand. If Ben Bernanke cannot successfully refinance his home based on current lending rules, what hope do the rest of us have?”