The jury is still out about the national housing recovery, but Shea Homes Arizona is noticing a pickup in its sales during the first four months of the year. With three new home communities that have opened since January and three more that will be announced soon, Shea Homes Arizona has already outpaced its 2011 YTD sales by 40%. During the housing slump, Shea averaged 5 home sales per week in 2010 and 2011 and currently is averaging more than 8 home sales per week already this year.
“We are seeing the same amount of visitors to our communities, but more are buying homes,” said Ken Peterson, VP of Sales and Marketing for Shea Homes. “We think a couple things are taking place, first, more people are becoming eligible to get loans again after going through foreclosures or short sales and second, the resale inventory is so low right now that people are getting frustrated by bidding wars.”
The most interesting trend Shea Homes has seen lately has been the final sales in communities that can now be closed out. La Quintana, La Mirada, Painted Trails, Entrada, Copper Hills, Lost Canyon and Cabrillo Canyon have all just recently closed over the past few months. Escala at Seville and Foothills at Layton Lakes only have one or two remaining model homes or spec homes, bringing the total Shea Homes communities to 12. The SPACES product that opened in early 2010 has only two lots left, in addition to its models, and a second SPACES at Evans Ranch community will be opening very soon.
“Sales are always a good indication of a recovering housing market, but we also added two new product lines this year- duplexes and triplexes and also acre lot luxury homes, which helps us bring in new buyers that we might have missed before,” said Peterson. “We are pretty optimistic for now and happy about the trends we are seeing in Arizona.”
