MARKET · NOVEMBER 2, 2026

Monday Market Update: Ten Buyer's Markets, and Arcadia Up 42%

Mesa and Glendale crossed into buyer's territory, which makes ten buyer's markets among the eighteen cities, the most since December 2022, and only three cities still read above 100. The counterweight is a three-year look at the luxury market: expensive neighborhoods near the center of the metro gained a typical 23% per square foot, with Arcadia up 42%, while the far edge gained 8%.

The Signal

Mesa and Glendale crossed into buyer's territory this week. Mesa fell to 86.6 on the Cromford Market Index and Glendale to 86.2, both under the 90 line that separates a balanced market from a buyer's market, which puts ten of the eighteen cities in buyer's markets, the most since December 2022, against five balanced and three seller's. The top three are unchanged, Scottsdale at 133.6, Paradise Valley at 120.4, and Chandler at 110.5, now half a point from the balanced band, and they are the only cities left above 100 after Fountain Hills fell 30% over the past month to 99.1, a reading it has not seen since April 2017. Fountain Hills and Cave Creek each gave up about eight points in a week, the largest weekly drops in the table, and Scottsdale lost 5.2. The average reading across the eighteen cities is down 15% from a month ago, the same pace as a week earlier and the first time since the middle of August that the decline did not deepen, though outside of last week it is still the softest average since November 2023. Every city carries more supply than it did a month ago and sixteen of the eighteen have less demand, and several sit at readings not seen in years: Phoenix at 94.4, Mesa, and Glendale have not read this low since December 2022, Tempe at 63.0 since 2010, Peoria at 68.6 since 2009, and Buckeye, Goodyear, and Surprise since the spring of 2008. The valley-wide index, which measures the balance between supply and demand rather than prices, reads 66.1, its eighth straight weekly decline from 80.1, against 76.1 a month ago, 78.0 a year ago, and 90.1 two years ago.

Set against that table, a three-year view of the luxury market shows where value has held. Across 53 neighborhoods, comparing detached homes' typical price per foot in the twelve months through August 2026 with the same window in 2023, expensive neighborhoods near the center of the metro have pulled well ahead of expensive neighborhoods on the edge. Among neighborhoods where the median sale tops $1 million, those inside ten miles of downtown Phoenix added a typical 23%: Arcadia leads at 42%, with Biltmore Estates and Paradise Valley each at 23%, Arcadia Lite at 20%, and Lower Arcadia at 17%. The luxury ring ten to twenty miles out added a typical 14%, and past twenty miles the gain was 8%, with Troon Village at 8%, Terravita at 5%, and Desert Mountain at 12% but giving some of that back since early 2025. The past twelve months run along the same gradient: roughly 9% inside ten miles, 5% in the middle ring, and a loss of about 1% at the edge. Distance is not everything, since Grayhawk at eighteen miles is up 22% while Kierland at fifteen is up 4%, and below the luxury tier distance barely registers: neighborhoods with a median under $600,000 were flat over three years wherever they sit, and for homes between $600,000 and $1 million the middle ring gained about 6% while the outer ring gained 1%. The premium of the last three years went to expensive homes near the core, and the index collapse of the last two months in Fountain Hills and Cave Creek, both on the far edge of the luxury map, fits that pattern.

The Numbers

Active listings excluding those under contract stand at 27,819, up 8.2% from a year ago and 7.8% from a month ago, a gain of about 2,000 homes in a month. Listings under contract fell to 5,749, down 19.4% from a year ago and 7.0% in a month, and pending listings dropped to 3,437, down 16.2%. Sales per month came in at 4,875, down 18.0%. Days on market for sales stayed at 84 against 85 both a month and a year ago. Months of supply excluding under contract held at 5.7, the first week since early September without an increase, against 4.4 a month ago and 4.3 a year ago, and days of inventory reached 134 from 122.

The average sale price finished at $623,306, up 5.1%, while the median slipped to $444,000, down 1.3% from $450,000 a year ago. The average sale price as a share of list was 97.29%, level with last year's 97.26%. Monthly dollar volume was $3.04B, down 13.9%. Monthly appreciation per square foot ran at 4.0% against 0.8% a year ago, a gain of 3.2 points, and double last month's 2.0%. The listing success rate fell to 61.5% from 68.5% a month ago and 67.9% a year ago, which means nearly four in ten listings that came off the market in the past month did so without a sale. Across the eighteen cities tracked, three are seller's markets, five are balanced, and ten favor buyers, from three, seven, and eight a week ago; three cities read above 100 and fifteen below it.

What This Means for the High End

The top of the table is not losing buyers so much as gaining competition. Scottsdale's demand reading is flat over the past month while its supply is up 17%, which is how a city keeps first place and still loses 14% on the index; its margin over Paradise Valley is down to about 13 points. Paradise Valley carries 16% more supply with 7% less demand, and Cave Creek 17% more supply with 9% less demand. Fountain Hills is the one where both sides moved, supply up 18% and demand down 18%, which is why it is the only city in the top five to lose a third of its reading in a month. For a seller in North Scottsdale or Paradise Valley, the practical translation is that there are about 17% more homes to tour than there were a month ago, and the buyer pool did not grow to meet them. Price against that competition, not against the September closing down the street that went under contract in August.

The three-year data says which part of the luxury map has the equity to work with. Inside the ten-mile ring, Arcadia at 42%, Biltmore Estates at 23%, Paradise Valley at 23%, Arcadia Lite at 20%, and Lower Arcadia at 17% all gained more over three years than any ring farther out, and the inner ring is the only one still rising over the past twelve months, at about 9%. Past twenty miles the three-year gain was 8% and the past year was a small loss, which is the same geography where the index has fallen fastest this autumn: Fountain Hills, Cave Creek, and the far north of Scottsdale. Grayhawk at 22% against Kierland at 4% says the neighborhood still matters inside a ring, but the direction is clear. For homes over $1 million, scarcity of land near the core has done the work that new construction cannot undo, because there is nowhere left to build it. For a buyer, the outer luxury ring is where the negotiating room is largest right now and where the three-year price support is thinnest; the core is where the room is smaller and the floor is firmer. Below $1 million, distance made almost no difference over three years, so for most of the market the question is the house and the price, not the ZIP code.

That is also the argument for the house itself in the core neighborhoods. The 42% in Arcadia was earned by the lot, not by a 1960s kitchen, and a buyer paying for the location will discount the house for every year of work that was put off the moment they walk in. Every buyer and seller who works with me gets My Exclusive Renovation Offer: I cover the labor for the renovations, and materials are the client's responsibility. For a seller it means the kitchen, the flooring, or the paint is finished before the photos, so the price reflects the lot's three-year gain instead of handing a share of it back at inspection. For a buyer it means the dated house on the right street in Arcadia or the Biltmore corridor, the one everyone else is discounting for its condition, becomes the way into a neighborhood that has outperformed everything around it. Sellers walk out with more money. Buyers walk in with more equity.

What to Watch

The Fed held its range at 3.75% to 4.00% on Wednesday on a 10 to 2 vote, with Governor Cook and Cleveland's Hammack voting for another quarter-point increase, and Chair Warsh said energy prices have moved higher again and that he will not prejudge December. The data since then favored the two dissenters: third quarter GDP came in at a 3.4% annual rate, up from 2.2%, September PCE inflation rose 0.5% in the month and 3.6% from a year ago with core at 3.1%, and futures now price about an 85% chance of a hike on December 9. Rates moved the other way anyway. Freddie Mac's survey fell to 7.24% for the 30 year fixed on Thursday, its second straight weekly decline from the 7.40% peak, the 15 year eased to 6.60%, and the ten year Treasury closed Friday at 4.93%, its lowest close since early September and about 35 basis points below where it started October, as the selloff in technology stocks kept pushing money into bonds. Oil cut the other way, with Brent near $118, its highest since April, and WTI around $104 on the Middle East conflict. Two dates this week: the midterm elections on Tuesday, and the October jobs report on Friday, where the consensus is roughly 55,000 to 65,000 new jobs after September's 29,000 with unemployment steady at 4.2%. A soft number weakens the case for a December hike; a strong one with firm wages all but seals it. October CPI follows on November 10.

For Phoenix, the supply curve may be close to its seasonal top. New listings are starting to thin out, as they do every year at this point, which usually means the active count stops growing within a month or so and then falls into the holidays, and months of supply held at 5.7 this week after rising every week since early September. That is relief at the margin, not a turn. Demand is still weaker than a month ago in sixteen of the eighteen cities, contracts are down 19.4% from a year ago, and a listing success rate of 61.5% says a large share of sellers are leaving the market without a sale rather than cutting to the price that clears. For sellers in Arcadia, the Biltmore corridor, and Paradise Valley, the three-year numbers are context, not the comp: a 42% gain since 2023 is why the equity is there, and the last thirty days of contracts are what set the price that converts it. For buyers, the most buyer's markets since December 2022 and 5.7 months of supply mean that in most of the metro, waiting for the next listing carries less risk than it has in years. At 7.24%, the payment on an 80% loan against the $444,000 median is about $2,421 a month, roughly $245 more than at last year's rate near 6.2%.

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Source: Cromford Associates LLC