Yesterday evening I received a call from the offices of the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service about the listing I have for this property in Arizona Pinecrest. It seems that when I entered the listing about a month or so ago, the cumulative days on market did not carry over from previous listings.

When I entered the listing, I took the time to make sure everything had been entered correctly - the address, the street abbreviation, the tax parcel number. All were as they were supposed to be. Yet the Days on Market did not property reflect.

This isn’t an isolated occurrence by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve seen this on other properties, both that I have entered and that other agents have entered. I’ve seen some use of “copying” old listings, which makes it harder (but not impossible) to track the history of a listing through the archive report.

Why do I bring this up? Because for all of the discussion of the importance of Days on Market in a buyers’ decision-making process, for all the discussion of real estate agents intentionally circumventing the Days on Market filters, the local MLS software has a bug somewhere that doesn’t always correctly calculate the figure.

It’s only my two cents, but rather than focusing so much intention of the handful of agents who are attempting to game the system, shouldn’t we be trying to figure out why the system doesn’t always work?

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I took the wife to lunch at Keegan’s yesterday, on the northwest corner of Camelback and 32nd Street. In my effort to escape the Biltmore area (no small feat given the construction on both Camelback and 24th Street), I passed by the year-old Optima Biltmore Lofts just south of Camelback on 24th Street.

Optima Biltmore is a two-building complex consisting of 230 units. Square footage on the units ranges from 840 to 2,666 and there are one-, two- and three-bedroom models.

Needless to say, these units are not inexpensive. Nothing is inexpensive in the Biltmore area, so named for the Arizona Biltmore Hotel resort just north of Camelback and east of 24th. The Ritz Carlton is across the street from Optima, in case you need any further financial frame of reference.

The loft market, like a the Phoenix real estate market in general, has been slow. And it may be even slower than the rest, given the particular buyer searching for a small (when compared to single-family) urban condo and the prices attached to said condo.

At this writing there are 73 units inside Optima for sale - nearly 1/3 of the building. Prices range from a 1,097-square foot unit for $465,900 to a nearly $2 million penthouse.

But today’s post isn’t just about real estate sales. It’s more about the changing face of real estate. You see, it’s virtually impossible to drive past Optima Biltmore and the adjacent commercial building to its immediate north and not think back to a warm day back in the summer of 1978.

My parents, my sister and I made the journey (it seemed longer to a 9-year-old) from Mesa to the Cine Capri theater, home of Phoenix’s largest screen, to see Star Wars. The George Lucas classic enjoyed a two-year run at the Cine Capri. Two years! When the first notes of John Williams’ theme blared from the theater’s speakers, I nearly jumped out of my seat.

The Cine Capri is long gone … there’s a “new” version near Loop 101 and 56th Street and Harkins Theaters also is building another Cine Capri in Tempe. But simple having a really, really big screen does not a Cine Capri create. Take things down to one screen and one movie (the last at the true Cine Capri was Titanic) and maybe then you’ll begin to recreate what was lost to the bulldozers.

We now return you to the Valley of the Sun, circa 2007, already in progress.

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Jonathan Miller at the Matrix uncovered Bill Gross’ monthly column discussing further the issues facing the housing market. Bill is with PIMCO, the word’s largest bound fund.

According to Bill, it’s incorrect to point to the defaults in the subprime market as damaging the national housing market. Rather, it’s the tightening of credit standards for all loans _ subprime or otherwise _ that’s having a dampening effect.

You can read Bill’s full column, Grim Reality, here.

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“No, sir, I didn’t expect the alarm system to be on. When I talked to the owners I explained the listing was going active on Friday and they never mentioned they were turning on the alarm before they left.”

“The code? Well, I learned that when I called them today right before you showed up as I was trying to stop the alarm from chirping at me. It’s not the first time I set off an alarm at a house, you know …”

“What’s that? Yeah, I guess I do want to strike that last statement from the record now that I think about it. Can we do that?”

“Well, sir, I understand that there’s no sign in the yard yet. It seems there was a mix-up at the sign company and they haven’t delivered my sign. But that’s my lockbox on the side of the house. If it wasn’t listed, it wouldn’t have one of those right?”

“Yessir, here’s my card. Isn’t the beagle cute?”

“You don’t say you’re thinking about selling your house … it doesn’t have an active alarm on it, does it?”

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR “THE PILOT ON THIS GAS OVEN DOESN’T SMELL LIKE IT’S LIT”

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I received this e-mail the other day in response to my posts about absorption rates here in the Phoenix area.

Tony writes …

I wanted to let you know that I think the concept of absorption rate is right on the money. I am not in the real estate business (actually in the aerospace business) and this really hits home with me as the best way to compare supply with demand. Funny you always hear “it is supply and demand.” Well, with absorption rate, it is both.

I was thinking about what you wrote about pending sales … probably the best thing I could think of with those it to take them out both inventory and sold numbers. I would think leaving them in would tilt the demand side (lower number, and the denominator) and result in showing too few months supply.

You could probably draw some interesting conclusions too if you looked at absorption rate in price buckets - more relative sales in the lower end of the market vs higher end of the market should be singnalling price pressure. Might also be interesting to look at age at sale … once that average number starts increasing it would indicate that people are having to look deeper in the market to get what they want… or that the sellers capitulated on price.

The only thing that really makes me think is that very often (most of the time??) a buyer of 1 home in Maricopa [County] is probably also the seller of 1 home in Maricopa. I’m not sure how that would/should/could be addressed./p>

I blabbed a little, but under any circumstances wanted to let you know that I appreciate the fact that you are applying some actual analysis to make sense of the market instead of a finger to the wind!!! Keep it up!

There are others who track absorption rate by price bucket. It’s something I may start to do but the tough part is not having historical active inventory numbers available. I’ve also debated tracking rentals to see what that market looks like but haven’t found the time.

I’m already incorporating Tony’s idea about pending sales. Essentially I ignore them (which is a less polite way of saying I don’t include them on either side of the equation.) These aren’t active listings, but they’re also not guaranteed closed sales … not until they show as sold.

If anyone else has an idea on what to do with them, I’m open to it but for the time being I think we’ve got the best course plotted.

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