By Angela Gonzales | Phoenix Business Journal
Record low mortgage rates are pushing homebuilder sales office traffic and new home sales higher, as the supply of existing homes remains extremely low in Arizona.
This is causing some homebuilders to think about using a lottery or drawing system to sell a limited supply of homes, said Jim Belfiore, founder and CEO of Belfiore Real Estate Consulting.
When he was out collecting sales data in the field in the past week, he started hearing the first rumblings of homebuilders implementing lotteries for some of their communities.
Homebuilders are experiencing wait lists for some of their products and are limiting the number of sales, he said.
“The housing market right now is red hot,” Belfiore said. “This isn’t like 2004, 2005 and 2006 when the market was red hot. Back then, the buyers were investors and those investors weren’t living in the houses. That is not the case today. The people buying today are the people living in houses and buying because there’s an extraordinary opportunity to get a historically low mortgage interest rate.”
Scottsdale-based Taylor Morrison Home Corp. is releasing a limited number of homesites in phases through a real-time virtual drawing at its Tierra Montana community in Laveen, which is seeing high demand from potential buyers, said Andrea Murphy, vice president of sales for Taylor Morrison’s Phoenix division.
“In this manner, all interested home buyers have an equal opportunity to participate in selecting their homesite, while practicing safe measures for both our team members and customers,” she said. “We have been pleased by the success of this program and the positive feedback from our buyers who did not want to miss the ability of moving forward with the steps toward their home purchase.”
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