Looking Down the Trail
By: Victoria Wylde, MSE
As seen in Sedona Monthly
We are off to a bit of a rough start to 2025 in the national housing market. According to Altos Research, national home sales volume in January are down 10%. Meanwhile, there are 24.8% more single family homes for sale in the US than there were a year ago. These are the national trends, which are important to be aware of, but our small town tends to march to the beat of its own drum.
On a positive note, the Sedona housing market in 2024 fared quite well. There were a total of 397 single family homes sold in Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek (VOC) with a Median Recorded Sales Price (MRSP) of $1,081,000 (up 10% from 2023) and an average price per square foot of $514 (up 7% from 2023). Single family homes had an average of 111 days on market in 2024 compared to 134 average days on market in 2023.
If we get more granular with the data, there are interesting trends between Sedona and the VOC. After running our yearly calculations, there is a 25% differential in price per square foot when comparing these two geographic areas. Pre-pandemic, the difference in price per square foot was only 10%. In Sedona, there were a total of 260 homes sold in 2024 for a MRSP of $1,232,500 and an average price per square foot of $552. VOC home sales totaled 137 transactions with a MRSP of $900,000 and an average price per square foot of $443.
Much of this can be attributed to the respective difference in the number of luxury home sales in Sedona when compared to VOC. Sedona had 169 home sales over $1 million while VOC had 44 home sales over $1 million. Both areas continue to trend upward and the main takeaway from this data is the VOC offers buyers a bit more bang for their buck while having all of Sedona’s wonderful amenities and lifestyle at their fingertips.
Looking ahead, Sedona is following the national trend of increased housing inventory as more sellers decide to list their home. We are also, however, seeing an uptick in buyer demand.
For the past two years, high interest rates and economic uncertainty have dampened buyer confidence, even though the market has gone up in that timeframe. In hindsight, this weakened buyer demand was actually a healthy market dynamic as Sedona is still recovering from the frenzied pandemic market with low inventory levels. Low inventory and hot buyer demand cause prices to shoot up, which in the short term can be a boon for sellers but is not good for the long term health of our housing market.
We will have a much clearer picture of where the Sedona housing market is headed in the next few months as buyer activity trends upward from March through May. Additionally, we are expecting to see the impacts of the California fires ripple into Sedona and Arizona as the victims of those fires will likely be looking for a new frontier to call home.
