The upper end of the housing market is performing better than the lower- and mid-tier segments. Naturally, buyers in this segment are not reliant on low rates. Builders in Scottsdale, Cave Creek, and Carefree are offering relatively low value incentives, and interestingly, seeing healthy demand for fully outfitted inventory homes in the $3M to $4M price range.

New home closing data is a lot less useful today than in past years. Why? The most common incentives offered by builders today- Rate Buydowns and Closing Cost Credits- are not included in closing prices. These incentives ARE significant discounts.

Anyone that has picked up a newspaper in the last 24 months knows home sales activity has been slow. Prices may feel "high" but they have actually fallen dramatically. Five years ago builders offered incentives that equated to 2% to 3% of a homes purchase price. Today, most production builders are offering incentives equating to 10% to 15% of a homes value. Those incentives are effectively a reduction in price.