FAQ

The Cromford® Report is a subscription market-intelligence service for the Arizona residential real estate market. We publish daily, weekly, and monthly charts, tables, and commentary on supply, demand, and pricing, so you can see where the market is heading before it hits the headlines.

Most of our readers are real estate agents. Investors and journalists also use it to understand current conditions and to explain them to their own clients and audiences.

Our core coverage is Greater Phoenix, broken down by city, ZIP code, and region. We also produce neighborhood-level analysis. We also cover the rest of Arizona served by ARMLS, including Southeast Arizona and Sedona/Verde Valley. Listings that appear in ARMLS from other parts of Arizona are analyzed, but because these areas have local MLS databases, coverage of these areas is sparse, especially for Tucson and Pima County. Some charts built from public records cover a wider set of Arizona counties, and we include a few national series, such as mortgage rates and building permits, for context.

Listing data is licensed from ARMLS, the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. Deed and ownership data comes from county records and The Information Market. We also use the US Census Bureau for building permits, Freddie Mac for mortgage rates, and S&P for the Case-Shiller home price index.

Many of our listing-based charts update daily; others update weekly or monthly. The Cromford® Market Index ranking for the 18 largest Greater Phoenix cities is published weekly, and the secondary cities monthly. Charts built from public records follow each source’s own release schedule.

The Cromford® Market Index (CMI) measures the balance between supply and demand. We publish it for Greater Phoenix as a whole and for individual cities, alongside a Supply Index and a Demand Index so you can see which side is driving a change.

The direction matters as much as the level. A seller’s market with a falling CMI is cooling, even while it is still above 110.

The CMI is proprietary. We publish the results and our conclusions and let the track record speak for itself: in the 20 years since we created the index, it has never failed to signal a change in market direction before it happened.

Each city has its own mix of price ranges, new construction and buyers, so cities can sit in different market types at the same time. That is why we rank the largest cities every week.

They are ARMLS statuses for listings that have accepted an offer but are still shown as Active. When we count homes under contract, we include UCB and CCBS listings as well as Pending listings.

Cromford® Days on Market measures how long a home was marketed before it went under the contract that led to the eventual sale. Unlike the MLS figure, it counts Coming Soon time, carries the clock across a relist, and leaves out time spent under contract. The two measure different things, so they will rarely match. The median Cromford® Days on Market will usually be lower for a group of listings, but not for every individual listing. Where our charts say plain “Days on Market”, they mean the MLS figure. ARMLS Days on Market includes time spent in UCB and CCBS status, excludes any time while Coming Soon, and ignores listings with zero days on market. ARMLS also resets the clock if 45 days elapse before a home is re-listed.

Some closings are recorded late, and some listings are closed then backed out. This means a month’s totals can rise or fall a little after we first publish them. The differences are usually small and don’t change the general picture of the market.

To a builder, a “sale” is the day the contract is signed, which can be months before the home closes, and it may never close at all if the deal falls through. Our new-home figures come from recorded deeds, so they count closings. For resale homes, “sales” means the same thing and we use it normally.

A median is the middle value: half the homes sold for more and half for less. A few very expensive sales can pull an average up sharply but barely move the median, so the median gives a better reading for a typical home. We publish both where both are useful.

Our regions, such as the Northeast Valley or the Southeast Valley, are large areas made up of many ZIP codes. A neighborhood is much smaller, such as a single community. For a closer look, use our city and ZIP code charts.

Sources differ in the area they cover, the property types they include, the date they use (contract or closing) and the day they took their snapshot. Before comparing, please check that both figures measure the same thing over the same period.

Current prices and terms are on our membership levels page.

That chart belongs to a membership you do not currently hold. Cromford® Public members see this on charts built from ARMLS data, for example. Check that you are logged in, then email support@cromfordreport.com if you think you should have access.

We are transitioning from the original site, www.cromfordreport.com, to v2.cromfordreport.com because the original site cannot support the technologies we want to deploy.

Members with active subscriptions have the right to share selected Cromford Report charts and commentary with their existing clients or prospects. This helps them support home buyers and sellers. This means sharing individual items, not complete sections. Sharing one observation is allowed. Sharing all observations is not allowed.

It is NOT permitted to share any content with other real estate professionals, even from the same team or brokerage. Professionals need a unique personal login to access the Cromford Report. Login sharing is strictly prohibited. If the professional you want to share with also has a subscription, then sharing is allowed.

We recommend a team plan if you want a whole team or office to benefit from the Cromford Report. These team plans are much cheaper than individual subscriptions and grant rights to share with the entire team, including new joiners, for the following 12 months. Team plans start at 3 people. Contact us for further details.

If you have an active subscription, you may share selected content in your newsletter, social media, or listing presentation. For social media, we ask that you discourage a non-subscriber from copying and pasting your content by embedding your contact details in the content.

Email accounts@cromfordreport.com and we will take care of it.

We rarely offer one-off consulting as our resources are limited. But if there is a measure or an area you would like to see covered, tell us: subscriber requests shape which charts we build next.

No, but you may be able to schedule Tina Tamboer for this.

Yes, with appropriate attribution.

Our contact page lists the team and an address for each topic: accounts@cromfordreport.com for payments and subscriptions, support@cromfordreport.com for technical support, and webmaster@cromfordreport.com for website issues or questions.