phoenix real estate prices

Phoenix Real Estate Market News May 2010

Good day Urban Connection readers. Michael Orr’s real estate market report for May 2010 just arrived in our mail box and we wanted to share the info with you. The full report and Michael’s numbers and analysis of the Phoenix residential real estate market is below. Just click on a page to have it open in a larger view for easier reading.

THE URBAN CONNETION TEAM’S THOUGHTS:

The report covers all of Phoenix and excludes other cities in Maricopa County. Since many of our readers are downtown types, please understand this is a big Phoenix picture and does not necessarily reflect the downtown market. Also, Michael’s data is for single family homes only so does not include info on the downtown condo/loft sector.

Much of the news is what we expected to see. The tax credit pushed a lot of home sales last month so the pending sales figures jumped a bit. This helped the days on market numbers to fall as more homes sold quickly.

On the goods news front, we continue to see some strength in home prices with lower priced homes actually seeing gains… good news for a lot of homeowners.

Good news item #2 is the number of notices of trustee sale (the date a home is scheduled to go back to the investor) has fallen. We feel this is due to more lenders trying to work out loan modifications or short sales. We feel homeowners will find greater success as banks are better equipped to handle the volume of requests than in 2009 and early 2010.

To get a clue of the problem banks face look at this statistic.  Bank of America/Countrywide had 65,000 short sale applications filed in April 2010 compared to just 12 filed in all of 2007.

As we’ve mentioned in other articles, we do not expect improvement in the condo/loft market in 2010. Lenders simply are not giving mortgages on condos except in rare cases like One Lexington. The single family home market should continue to see modest strength, however, until the jobs market gets better don’t expect too much.

If you have any question or would like more information about the report, toss us an email and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

THE PHOENIX REAL ESTATE MARKET REPORT FOR MAY 2010:

The data used to create this report is obtained from public records and extracted under license from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, Inc (ARMLS).
Although certain corrections and checks have been applied to this data, Cromford Associates LLC, Fidelity National Title Insurance Company, Realty Executives and ARMLS expressly disclaim and make no representations or warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, as to the accuracy of the data used or the merchantability
or fitness for any particular purpose. This report is copyrighted in 2010 by Cromford Associates LLC and used with permission on UrbanConnectionRealty.com

phoenix real estate prices

Phoenix real estate prices close to the bottom

 For the first time in a few years, we are starting to see encouraging articles appear in the local media about our real estate market.  This past week, I actually see three separate articles in a two day span with good news. 
 
The first article was titled “Pending home sales, prices on the rise” .  This article appeared in the Phoenix Business Journal.    The article quotes local real estate market analyst Michael Orr.  Orr, author of the Cromford Report, said that the January rise in pending home sales is a critical recovery indicator for Arizona’s real estate market.  Orr said the latest report shows pending sales in the Metro Phoenix area hit a record 9,883 in the first week of January 2010 – a 79 percent increase over the 5,350 from a year ago.
 
The second article, also in the Phoenix Business Journal, stated that Phoenix home values were up 1.1% from October of 2009 to November of 2009.
 
The third article, written by J. Craig Anderson at azcentral.com, quoted Arizona State University professor Karl Guntermann who publishes the monthly ASU Repeat Sales Index housing report.  Guntermann said, for the first time since the foreclosure crisis began, the price of a Phoenix area foreclosed home was roughly the same as it was a year ago.  Guntermann said that in December, based on early numbers, the annual decline in price was down to 2%.  That does not hold true for the non-foreclosure market which is still declining at an annual rate of 20% according to Guntermann. 
 
Signs are beginning to point to the possibility that we could start seeing a slight and slow recovery in local real estate values in 2010.

phoenix real estate prices

ASU Research suggests Real Estate Prices may have hit bottom

Source: Phoenix Business Journal by Adam Kress – Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

New research from ASU shows Phoenix-area home prices are at or close to a market bottom.

The Arizona State University Repeat Sales Index reported a 37-percent year-over-year decline in both February and March. But the new April 2008 to April 2009 report shows a lesser 35-percent drop. Preliminary estimates for May and June show annual drops of 33 percent and 31 percent, respectively

The ASU-RSI measures changes in average Phoenix-area home prices from year to year.

“April is the first month with a slower annual rate of decline, and the progressively smaller declines over the next two months are pretty good evidence that the worst of the price drops are in the past,” said Karl Guntermann, Fred E. Taylor Professor of Real Estate at W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU. He helps calculate the index. “While the housing market is still quite volatile, it may turn out that the low point in terms of price occurred in May, almost three years after prices peaked in the Valley.”

The current slide in home prices is the longest in Phoenix-area history at 26 months.

Preliminary estimates put the median Phoenix-area home price for June at $119,000. That’s up from $115,000 in May and $117,000 in April.

However, Guntermann said the large number of foreclosed properties being sold at distressed price levels suggests the median price is not likely to go up significantly for a while.