The short answer is that it depends on what you are looking at. If you look at prices for Phoenix real estate, then yes, they are going down, but if you look at units sold, they are on the rise. With an estimate that says that nearly half of the homes on the market here in the Valley are either foreclosure, or pre-foreclosure homes with rock-bottom prices, the more these homes get snatched up – in some cases for 50 cents on the dollar – the more those homes tend to depress prices in the market. None of us like this, but these homes MUST be bought up before we can get back into a normal market and see some appreciation again. I use the analogy that it’s much like a boat that’s taking on a bunch of water – we still have time to bail the water out and plug the leak, but if we all panic and run to the other end of the boat, we are just going to sink it faster. Just to illustrate how far we’ve come, at one point about a year ago, the Phoenix real estate market had a 20 month supply of inventory, and now we are down to roughly about 9 months – that’s pretty significant! We will, no doubt, go through some major ups and downs in the next 2 – 5 years, but it’s important for us to realize that, if we can make it down to about a 4 month supply, then, from an inventory standpoint, we are in a normalized market. I know, I know… What about prices? Prices will come just like they used to and we’ll judge appreciation rates by years and not by days and weeks. Be patient, and the prices will come, albeit very slowly, but they will come. Now, will we have learned our lesson?
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Filed under: For Buyers, For Sellers, Real Estate Market Watch, Real Estate Opinions Tagged: | arizona premiere living, foreclosure, home prices, is the market going down, is the market going up, phoenix real estate
