Phoenix MLS Predicting Lowest Median September Price in Nine Years (unemployment rate, assessment)

[jimj]

Originally Posted by EnicAZ

MotleyCrew,

Good comments on this. Those are some of the many reasons why our sales office, and many other have been projecting value declines between 25-40% in the Phoenix area. Already, we have declined 7-8% from last month, as artificial government intervention is being pulled from the market. Other zip codes have suffered worse. This is why we have been advising others to wait 6-9 months to reassess the market, to avoid catching a falling home value knife.

May I ask why you feel it's needed to restate the same position that has not been borne out by the facts in all places as of yet and may or may not happen at all? It seems like many of these predictions are trying to force it to become true but to what end I would ask? Almost like stock pumping and dumping.
I don't know if you realize it's starting to/has become the boy who cried wolf thing...

[Boompa]

Greater Phoenix bet its future on millions of Baby Boomers moving there and LOST. Now houses are a glut on tthe market and the only way housing prices will rise is if they stop building for a few years. According to Zillow my house in the West Valley is worth half of what i sold for in 2005, meanwhile the house I bought has only gone down 10%.

[EnicAZ]

JimJ,

Rapidly falling prices are already taking place, and have been documented in the MLS. The only question is how far prices will fall now that government intervention is being removed from the marketplace. Prices dropped more than 7% last month, and this month is looking like another drop. Any real estate agent with honesty is going to inform buyers to wait a while to see how far prices will fall.

[Greatday]

Originally Posted by Boompa

Greater Phoenix bet its future on millions of Baby Boomers moving there and LOST. Now houses are a glut on tthe market and the only way housing prices will rise is if they stop building for a few years. According to Zillow my house in the West Valley is worth half of what i sold for in 2005, meanwhile the house I bought has only gone down 10%.

The Phoenix Metro area is still growing with population. Granted, not at the same rate as a few years ago. There is every reason to believe however, that this population growth will not only continue, but grow.

[MotleyCrew]

Originally Posted by Greatday

The Phoenix Metro area is still growing with population. Granted, not at the same rate as a few years ago. There is every reason to believe however, that this population growth will not only continue, but grow.

I think if we have another freezing winter the mid west folks will be heading this way again. My friend thinks AZ will be a "geezer" magnet, ha and I have to agree. We have the best as far as low priced homes, fantastic medical, and reasonable property taxes for retirees. All we need is a little wind of change and they will come poking around.

[suburbgal]

I guess one of the questions is, Phoenix is growing, but is it growing enough to keep up with the backlog of homes on the market? It seems like a lot of the builders have pulled out and there really aren't as many new home communities being currently built in the valley - so that seems like a step until there is a decrease in the backlog.

I have seen a lot of homes half built sitting in foreclosure. I've also seen a lot of really big homes (3500+ sq ft ,even 2 story) that I can't really see retirees scooping up as a 2nd home. Hope there is enough of growth to move that part of the market along as well.

[Howard Roark]

But the water.

If it wasn't for 18 million southern Californians, I would not be worried about the future of Phoenix. They compete with us and Las Vegas for the Colorado River water. Add to that our drought situation when almost every year of the last fifteen years was below normal in precipitation. That's one thing that scares me about the idea of jumping off the fence and buying a house in Phoenix. The other thing is the shadow inventory and the delinquencies out there. I want to be sure that my future neighbors can HONESTLY afford (without taxpayer help) to pay for the roof over their heads. Well in an apartment that is a certainty.

Originally Posted by Greatday

The Phoenix Metro area is still growing with population. Granted, not at the same rate as a few years ago. There is every reason to believe however, that this population growth will not only continue, but grow.

[EnicAZ]

One of the biggest problems we have is a lack of jobs. This is the Phoenix metro's biggest economic problem. The housing market is unfortunately directly tied to this problem, and there have been economists saying that Phoenix's job market won't start recovering until 2016. Job creation is something we really need to focus on, otherwise people will continue to leave for places like Texas where the job market is better.

[Valley Native]

Originally Posted by EnicAZ

One of the biggest problems we have is a lack of jobs. This is the Phoenix metro's biggest economic problem. The housing market is unfortunately directly tied to this problem, and there have been economists saying that Phoenix's job market won't start recovering until 2016. Job creation is something we really need to focus on, otherwise people will continue to leave for places like Texas where the job market is better.

This is completely true! Unfortunately, there will never be a competitive market for high wage jobs if we continue plodding down the same old path and promoting things like sunshine, cheap real estate, retirement, mountain views, and an abundance of golf courses as primary reasons to live here. Those things were all right when Phoenix was a much smaller area ... but now since we are the nation's fifth largest city, we should be trying to attract more Fortune 500/Fortune 1,000 type of firms to base their HQs here.

You brought up Texas as a good example. The bleeding hearts like to say that Arizona doesn't have a good job market because we don't pay enough taxes for things like education, etc. I say that is a load of nonsense because Texas has no state income tax, and the cost of living is just as low (if not lower) than ours in many cases.

[jimj]

What may be a game changer is the new foreclosure legal mess. With many/all banks halting foreclosures and some (possibly many) having to be reversed (todays news) the housing market could very well tighten up due to a shortage of salable inventory. This could very well continue for quite a while barring mass intervention from the government.
Think about it, a potential mass removal from the MLS of pre-forclosure, short sale and bank owned properties leaving just the normal inventory of regular sale homes. Then add to it the people (like myself) who bought a foreclosure who face a potential eviction due to a bad title. If these evictions happen en-mass then what?

I would think the new worry would be title companies failing after so many claims against title insurance are filed because they didn't see the cloudy titles.
This could actually be a great thing for values in the short term don't y'all think?
One other side note, if you've made repairs/upgrades to the foreclosure property and it's reversed then what happens with the $$$ you've put in the house when you have to hand it back?