Buyers paying cash for Phoenix-area homes

September 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Half a billion dollars in cash was spent on downpayments and home purchases in metropolitan Phoenix last month. That tally doesn’t include mortgages on homes. It’s the pure cash figure buyers spent on existing Valley homes in July, according to Arizona housing analyst RL Brown.
 In his recent Phoenix Housing Market Letter, Brown uses the figure to show the housing market is showing signs of life after last year’s crash.
 
"The recovery in metro Phoenix housing is becoming undeniable," said Brown.
  …

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Metro Phoenix foreclosures climb in July due to last minute surge

August 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Lenders rushed to foreclose on homes in metropolitan Phoenix during the last week of July. The number of foreclosures climbed an average of 60 a day last week.
Due to the surge, foreclosures hit a new monthly record of 5,316 in July, compared to 5,149 in June, reports Information Market.
Valley real estate market watchers say the recent increase could be due to the expiration of federally-mandated foreclosure moratoriums and problems with loan modifications. The U.S. Treasury Department released its first monthly report on its Making Home Affordable loan modification program Tuesday. The government’s report showed mixed results from lenders. It found …

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Index shows 37 percent drop in metro Phoenix home prices

May 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Arizona State University’s latest repeat home sales index shows Valley home prices were down 37 percent between February 2008 and February 2009.
That’s the biggest home price drop so far, but ASU researchers say an early estimate for March shows home prices falling 36 percent year-over-year. The early analysis for April is even better with home prices falling 34 percent.

“These figures suggest that prices may be declining at a slower rate than previous months,” says Karl Guntermann, professor of Real Estate at the W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU. He calculates the repeat sales data with research associate Alex Horenstein.
"In this market, this …

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New home sales climb in metro Phoenix

May 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

In March, there were 200 more new homes sales across the Valley than the month before. That may not sound like much, but it’s significant in the current slowdown.
Last month, 9124 new homes sold across metropolitan Phoenix, a 28 percent4 increase from February, according to RL Brown’s latest Phoenix Housing Market Letter.
Even better for the market is that many of the new homes to sell recently were built last year or the year before either speculatively or for buyers who pulled out of deals. Depleting the inventory of built but unsold homes will help the area’s home building market …

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Phoenix apartment rents draw for college grads

May 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Metro Phoenix named one of best places for recent college graduates to locate because of low apartment rents.
A new survey from Apartments.com and CBcampus.com puts Phoenix in the top U.S. cities for grads to move to. The survey puts Phoenix’s average rent for an apartment at $747 a month.
 

Phoenix’s rents are cheaper than Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York, which rank higher on the list. But the was also based on the number of entry-level job openings available and most popular resident populations for young adults.
 
 

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Pulte buyout of Centex could make it Valley’s biggest builder

April 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

The merger of U.S. housing giants Pulte and Centex Corp. could create the Valley’s biggest home builder.
Michigan-based Pulte Homes agreed to buy Centex for $1.3 billion in stock. Pulte’s purchase of the Dallas-based company will make it the largest homebuilder in the country.
At the end of 2008, Pulte was metro Phoenix’s second biggest home builder 3,228 sales, according to housing analyst RL Brown’s Phoenix Housing Market Letter. Centex was third with 980 new home closings. D.R. Horton topped the list with 3,607 closings.
Brown said Pulte will likely benefit from its buyout of Centex in other markets more than the Valley because …

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Metro Phoenix foreclosures fall in March

April 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

During March, almost 2,000 fewer people in the Valley lost their home to foreclosure than in February.
Foreclosures dropped to 3,377 in March, according to the Information Market. In February, Valley foreclosures hit a  record 5,237.
Foreclosure cancellations almost doubled between February and March to reach 3,168.
Pre-foreclosures curiously hit a new high of 10,600.
But Information Market’s analyst Tom Ruff doesn’t expect all those pre-foreclosure to turn into foreclosures. 
He said now due to loan modifications and lender moratoriums on foreclosures some of the filing patterns are out of sync. 
Also pre-foreclosures, notice of trustee sales, can be filed to for short sales to go through. But when a short sale closes, no trustee sale …

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Foreclosure help soon playing at your nearest movie theater

March 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

 
The Federal Reserve plans to soon start showing ads warning people about foreclosure fraud on the big screen. The government-sponsored films will run in movie theaters in 14 cities across the country.
The ads will run in the the cities with the highest foreclosure rates, so metro Phoenix is likely to get them.
The ad runs about 30 seconds and show photos of people facing foreclosure and lists foreclosure tips. The Federal Reserve says the goal of the film is to show people there is help available and how to avoid the growing number for foreclosure help scams. …

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Pending home sales index up in metro Phoenix

March 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

 
Most key indicators used to track the Valley’s housing market are still going the wrong way, but there is a measure of the market that has begun to defy the downturn.
Pending listings, which are home sales in negotiation or under contract, are up 90 percent in the Valley.
Real-estate agent Michael Orr, who tracks Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service data, said there are currently about 9,600 pending sales in the system. If all of those pending sales — or even most of them — turn into actual home closings, March and April could be good months for the Valley’s housing market.
Go …

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Pinal County resales and prices fall again

March 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

 Resales in Pinal County fell to 2,850 during the last quarter of 2008. That compares to 3,355 during the third quarter of last year, according to Realty Studies at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic.
The median home price in Pinal has fallen to $119,000. It hit a high of $220,000 during the fourth quarter of 2005. Pinal has grown into one of metro Phoenix’s most affordable suburbs.
"In Pinal County, there is a wide range of homes available from the listed homes to foreclosures, but a key force has been the rapidly declining prices," said Jay Butler, director of Realty Studies in …

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