Saturday, May 23, 2009

Real Estate Market is Booming in Phoenix: What A National Housing Recovery Could Look Like

LA TIMES -- More Phoenix homes are selling than at any time since 2006. Prices are slowly stabilizing. Buyers find themselves in bidding wars over low-end properties. It's what a national housing recovery could look like.

Mike Orr, a Phoenix real estate analyst, thinks the market already has hit bottom. Among the signs: As recently as January, a year's worth of homes sat on the market; in March, that dropped to seven months' worth of inventory."It's a dramatic change in just three months," he said. "I never imagined it'd get this crazy this quickly."

In a throwback to the boom, real estate agents and investors are swapping stories of brutal competition for bottom-end homes. Orr called on one property to find it had already received 14 bids. Realtor David Thomas recalled getting a client in a $60,000 foreclosed home in the suburb of Avondale, on a street lined with vacant properties. He recently returned to find almost all the for-sale signs gone.

NY TIMES
-- The low end of the Phoenix real estate market — and in some equally hard-hit places like inland California and coastal Florida — is becoming as wild as anything during the boom.

One real estate agent was showing a foreclosed house to a prospective client when a passer-by saw the open door, came in and snapped up the property. Another agent says she was having the lock changed on a bank-owned home when a man happened by, found out from the locksmith that it was available, and immediately bought it. Bidding wars are routine.

10 Comments:

At 5/23/2009 11:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

C'mon, Mark! Are you TRYING to make us all suicidal with yet another one of your wilted weeds?

Oh, wait. This is yet ANOTHER piece of good economic news that some will attempt to spin as being bad (note I said 'attempt to spin' and not 'succeed in spinning').

Watching the doom-and-gloomers these days is like watching a single firefighter trying to put out a wildfire in the midst of 80 mph winds. While they 'attempt' to stamp out one piece of good economic news, more and more good economic news flares up all around them.

 
At 5/24/2009 1:04 AM, Blogger Hot Sam said...

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At 5/24/2009 1:22 AM, Blogger bobble said...

i read the NYTimes article. frankly, this is the first "green shoot" i've seen.

i'm looking forward to more of this real estate market clearing.

 
At 5/24/2009 2:09 AM, Blogger Hot Sam said...

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At 5/24/2009 12:38 PM, Anonymous gettingrational said...

RE: Mr. Miller's first essay. That was funny.

RE: The Article.
I can tell you anecdotally that the Scottsdale market has turned up in the last four weeks. A friend of mine as been condo shopping and the screaming deals must have gotten laryngitis.

 
At 5/24/2009 1:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Housing 'boom' is meaningless without knowing whether it is investor-driven or mom-and-pop-driven. (I doubt such a metric exists.)

If investor-driven, then it's just another unsustainable mirage.

 
At 5/24/2009 2:19 PM, Blogger Hot Sam said...

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At 5/24/2009 2:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Phoenix will rise from the ashes some day, just like Berlin. How long that will take is anybody's guess.

The problem with Creative Destruction is the destruction.

 
At 5/24/2009 10:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If the statistics are correct, I wonder how many of those buyers driving the recovery in Phoenix, are tax/economic refugees from California. With the problems facing California government and the increasing burden placed upon taxpayers, it will be interesting to gauge how the states neighboring CA benefit from California's incompetence.

 
At 5/25/2009 12:52 PM, Anonymous Matt said...

I've been watching home supply on the MLS fall for a few months now on ListingSupply.com. I just wonder how long it will be before prices stabilize.

 

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