Metro Phoenix Homebuyers making headway
While Metro Phoenix is still a seller’s market in the residential real estate arena, buyers are making headway. While Valley home prices hold steady, the area’s inventory of homes for sale is up.
With prices holding steady and supply up, buyers who a year ago were engaging in bidding wars for affordable single-family properties are having more success purchasing homes priced below $300,000, according to Cromford Report Senior Housing Analyst Tina Tamboer, who says that while a year ago buyers may have competed with 15 other bidders, now they’re competing with just three other offers.
According to the latest report from The Information Market for the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS), the median home sales price in January 2019 was $262,100. That’s down from the record $268,000 it hit in June 2018 but up from $260,000 in September 2019.
Too few homes for sale priced for first-time buyers in the Phoenix area led to a soaring seller’s market over the past two years. Home prices climbed about 7 percent in 2018 and 7.5 percent in 2017. Buts
But since December 2019, the number of new home listings in the Phoenix area leaped 78 percent, according to ARMLS.
A better market for buyers
Many first-time buyers have been competing with investors and flippers in search of median-priced Valley homes. But recently, homes priced below $250,000 have experienced the most price reductions, according to Tamboer. The reason is at least partly due to a glut of investors and flippers trying to resell homes they bought in that price range.
After a couple of years of disappointment, first-time buyers re-entering the market have become more particular in regards to what they will pay for houses that need work.
Market continues to stat strong
Metro Phoenix area homebuyers who are holding out until home prices begin to plunge aren’t likely to become homeowners in 2019, as Valley home prices are expected to climb at a slower pace or possibly plateau during 2019, but no decrease is in sight.
Phoenix will not experience plummeting home values as it did during the 2008-2011 real estate crash say analysts who are making predictions based on actual numbers rather than crystal ball speculating. None of the same issues such as subprime loans and rising foreclosures are occurring now.
Metro Phoenix homebuyers making headway