Cathryn Creno
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 11, 2008 02:44 PM Sales of existing homes in metro Phoenix climbed from January but declined 13 percent in February compared with sales recorded a year ago, an Arizona State University real estate expert reported Tuesday.The median resale home sale price dropped 15 percent, to $220,000 last month from $260,000 in February 2007, said Jay Butler, director of Realty Studies in the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus.
In February, 3,710 sales were recorded, compared with February 2007's 4,280. Homes selling for less than $200,000 now comprise 40 percent of the resale homes for sale in metro Phoenix, Butler said.A bright spot in the report shows that that last month's numbers were better than January's, when 3,350 sales recorded. It could be a sign that spring home buying season is starting.
"For some people it's a win, a great time to buy," Butler said. "Yes, prices are probably going to go lower, but there are a lot of people out there willing help people get into good mortgages now."
On the other hand, Butler said, homeowners who purchased or refinanced at the 2006 market peak will have to sit tight at least "for a couple years" if they want to sell their homes for as much as the purchase price.
Butler predicts that people who bought homes in areas that are built out will see prices recover more quickly than those who purchased on the outskirts of the metro area, in places where neighborhoods and shopping centers remain unfinished.
"What we went through was a really crazy time," he said, referring to the $85,000-plus surge in median resale home prices from 2004 to late 2006, when median prices rose from $174,815 to $260,600. "We had never seen big increases in prices before. We got caught up in this frenzy, and it is going to take awhile to work our way out of it."
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