More Valley Homes For Sale

The number of single-family homes for sale in the Southeast Valley reached 11,521 last month, the highest number in recent years.

The last time the SEV had listings in the 10,000 range was late 2002 and early 2003, according to the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service.

Realtors and housing analysts believe the number of listings is high because investors have begun dumping houses, home sales are usually slow in the beginning of the year and people who wanted to move held off because it was so difficult to buy another home for about a year.

The median price hit $250,000 for three-bedroom homes, $340,000 for four-bedroom and $167,000 for condos in January. The average time on the market lengthened to 47 days, compared with four days in January 2005 and 68 days in January 2004. More...

I for one am tired of hearing that "the sky is falling". If one has spent ANY time at all understanding Central Arizona's real estate market one would see clearly that the market is just stabilizing. These same "Chicken Little's" are the ones who were also screaming about what a hot market we were in back in the 90's when there were twice as many homes for sale in Central Arizona. Just because we are coming off of the hottest market I've ever seen, doesn't mean we are now in a slow market. This is the best thing that could've happened to our local real estate market. If it didn't slow down on its own, prices would've continued to rise until no one could afford to live here. Then we would've had the inevitable "crash" in order to correct a run away market. But, that didn't happen... Thankfully.

So enough from the "Chicken Little's" out there, the sky is not falling.

Matt Pellerin