November '05 Market Report

Headlines, Headlines, more and more headlines. Real Estate in the Phoenix area is still front page news.

Don't believe the headlines you are seeing in the local press or at least read the entire article before making up your mind.

We have seen everything from "Housing prices dropping" to (today) the National Association of Realtors saying that Phoenix house prices have increased 55% since this time last year (average national increase in home values was 15% for the same period).

What it boils down to is this. While marketing time is increasing along with the number of available homes, almost all the knowledgable people are predicting a robust 2006 for real estate with conservative monthly increases in value around 1.5%

We are still ahead of where we were last year in number of resale home sales. I spent all last weekend looking at new homes with out of town buyers. Most builders had some lots available but everyone was predicting that monthly (and sometimes weekly) price increases were going to continue with their builders. That means that the price of resale homes will be going up as well. If interest rates spike up, this could change.

SUMMARY: The frantic pace of last summer is cooling off. Home prices are still going up and are forecast to do so for this coming year. The pace of home sales is still brisk but not as frantic as this past Spring and Summer. Real estate is still a very good investment.

Richard