Phoenix Market Update 5-1-2006

We still have plenty of real estate headlines - both good and bad sounding.

My recent personal favorite was "Phoenix loses home-building title but performs well". So, we lost our top billing nationally but overall things are back to what they were before last year's gold rush.

There are buyers out there and mortgage rates, while rising, are not yet too high. Inventory of resale homes on the market is up and is being described as "higher than ever". While true, that fact itself does not portend disaster.

Considering the number of people moving to the area each year and the number of new homes built over a 12 month period, there should be more homes on the market each year. Something would be wrong if there weren't more homes available.

So, overall, we are in about the same situation we were two years ago with a small but steady increase in the average home's value. Don't buy into comparisons of the market to a year ago; 2005 was a special case.

By the way, I still have California investors making offers on the listings I have. They are, I think, here to stay.