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Valley home prices keep slipping in September
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A bank owned home is for sale in Queen Creek Tuesday morning. Photo taken Tues., Oct. 14, 2008 in Queen Creek.
Jennifer Grimes, Tribune
Median home prices continued to slide in September while existing home sales continued a steady climb, according to the latest report on housing resales from Arizona State University.
The median price of an existing house was $180,000 last month, about 7 percent lower than $193,550 the month before. Foreclosed houses also decreased in price about 5.5 percent from $161,875 in August to $153,000 last month.
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Total home resales jumped about 10.3 percent from 7,505 in August to 8,280 last month, but foreclosures accounted for about 44 percent, or 3,655, of those transactions.
"That's not going to go away for a while," said Jay Butler, director of realty studies at ASU's Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at the Polytechnic campus. "(Foreclosures) may slow a little bit because there's a lot of potential rescue programs sitting out there."
Traditional home resales jumped by about 9.9 percent from 4,210 in August to 4,625 last month. That's the second-highest month this year, Butler said.
"We were at 4,695 in July, so it's not that far off."
The decline in prices was driven largely by the high number of vacant houses in certain pockets of the Valley, experts said.
"(In) certain areas in the Valley we're seeing some stabilization (in prices), and then (in) other areas we're still seeing a slight decline," said Patti Haugland, an agent with Sonoran Fine Properties.
Haugland said the lower prices are a reflection that sanity is returning to the market after values were overinflated during the housing bubble. "People overpaid," she said. "People were getting crazy bidding against investors trying to snatch up these properties."
One of the upsides in the ASU report was that declining prices are attracted buyers, especially those in the lower income ranges. They're also drawing more investors who anticipate a rise in prices in the coming years, according to the report.
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