Arizona Home Prices PLUNGE
December 6, 2007
Post Tags: Arizona-Home-Prices-Plunge , hazmat-suit , Tucson-Plunging-Real-Estate-Market
PLUNGE I tell you, they Plunge like sticking your big toe in the water and saying you went for a swim.
It seems like there is a lot of plunging going on in the media. Plunging AZ Home Prices Cut into Gains.
PHOENIX — The continued rapid fall of housing prices in Arizona has now wiped out any gains of the past year and is starting to eat into the appreciated values homeowners saw in the last five.
. . .
Of all the individual communities monitored, only Tucson home prices actually showed some sign of life, rising nearly a percentage point in the last quarter.
But even in Tucson, OFHEO said the soft market is taking its toll.
A comment to this story is very fitting.
Let’s see. The prices of homes in Tucson have actually increased defying the national trend. I would think that this would be the headline. It is actually quite remarkable. As for the rest of Az. – A $200,000 house now worth only $197.440. What an immense tragedy. Yet the headline uses the word PLUNGES. Keep pouring gasoline on what is yet a small blaze Star.
I think someone thought this earlier article US Home Prices Plunge 4.5% had a nice sound to it so they wanted to see if they could bring the PLUNGE word down to a more local level. So we have Plunging values. Oh, wait, those don’t apply to Tucson. ALL REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL! The local angle in this:
“LOCAL ANGLE
The Tucson market isn’t included in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, but the trend is familiar.
The median price of homes sold through the Tucson Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service in the third quarter was $219,000, down just under 1 percent from $220,900 in the third quarter of 2006.”
It seems to me it is time for the media, and especially the “Arizona Daily Star” to take a Plunge into reality.
Everywhere I go people are asking me about the market. “Oh isn’t it terrible?” “How are you doing?” “Are you going to survive this market?” YES we are going to survive! No, we are thriving, as I’ve stated here we had one of busiest month on 2007 in November, and December and January are shaping up to be almost as busy, if not as busy.
Only people that for some unforeseen circumstance bought in the last two years and now have to sell might, I SAY MIGHT!, have an issue. If you haven’t been using your home as an ATM machine the past few years and you want or need to sell your home you should be fine.
Buyers, thinking the Tucson Market is Flooded, and homes are Languishing on the market. . . We still find many homes “On the Market” but not “For Sale” today. We have qualified buyers ready to buy, but there is no keysafe. Showing by appointment only when convenient to the seller AND IT IS NEVER CONVENIENT! Those are homes that just skew the statistics everyone is so fond of quoting. And I won’t go into the number of homes out there that you want to get on a hazmat suit just to enter. No I’m not going to go into that today.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Hi Dave – I was waiting to read your feedback in response to that article to keep my reality in check! All this doom and gloom makes 2008 look terrible for those of us planning to sell in the spring, and having your insight puts me back on track. Glad to hear you’re having a great end of 2007 – hoping that continues when we’re ready to sell in 2008!
December 6th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Erin,
Good to hear from you. It took me awhile to get to it. There has been so much negative press, and it is all the same kind of thing. Over and Over again.
Tucson is doing fine and will continue to do very good, the article on page 1 of the Arizona Daily Star today is right on. Of course they cast it in a negative light (as much as possible, but it is exactly what I’ve been saying for more than a year. “Pima population growth to slow – - – microscopically”
Here are the points from the sidebar which explain why this isn’t a bad thing and why prices aren’t dropping like they are in other parts of the country.
1. The mortgage meltdown won’t stop our population growth.
2. There’s enough housing to handle growth for the next 1-2 years.
3. People are moving here for reasons other than employment.
4. A lot of them are bringing nest eggs with them.
5. The slight growth downtick we will experience will be invisible.
The link to this article and the comments should be in the left navigation.