The Arizona Republic - October 2006Pinal County continued its housing value surge in the first eight months of 2006, with nearly all areas seeing double-digit gains.
And resale homes in several places again outpriced new homes, as sales volume appeared to be slipping. Former hot spots also saw dips in the rate of gain for median prices for resale homes.
In some cases, resale homes in the urbanizing rural county saw higher median prices by tens of thousands of dollars than new homes in Gold Canyon/Queen Valley area (ZIP code 85218), Arizona City (85223), Maricopa (85239) and the Queen Creek/Santan area (85242), or priced just a few thousand dollars less in areas like Santan (85243).
As the housing market has cooled, homeowners thinking they could cash in after just a couple of years have been frustrated. They've been competing for buyers against home builders, who have been cutting prices on bigger homes, offering free upgrades such as swimming pools, fancy floor tiles and granite countertops, and enticing brokers to bring clients by sometimes offering double-digit commissions.
Median prices were still up through the end of August for new and resale homes.
But former hot spots like Queen Creek/Santan and farther south at Santan in northern Pinal County saw median price gains of just 5.2 and 4.1 percent, respectively, for the first eight months of the year, compared with gains of 51.3 and 57.5 percent from 2004 to 2005.
Jay Butler, director of the Arizona Real Estate Center at Arizona State University, said a lack of infrastructure, as well as aggressive builders, have made it tough on homeowners.
"It seems to be taking a bigger hit because of traffic congestion," Butler said.
Fast-growing 3-year-old Maricopa had a median resale price gain of 43 percent from 2004 to 2005, but cooled to just a 13.3 percent increase as homeowners battled builders for buyers. The city, though, seemed a lock for a sales-volume increase for new and resale homes, while Queen Creek/Santan and Santan seemed likely to have a dip.
Pinal County's biggest resale median price gain was 90 percent, to $190,000 in Eloy (85231), which also had the biggest dollar gain, $90,000, and is poised soon for a building boom. The highest median resale price was $392,000 at the unincorporated Saddlebrooke (85739) area, in southeast Pinal County near Tucson.
The biggest new-home median price gain was 55.4 percent to $485,818 at Saddlebrooke, which also had the biggest dollar gain, a whopping $173,284, and the highest median price.
