The Arizona Republic - January 2008
The median price of an existing metro-Phoenix home tumbled to $232,000 in December, an 11 percent drop from where prices were at the beginning of 2007.
Is it the market correction that real-estate analysts and economists have been expecting?
Market watchers have been saying that Valley home prices were inflated by 20 to 30 percent due to the boom.
December's median home price was the lowest since the spring of 2005. At the time, the speculator-driven housing boom was in full swing and so were bidding wars on Valley homes. The median price of an existing metro-Phoenix home in April 2005 was $221,000, according to the Realty Studies group at Arizona State University.
The Valley's median existing-home price hit a high of $267,000 in June 2006. December's median is a 13 percent drop from the peak.
Some say home prices have a little more to fall.
Based on the 6 to 10 percent Valley home prices climbed annually before the boom, $232,000 is pretty close to where the median home price would be without the boom.
The rest of the market
Experts from the many other parts of the market besides housing convened last week at the Institute of Real Estate Management/Certified Commercial Investment Member economic forecast for Phoenix.
"The mood about all of the market is cautious and guarded," said Stanley Paul Cook, the keynote speaker. Cook is a longtime real estate market watcher with Landiscor Aerial Information as well as an investor and developer.
"Vacancies across the board from office to apartments are going to rise this year, and sales prices on all those properties are bound to head down."
But he said everyone now is looking for the opportunities in a down market.
Kudos for planning
Phoenix's move to set aside 7,100 acres of open space more than three decades ago has garnered it an award from the American Planning Association.
The group is giving the city a 2008 National Planning Landmark award for its "Open Space Plan for the Phoenix Mountains."
Background comments about the award said the effort to set aside that desert land was "unprecedented" in the 1970s. Citizens led the move to preserve the land, and legislation had to be passed to fund the purchase of the preserve.
Today, the original 7,500-acre preserve, acquired for more than $70 million, includes Shaw Butte, North Mountain and Dreamy Draw Recreation Area.
