The housing market in the Phoenix area has had some amazing roller coaster type rides in recent years. As you have probably heard, we had a very rapid spike of a buying frenzy in 2004 thru most of 2005 causing prices of homes to sky rocket out of control. What goes up must come down in most cases and this was so true in our real estate market. When this buying frenzy and out of control pricing ended it was blunt and abrupt. The housing market all but stopped. What happens then? Prices started to plummet. Slowly at first and then it kept dropping and dropping. At least a year longer than most people could foresee. Here we are middle of 2009 and we hope we have finally seen the end of our prices decreasing beyond our imaginations. Builders have folded since they could not compete with the resale prices being below their build costs. Many people caught up in the buying frenzy have been forced to short sale their homes or be foreclosed on due to many circumstances from job loss to the end of an interest only arm type loan to simply caught in one of the worst loans you could imagine.

Home prices continued to drop and investors and others that were either moving to the area or first time home buyers and others not caught up in all of this are loving how much home they can get for their money and they are literally swiping them up almost as fast as they hit the market, if they are priced right and look nice. Even those that are in dis-repair are being bought, updated and re-sold as nice move in ready homes. We still see so many lender owned and short sale properties on the market but we are beginning to see them go off the market at a much higher rate. Beside all the obvious reasons for this, it is believed that since the regulations for real estate agents listing short sales has recently been implemented to only allowing a seller to sign one contract and one get sent to the bank would have to be a big factor for so many homes coming off the market.

Naturally, this is still a great time to grab up one of those great deals or if you have the gut for it become a landlord or maybe do a fix and flip. This takes more than a little bit of understanding so be sure you are stable and can handle having two mortgages for more than a month while waiting for an investment to turn or rent. The first time home buyers rebate from the government is coming to an end since the home has to be closed by the end of November for the tax credit so many first time buyers need to get a home and get it closed. Short sales will not work in these cases anymore as the negotiations would likely go past the deadline.

Happy buying and Selling!