By Catherine Reagor | The Arizona Republic
More than 100,000 houses stood vacant across metro Phoenix barely three years ago — roughly one of every 10. Today, it’s more like one out of every 100.
Where have all the empty houses gone? Abandoned properties pockmarked virtually every neighborhood in the region in 2010, when the housing crisis peaked.
Many communities had dozens. These were the foreclosure houses, with the stark notices in the windows. Some were boarded up, with brown lawns or green pools. On the fringes of the metro area, brand-new houses sat empty — the result of a massive building boom gone bust. Rattled buyers had backed out of contracts, and hundreds of other new houses built on spec didn’t sell.
The sheer volume of empty properties did more than distress neighbors: All those houses, which eventually flooded the market, contributed to the free fall in home prices from 2009 to 2011.
Now, buyers and renters live in those places — in properties re-floored, repainted and relandscaped. The number of empty houses in the Phoenix area today stands at about 10,000, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of housing data.
In 2009 and 2010, houses were vacant for months. Now, properties generally are vacant because they are in transition between owners. The turnaround is credited to investors, who streamed in to buy dirt-cheap properties for cash. In many cases, these houses were turned into rentals for those who had lost properties to foreclosure or otherwise couldn’t afford to own. Once some of the massive amount of housing inventory was absorbed, it helped win back the confidence of some traditional buyers.
