By Catherine Reagor | The Republic | azcentral.com
A few years ago, it seemed all metro Phoenix homeowners had a foreclosure on their street — or were facing losing their own house.
Everybody seemed to know someone who was battling with a lender and trying to complete a short sale instead of losing their home to foreclosure.
Those days are gone, and most real-estate talk is about rising home prices again.
Foreclosures have plummeted 86 percent since the peak of the housing crisis in 2010. Short sales are down 68 percent from last year’s peak. And home prices are up 65 percent since hitting the crash low point in September 2011.
“Phoenix’s real-estate market is presently transitioning from the highest number of foreclosures in our history to a period where we’ll see the lowest number of foreclosures in our history,” said Tom Ruff, real-estate analyst with the Information Market, a data service owned by the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service.
In March 2010, a record 5,100 Valley homes were taken back by lenders. In September, 697 houses were foreclosed on, the lowest monthly tally since June 2007.
Most of the houses that have gone back to lenders this year were bought in the boom years of 2004-06, according to foreclosure data.
Another bubble?
Related: Valley Home Values for 2012-2013
