By Nick Timiraos | The Wall Street Journal
To understand why the U.S. housing market this year isn’t providing the lift many economists expected, look to Phoenix.
Among the cities most battered by the 2006 bust, Phoenix was the first to snap back in 2011. Prices, off by 56% from peak, then rebounded sharply, trimming that drop by a third. The number of homes in some stage of foreclosure has fallen to about 4,300 today from more than 50,000 four years ago.
Now, prices and sales are cooling off. Inventories of homes listed for sale have climbed to their highest level in three years while the number of houses sold in June fell 12% from a year earlier. The rebound during the past two years “gave people a false sense of how quick we would recover,” said Jim Belfiore, who runs a local homebuilder consulting firm.
