By Chris Parker | Phoenix New Times
Real estate fortunes are looking up in the Valley of the Sun — where the economy is tied inextricably to the housing market.
The dramatic rise in housing prices during the past two years has lifted a millstone off the backs of many once-underwater homeowners and many who work in the industry. Sometimes they’re one and the same, like Lisa Brown, a branch manager at mortgage banker AmeriFirst Financial.
“[I] lost a significant amount of income,” says Brown, who appears on the Real Estate Show on KTAR (92.3 FM) as Lisa the Lender. Brown bought her Desert Ridge residence in 2004 and a rental in Scottsdale in 2005. She also took out cash to buy other homes. In the end, she had to short-sell one of them.
“I lost sleep. I didn’t come out of my house for a few months after I short-sold,” she says. “I’m supposed to have perfect credit and give people direction on what to do with their 
home finances, and here I am losing homes and not making any money, thinking I might have to dump the two homes I have now. The only reason I didn’t is because I had renters that hung in there.”
Thanks to prices that have risen in some areas by as much as 35 percent in just the past year, Brown now is above water and able to refinance. Even though interest rates also have risen over the past year (to 4.24 percent), they’re still historically low and much better than the 6.5 percent she got nine years ago. She’s seeing more of that lately.
