By Kristena Hansen | Phoenix Business Journal
As the chronic shortage of homes for sale worsened last month, the greater Phoenix housing market kicked off home-buying season with dramatic price gains and a drop in investor interest, according to the latest report Thursday from Arizona State University.
The supply problem shoved median Valley home prices to $170,000 in February — up by 36.5 percent year-over-year, and by nearly 5 percent from the previous month, the report showed.
The average price per square foot — a metric commonly used by Realtors — was $110.44, up almost 31 percent year-over-year.
Exasperation with the limited supply of existing homes for sale continued to push buyers toward the new-home market, causing the sales volume of newly built homes to climb 67 percent from February 2012 to February 2013, the report said. New-home sales almost doubled their market share from a year earlier, from 6 percent to 11 percent.
The price gains and short supply indicate sellers are maintaining full control of the market, especially for homes priced at the low end. But as bargain deal — whether through short sales or foreclosures — are increasingly harder to come by, investor activity is seeing a “significant down trend,” said the report’s author, Michael Orr, a real estate expert at ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business.
After reaching a high point last summer, investor purchases accounted for less than 30 percent of all home sales in Maricopa County last month — down from 37 percent a year ago.
If you’d like to discuss real estate matters, contact RLG founder Jordan Rose, jrose@roselawgroup.com
