Mindless Propaganda: Phoenix Housing Market Prices to Recover by 2015

01-28-2011 • AZcentral.com

Metro Phoenix home values won't recover to pre-boom levels until 2015, according to industry experts. The latest forecasts for the housing market's recovery have been pushed out by another year because of slower-than-expected job and population growth and a bigger glut of home foreclosures than anyone expected. Phoenix's housing recovery will remain slow until enough new jobs are created to attract tens of thousands of new residents annually to the region again, economic-growth experts said at Urban Land Institute Arizona's annual forecast conference on Thursday. Real-estate experts said the Valley is likely still only halfway through its foreclosure problem, meaning it could drag on another three to five years and result in nearly 300,000 houses being taken back by lenders. Since the start of the economic downturn in mid-2007, more than 150,000 houses have been foreclosed. "Phoenix needs jobs. No jobs, no housing-market recovery," said Gadi Kaufmann, managing director of Robert Charles Lesser & Co., a Washington, D.C.-based real-estate consulting firm. This year's theme of the annual conference hosted by the real-estate think tank was "It's all about jobs." The conference has become a signature event for Arizonans involved in the real-estate industry because of the range of expert speakers and their frank projections. Kaufmann said the region's home prices won't rebound even to 2003's pre-boom level until 2015. The area's housing boom ran from 2004 to early 2007, when homes prices shot up 50 percent.