Phoenix Housing Market Remains Incapable Of Moving On From The Crash

03-10-2011 • AZcentral.com

The Phoenix-area housing market remains incapable of moving on from a devastating crash in home values that began about five years ago, according to new home-resale data from Arizona State University. Jay Butler, an associate professor of real estate, was author of the report on home-resale activity, released Wednesday. The report said the long delay in market recovery was a two-pronged monster. The first issue relates to unresolved problems from the housing market's past. The second concerns more recent economic challenges, such as job losses and relatively stagnant population growth. Among the 8,565 single-family home-resale transactions in February, 3,650 were foreclosures, Butler's report said. Of the 4,915 non-foreclosure transactions, 40 percent of those were resales of recently foreclosed-on homes. Foreclosure-related activity represented about two-thirds of the market transactions in February, said Butler, of ASU's W.P. Carey School of Business.