Thursday, November 01, 2007

Foreclosure rates double, one-third of Phoenix homes for sale vacant

U.S. foreclosure rates are double what they were last year, and the top states for foreclosures are:

1. Nevada
2. California
3. Florida
4. Michigan
5. Ohio
6. Colorado
7. Arizona
8. Georgia
9. Indiana
10. Texas

36% of homes for sale in Phoenix are vacant, either due to speculators getting caught holding the bag or people who have bought and moved to new homes without finding a buyer for their previous home. Average time to sell (for those houses that are actually selling) is 94 days, versus 73 days a year ago.

Zillow seemed to have stopped updating Phoenix-area home prices on September 11, but they've now given an update with October 25 data, and my home's "zestimate" value has dropped by 3.6% since the September 11 data.

2 comments:

Michael Norton said...

I love this quote: "It's a great time to buy, but sellers have a lot of competition now." from Jim Sexton, president of the Phoenix real-estate firm John Hall & Associates.

Since the article was published 31 Oct things have gotten worse for sellers. So it must be an even better time to buy now!

Lippard said...

It's always a great time to buy, according to real estate agents.

If house prices are going up, they're going to keep going up, so you should buy.

If house prices are going down, we're near a bottom, so you should buy.

It's kind of like the excuses used by purveyors of quack remedies that don't do anything--if you get better, it worked. If you get worse, you need to increase your dosage until you get better. If you die, you didn't use enough quickly enough. Since disease progression has ups and downs, they can explain any outcome in a way favorable to their remedy.