Home prices rising faster in Phoenix than rest of country, report says

PHOENIX – Home prices in the Phoenix area have been rising faster than the rest of the country, according to a new sales report.

That’s good news for Valley sellers and bad news for buyers.

The median sale price of a Phoenix metro home was $254,000 for the second quarter of 2018, a 9 percent increase over same period last year, according to research released Thursday by ATTOM Data Solutions.

“The market is still pumping along very rapidly in the Phoenix market,” Daren Blomquist, ATTOM senior vice president, told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

The national average was slightly more at $255,000, an all-time high. That was an increase of 6.3 percent from a year ago, the slowest annual appreciation since the second quarter of 2016.

Blomquist said the Phoenix average is just 1 percent under the record high of $257,700 set in the second quarter of 2006. And it was a 133 percent increase from when the marketed bottomed out in the first quarter of 2001.

Phoenix homeowners who sold in the second quarter of 2018 had owned their houses an average of 8.24 years. That’s the longest seen since 2000, Blomquist said.

“People are staying in their homes longer, not just because they had to, which was the case in the wake of the recession as people lost a lot of value in their homes, but really I think more voluntarily now,” he said.

That reluctance to sell contributed to lower inventories and higher prices, Blomquist said.

Those who do put their houses on the market have been cleaning up. Phoenix home sales for the quarter netted an average profit of $69,000, a return of 37 percent. Both of those numbers were the highest since the third quarter of 2007.

“If you did sell, you’d be making a lot of money in Phoenix,” Blomquist said.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Jeremy Foster contributed to this report.

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