Paradise Valley is on sale at a realty office near you.
The posh community, once thought impervious to housing-market doldrums, has seen home after home come on the market – and stay there, as high-end buyers become scarce.
Since the real-estate market peaked in late 2005, home prices in Arizona’s wealthiest neighborhood have been slower to drop than those in more modest parts of the Phoenix area.
But that’s beginning to change, and real-estate brokers in the area say they are offering bargains no billionaire could resist.
“It’s a perfect time to buy,” said Jimmy Neighbors, an agent trying to sell his own Paradise Valley mansion. “There’s a ton of equity in all these homes – they’ll make a ton of money.”
Neighbors originally placed his 9,145-square-foot home on the market a year ago for $6.1 million.
After four months of waiting, he hired a real-estate agent to sell it for him and reduced the list price to $4.8 million.
Five more months passed, then Neighbors reassumed the task of selling it himself and lowered the price to just under $4 million, where it remains today.
“Available credit isn’t out there for everybody; even cash customers are holding back,” he said.
Uncertainty about the economy and financial markets might be putting some potential buyers in a wait-and-see posture, Neighbors said, but he added that the market has been softening for quite some time.
“For the past three years, it’s been kind of stagnant,” he said. “In 2005, (homes) were selling in a matter of seconds.”
Still, it’s clear that some of the deeper housing problems plaguing the region have begun to bleed into the once-insular Paradise Valley, home to celebrities including Phoenix Suns All-Star guard Steve Nash and entertainers Stevie Nicks and Alice Cooper.
Pre-foreclosure filings, while still far fewer than in the rest of the Valley, are triple what they were a year ago. So far this year, banks have initiated foreclosure proceedings on 75 of the 15-square-mile community’s roughly 7,500 homes.
And there were eight foreclosures in the first half of 2008, compared with none during the same period of 2007.
On a recent Sunday, the intersection of Lincoln Drive and Mockingbird Lane in Paradise Valley was littered with signs pointing to open houses hosted by anxious would-be home sellers and their agents.
In all, more than 670 homes in the community’s 85253 ZIP code were listed Thursday as available for sale on the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service.
Real-estate broker Walt Danley, who specializes in multimillion-dollar homes, said high-end buyers now want to know how many times a home’s price has been lowered and are interested in seeing only properties they believe have been adequately discounted to reflect market reality.
“We have some sellers who continue to reduce their prices every 30 days until they see the activity level change, showings increase and the property sells,” he said. “If a property is overpriced in this market, we don’t even get the opportunity to show it.”
One of his clients is trying to sell a 5,000-square-foot home on 2.2 pristinely landscaped and designed acres for $10 million.
The estate has been on the market since November 2005, when it was listed with a price tag of $12.6 million.
“With the issues in both the financial and real-estate market, prices have depreciated to where these properties are now incredible buys,” Danley said.
Neighbors said prices have declined slower than in other areas because many of the owners aren’t in any hurry to sell.
But that’s not the case for everyone, even in Arizona’s wealthiest ZIP code.
“There’s a few people here in Paradise Valley, too, that have no choice,” he said.
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