by Parker Leavitt – Mar. 19, 2010 10:24 AM
The Arizona Republic
Home prices across the Valley took another hard hit in 2009, but real-estate data show the Southeast Valley is still faring better than most parts of Phoenix and the West Valley.
Twenty-seven Maricopa County communities and 116 local ZIP codes all posted a decrease in home-sale prices in 2009, the third consecutive year of declines, according to data from Glendale-based the Information Market.
The median home price, including new and existing homes, fell by 18 percent in Gilbert and Chandler, 21 percent in Tempe, and 30 percent in Mesa.
By comparison, the median price in Phoenix plummeted 53 percent, to $90,000.
If there is a glimmer of hope buried within the somber statistics, it likely would be found in the Southeast Valley, experts say.
Good schools and close proximity to employment, retail centers and churches are helping the area weather the storm, said Jay Butler, associate professor of real estate at Arizona State University.
“It is a more stable area because it has some of the things you don’t see in other areas,” Butler said. “It has all the plusses.”
Of the 25 hardest-hit Valley ZIP codes, 23 were in Phoenix or the West Valley, and two were in west Mesa.
None of the 15 ZIP codes that roughly cover the areas of Tempe, Chandler and Gilbert was among the 50 hardest hit, and many of the most stable ZIP codes were found in the Southeast Valley.
“Chandler and Gilbert have been holding on pretty well,” Butler said. “They fell, but not as far as some of the others did.”
A flurry of real-estate activity has followed the drop in home prices, and the volume of home sales has picked up over the past year.
Nearly 7,000 homes were sold in Mesa in 2009, up 33 percent from the previous year. And more new homes were sold in Gilbert – 884 – than in any other Valley municipality.
Skyler Smith, 23, said he bought a home last year in Queen Creek because “we were looking for something close to work and school and also in a decent neighborhood.”
Smith bought the house in October with his wife, Kari. The couple now has a 4-month-old daughter, Ellie.
Smith said his house is around the corner from an elementary school, where his daughter can safely walk when she’s older.
“That’s going to be nice, being able to walk around the corner not having to worry about if she’s going to get in trouble or kidnapped,” he said.
The couple also looked at houses in Gilbert and Mesa, but said Phoenix was never an option.
“When I think of Phoenix, I also think of a rundown and full of crime kind of a city,” he said. “I don’t know if we would have wanted to go to a place like that.”
Butler said the Valley-wide acceleration in home buying last year can be attributed to the flood of inexpensive foreclosure properties now on the market.
Young families and first-time homebuyers are benefiting from the decline in home values, and an $8,000 federal tax rebate has also encouraged more low-end buying, experts say.
To some degree, greater activity in the real-estate marketplace can be taken as a positive sign, but the issue runs much deeper than that, Butler said.
“You really have to look at why people are buying in a certain area,” he said. “Are they actually moving in or just buying it to flip?”
Potential homebuyers need to be cautious and carefully examine the quality of a neighborhood before making a purchase, Butler said.
Unkempt yards, “For Rent” and foreclosure signs, and dark windows at night are all signs of a “forbidden zone,” he said.
Nearly 60 percent of homes sold in Glendale and 57 percent in Phoenix last year were foreclosures. In Mesa, foreclosures totaled about 45 percent of all home sales.
In Gilbert, Chandler and Tempe, the foreclosure percentages hovered around 30 percent.
“It’s a little bit less of an issue in the Southeast communities,” Butler said. “The key is that overall it’s a good location to live in.”
