Valley Home Prices on the Upswing

Valley home prices on the upswing
With fewer houses for sale, buyer competition mounts

By Catherine Reagor
The Republic

Home prices are climbing in metroPhoenix faster than they have since the housing boom.

Some parts of the region experienced home-value increases of 5 to 10 percent a month this year because of a shortage of homes for sale that is sparking bidding wars between investors and regular buyers armed with pre-approvals for mortgages.

This emerging recovery of homeprices in the Phoenix area started late last year and has been building each month.

Home values still have a long way to go to recover to pre-boom levels. MetroPhoenix’s median existing-home price is currently $124,500, about $20,000 below the area’s median in 2002 and well below the $267,000 from the height of the boom in summer 2006.

But many housing-market analysts see this as the beginning of a long-awaited recovery for the area’s battered housing market. The uptick in prices is enticing more buyers who have been waiting for the market’s bottom to purchase a home and now have likely missed it.