It’s Friday, and in Arizona, home equity is "slip-sliding away": [Hat tip MR!]
New figures Thursday from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight show the value of an average home in the state slid 5.5 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period a year earlier. So a home that was worth $200,000 a year ago is now valued at just $189,000.That’s the fourth biggest drop in the nation and the largest for Arizona since the federal agency has been reporting numbers since 1985.
The drop is not bad news for everyone however. For renters who plan on getting back in the market when the dust settles, that’s $11,000 less they have to pay for that former $200,000 home.
What other news should we be looking at today? We welcome your links, comments, thoughts- anything and everything housing related.
As always, this thread’s for you!
This info is for anyone unaware of the situation in Maricopa and Queen Creek, AZ. These two cities have far surpassed the depreciation mentioned in this article:
Queen Creek: http://www.foreclosureexpert.info/2008/05/a-tale-of-two-c.html
Maricopa:
http://www.foreclosureexpert.info/2008/05/a-tale-of-2-cit.html
Both Queen Creek and Maricopa, AZ have surpassed the depreciation mentioned in this article (by a long shot):
http://www.foreclosureexpert.info/2008/05/a-tale-of-two-c.html
i say keep diving!! i’d like a nicer, larger house and would rather loose 10% more on the cheaper home i am in now to save 10% on the next one i buy. i know so many people that have been freakin out about all of this and i try to explain that it is a good thing if they are lookin to “step up” into their next house….but they just don’t seem to understand.
Azsaluki
I agree - if you are trying to move up, it is a good thing. Except if you are trying to buy a house with a mortgage.
Markets don’t like uncertainty. That is a very bad thing (both going up and coming down).
As such - the lenders, who depend on appraisals for their risk, don’t know what to do. They have tightened restrictions on both time and distance for comps, and sales have droppped, doubly compounding things.
Roller coaster markets (up and down) are not good (except for a few in the short term).
I think that some areas lack any value. Am I really saying zero? Maybe. In the furthest fringes of QueenCreek-Pinal in the era of peak oil, what possible reason would there be to buy one of these things?
If you are retired, there are nicer options. If you work outside of the fields of prison guarding or Wal-Mart, what is there? Driving roundtrip on two-lane roads just for the joy of (eventually) joining the freeway crowd. That’s right, you have to struggle to even get to the crowded freeways further in.
And this is coming from someone who lives in a fringe area. But having explored QC-Pinal, my exurban burg of Surprise is a commuter’s paradise in comparison. By timing things correctly, I usually arrive around Central and Jefferson from near the 303 and Greenway in 40 minutes. I commute fewer days than most do, but there is even an express bus option for M-F 8-5ers.
So, my point is, while fringe obviously means using more costly gas, extreme fringe in areas that are light on infrastructure is really undesirable. And in era of recession and shrinking government revenue, the chances of that infrastructure improving anytime soon are remote.
Three years ago approx, Arizonans were gaining home equity at the fastest rate ever. It is all perception.
“…the value of an average home in the state slid 5.5 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period a year earlier. So a home that was worth $200,000 a year ago is now valued at just $189,000.”
This seems way, way, waaaay off to me. Home prices in greater PHX have dropped by much more than 5.5% in the past year.
Between Butler’s funny numbers (and wondering the ebst way to tease out the Trustee sales to arrive at meaningful figures) and so many other conflicting statistics (sometimes due to sloppy reporting) we are faced with a great deal of misinformation.