My Home Advise

The Cave Creek real estate market, a small residential market enclosed within the larger Phoenix area and Maricopa Valley markets, seemed to be showing signs of a potential recovery while still remaining quite weak. According to a May 22, 2010 article from the Arizona Republic, “April figures for existing-home sales in metro Phoenix reveal several promising shifts for those searching for signs of a housing-market recovery. The overall number of home sales in the region continued to hover near record lows last month.” The piece by Catherine Reagor continued to note that “The return of average buyers to the market suggests more people are buying for the long haul rather than for a quick resale. The shift away from foreclosures also means more Valley homeowners were able to sell their houses last month.”

The rate of foreclosures in the greater Phoenix area, which previously had been seriously harming Cave Creek homes for sale, declined relative to the number of home sales. According to a June 1, 2010 article from DQ News, “Phoenix region home sales rose to a four-year high in April and posted an above-average gain over March as first-time buyers and investors continued to dominate the sub-$200,000 market. The region’s overall median sale price rose above the year-ago level for the second consecutive month, reflecting widening price stability and fewer foreclosures and other properties selling below $100,000, a real estate information service reported.” The article, also published in the NuWire Investor, went on to say that “Buyers paid a median $135,889 last month for all new and resale houses and condos that closed escrow in the Phoenix metro area, up 0.7 percent from March and up 8.7 percent from $125,000 a year ago, according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego, which tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.”

The commercial aspect of the Cave Creek and Phoenix real estate markets may still be in serious trouble, according to a May 30, 2010 article from the Arizona Republic. This piece, written by J. Craig Anderson, noted that “Arizona’s housing market is deep into the process of flushing out its bad mortgage debt. But lenders and borrowers of troubled commercial real-estate loans continued to live a lie. Commercial real-estate brokers have coined a phrase, ‘extend and pretend,’ to describe lenders’ sluggish response to the billions of dollars in bad commercial mortgages on their books.”

The El Dorado Hills real estate market, an outlying portion of the Sacramento Metropolitan Statistical Area market, has been facing continued difficulties in the first half of the 2010 fiscal year. According to a June 3, 2010 article from the Central Valley Business Times, “The rate that families are losing their homes to foreclosure is easing in some parts of the Central Valley, especially where the mortgage meltdown came first and was the most ferocious, according to figures Thursday from real estate information company CoreLogic of Santa Ana.” The piece went on to note that, in a more negative development for the narrower Sacramento region “Foreclosure rates in the Sacramento metropolitan statistical area, which includes the Arden-Arcade and Roseville areas, increased in April over the same period last year, according to CoreLogic.”

The number of El Dorado Hills homes for sale which actually went into escrow declined in the month of April along with the rest of the Sacramento Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to a May 20, 2010 article from the Sacramento Business Journal, “Home sales in the four-county Sacramento region were slightly lower in April than the same month last year, according to figures released Thursday from real estate information company MDA DataQuick.” The piece, written by Michael Shaw, went on to say that “There were 2,873 home sales of all types, including new homes, and existing homes and condos, in April compared with 3,036 sales a year ago, the company reported. Home prices remained relatively unchanged from a year ago, with Sacramento County prices 4.5 percent higher than a year ago at a median $172,500. Placer County median prices were at $287,000 in April, down 2.7 percent, while El Dorado prices were down 4.5 percent to $300,000.”

Foreclosures in the El Dorado Hills region spiked considerably in the month of April, according to a May 11, 2010 report on All Things Considered. This piece noted that “Foreclosures increased 46 percent in April, compared to a year earlier with almost 1,800 homes going back to lenders or sold at auction in the Sacramento region. Foreclosures.com says Sacramento County accounted for almost half of those foreclosed homes, with Elk Grove, North Natomas, and south Sacramento among the hardest-hit communities. But El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties also had more foreclosures last month than a year ago.”