Arizona Real Estate Notebook

(See recent posts on Phoenix Case-Shiller Home Price Index.)

Home prices fell 5.3% from November to December according to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index for Phoenix, Arizona. The Case Shiller Index for Phoenix is about what is was in September 2003.

Metropolitan Phoenix home prices at the peak in June 2006 were 84% more expensive than in December 2008.

Below are my comments from last December and they still hold true.

We probably won’t see prices of Phoenix homes strengthen until February or March (and those Case-Shiller numbers won’t be published until 2 months later). I’m guessing that by June there will be a lot of buzz about Phoenix home prices having bottomed out reflecting strong Spring sales and, in fact, that may be true in some areas of metropolitan Phoenix.

As always, the Case-Shiller index obscures the large differences within metro Phoenix sub-markets. This web site, Arizona Real Estate Notebook, is the best I’ve seen for allowing you to look at real estate trends by zip code and to tease out trends within metropolitan Phoenix.

Phoenix Home Price Index

We’re getting so close to the index’s 100 value I wanted to see what it looked like during the 1990′s.

These indices are a little funky to figure out. A city’s home price value on January 2000 is given an index value of 100. The index for a particular city is very good at showing the changes in home values for that city. You can’t, however, compare one city to another, except to compare how their prices have changed since January 2000.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are calculated monthly using a three-month moving average and published with a two month lag.