2009 Metro Phoenix Home Sales Summary

Well 2009 has ended, and it's time for a new year of selling real estate. Many folks thought 2009 was a pretty rough year, but it seems as though 2009 home sales in Metropolitan Phoenix wasn't so bad after all.

We finished 2009 with monthly home sales in December of 7,723, which is double the monthly sales in December of 2008 (according to information published by the Cromford Report). This made the annual total number of home sales in Metropolitan Phoenix at 92,435. This was substantially better than 2008, which was 50% lower.

Foreclosures in Metro Phoenix had a large increase to end 2009, with 5,344 recorded in December compared to 3,808 in November 2009 (according to the Information Market). The total foreclosures for 2009 ended at almost 52,000. I try to look at this in a positive way. There may have been 52,000 foreclosures this past year, but hopefully that means lots are getting pushed through and there will be fewer in the future.

Short sales had started to see a significant increase in Metro Phoenix by the end of 2009. December short sales increased 38% over November 2009. Again, perhaps the more short sales we are having now, the fewer we will have in the future.

Median home prices in Metro Phoenix have risen over the last 4 months of 2009, and the price of pending short sales are now increasing as well. These are both positive signs that the market is getting back to some normalcy.

There will come a day when all the bad loans are either foreclosed, short sold, modified, or just gone due to the sale of the property. We can only hope that 2010 brings us closer to that end. Here's to a successful 2010, even better than the small improvements we saw in the Metro Phoenix home sales for 2009.