Canadians can still find deals in Phoenix but the window is quickly closing on the bargain-priced, often foreclosed, real estate that characterized Arizona's largest city over the past five years.
"I had to apologize to my Canadians," said Linda Gerchick, of Phoenix-based Gerchick Real Estate after a recent property tour she mounted for B.C. and Alberta investors went sideways. "Property after property had already been sold," she said, "I couldn't even show them."
Gerchick, who is mounting another tour in March, estimated that Phoenix now has about a five week supply of homes for sale, compared to a three month inventory just a year ago.
According to the Phoenix Association of Realtors there were 1,632 "lender-owned" properties for sale in the city in January, compared to 2,169 during the same month last year and more than 8,500 in January of 2010. Sales of such foreclosures, at 830 homes in January, accounted for 34 per cent of the entire market, the lowest percentage since the recession started in 2007.
Phoenix home prices remain low by Calgary or Vancouver standards.
The average price per square foot is US$108 and the average detached house sells for less than US$155,000. Average foreclosure condo prices are below US$50,000 per suite, if you can find them.
Phoenix realtor Todd Smith of AZ Performance Realty, who specializes in sales to Canadaians, told a Vancouver conference this month that, by 2015, Phoenix real estate prices will be back to pre-recession levels, perhaps higher. "A house selling for the average of $154,000 today will be $275,000 by 2015," Smith forecast
