This is actually a good thing. If prices were to increase in 2014 as much as they have increased over the last 30 months, the Phoenix housing market would be overpriced by the end of the year.
“This past November was the weakest month for sales in several years,” explains the report’s author, Mike Orr, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at the W. P. Carey School of Business. “Demand is drastically lower in a slide that started in July. By the beginning of January, demand had weakened enough to drop even below the limited supply here, despite the fact that we have 15 to 20 percent fewer active listings than normal.”
For Phoenix home sellers, we’re back to the normal slugfest it takes to your house sold… but at phenomenally higher prices than 30 months ago.