Don’t miss the latest presentation from Elliot Pollack, economist. It lacks any audio but you can read between the slides.
This is why I blame Arizona home builders for a lot of the weakness in the real estate market, especially on the fringes. The Arizona real estate market peaked in the summer of 2005 and Arizona home builders have still not significantly reduced their production of homes.
The Arizona home builders are playing chicken with each other and it looks like production will not decline significantly until some of them go over the cliff.
Unfortunately, Arizona home builders have pushed a lot of their former customers over the cliff in front of them by cutting prices instead of production.
Pollack’s forecasts are certainly reasonable given the data available today, but they aren’t going to help today’s frustrated home sellers feel any better.