Measuring the housing market

Housing data remain mostly bleak as Valley awaits mortgage-relief details

by Catherine Reagor - Feb. 25, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Most key indicators used to track the Valley's housing market are still going the wrong way, but there is one measure of the market that has begun to defy the downturn.

Pending listings, which are home sales in negotiation or under contract, are up 90 percent in the Valley.

Real-estate agent Michael Orr, who tracks Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service data, said there are currently about 9,600 pending sales in the system. If all of those pending sales - or even most of them - turn into actual closings, March and April could be good months for the Valley's housing market.

Here are the Valley's other latest housing data:

• New-home sales, or closings, fell 47 percent in January from December 2008, reports RL Brown's Phoenix Housing Market Letter.

• Home building hasn't picked up after slowing dramatically last fall. There were 301 single-family permits issued across metropolitan Phoenix in January, according to the Housing Market Letter.

• Metro Phoenix posted a 34 percent decline in home prices during the last three months of 2008, according to the Standard and Poor's/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index released Tuesday. Las Vegas and San Francisco were right behind the Valley, with drops of more than 31 percent.

Nationally, home prices plunged more than 18 percent during the quarter from the prior-year period, the largest drop in the index's 21-year history.

Help is on the way

Federal help is on the way for the housing market.

There's the new $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers, which should spur sales; next month, $121 million in Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds will be coming to Arizona to help areas hardest hit by foreclosures; and final details for the plan to aid both people facing foreclosure and those who can't refinance because of falling home prices will be unveiled March 4.

The economic-stimulus package should help about 70,000 Arizonans keep their jobs or find a new ones, which means more people will be able to buy homes or keep paying their mortgages.

If you have questions about the new federal housing plan and whom it will help, go to azcentral.com/realestate and click on "Leave a question for Catherine Reagor."

Housing director departs

Fred Karnas resigned as director of Arizona's Housing Department last week, and he's already in Washington, D.C., for his new job. Karnas is a now senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Karnas' parting comment: "All state agencies have to deal with Arizona's budget shortfall, but the Department of Housing is looking at a cut that's disproportionate. Look forward: If the Housing Trust Fund is devastated, there won't be the help for the homeless and the first-time home buyers (that) there has been in Arizona for the past several years."

The Arizona Housing Trust Fund is facing a $29 million cut from its 2009 budget of $33 million.