The Phoenix real estate market is suddenly experiencing something it hasn’t seen in years: Bidding wars. Phoenix used to represent just about the worst of the US housing market, with suburbs full of empty homes and foreclosures running so high that investors gathered like vultures at the county courthouse to snap up distressed properties.
Despite the current boom, the market still has a long way to go. The median price is now about $135,000 (US). That’s still well below the peak in 2006, when it reached $265,000, and it puts prices at about the same level as in 2000. And although the number of existing homes sold in April across the country rose to an annualized rate of 4.6 million, economists say a healthy US housing market would see almost 6 million sales of existing homes a year.