Yes it’s a good time to buy a home in Phoenix. Blog over. Thanks for reading. Just kidding. I recently came across an article from Axios about how the pandemic supercharged the housing market. I think it is a decent read and has some good information letting you know more about what the market has done the past few years.
So, let’s dig a little deeper on the question about being a good time to buy a home in the Phoenix area.
Working Virtually…
Before COVID, many people worked from their Employer’s office. COVID hit and that changed the workspace entirely. More people working from home. More people needing space at home to find a workspace. Even the transformation of ADUs (which by the way, we’ve always had them–we just like coming up with “new” popular names). So more people working from home, which could mean more people in areas they didn’t like wanting to buy a place to work from during bad weather.
Hello, Phoenix. Sunshine almost every day out of the year. Beats Seattle rain and gloominess. Beats Chicago’s horrendous winters and summers for that matter. Beats even California’s pricing and other issues.
So, then we saw Buyers from all these areas and more, enter our market, and BOOM, prices accelerated and peaked around April 2022.
Low Rates…
What was also happening during this time was most interest rates on home purchases were sub 4%. Whether you paid $300k for a home or $3,000,000-a 4% rate is crazy low. And it sure beats the rates we see today in the 6s and 7s.
I Want New!!
You will see in the article that it reports Phoenix is at the top of the list for number of new home permits that were issued over the past 5 years. After building so much pre crash, there was so pent up demand that we then exploded with new home growth.
I’m Waiting….Is It A Good Time Or Not?
So we are up by about 50% since 2020–is it a good time to buy? Real estate is cyclical. That does not always mean what goes up will come down. Or if it does, the amount of down, might not be what you want or expect. But what is cyclical is the market conditions. What at 1 moment can be a seller’s market can become a buyer’s market. Or a weaker seller’s market. As of writing of this blog, and yes there are sub markets which are different, the entire Phoenix area continues to lean towards being a Buyer’s market.
That will not always remain the case. Let’s look at an example:
Home is listed for 500k. You can probably be able to purchase it for 495ish and have the Seller pay 2-3% of your closing costs. And you can use that to get a lower rate/lower payment. Fast forward to whatever time period, it is unlikely that home will sell for 495. It probably will sell for 500-510 and the Seller will pay 0 closing costs. And you will be competing against multiple Buyers.
So what’s more important? Waiting for the market to come down to get more of what you want? Or squeezing what you can out of what there is? I’d go for the latter and say yes it’s a good time to buy a home in Phoenix as of March 2025. Will it get better? Dunno. Is it worth waiting? I say no.
By the way, if you are looking for more info about the North Phoenix area, the #1 Community website there is is right here about North Phoenix. And you can always use this website to search all available homes for sale in North Phoenix too!
Don’t forget to call me when you are ready to start shopping for a home. I am ready to help 🙂