The Phoenix Real Estate market is not dead!  The September numbers indicate that resale homes increased sales by almost 70% compared to a year ago, but New Home sales decreased by 15% from last September.  Almost half of the resale activity came from Bank Owned properties however.  In detail, there were 1,877 new home sales in September, 2,890 conventional resale sales, 2,859 Bank Owned sales, and 98 condo conversion sales.  The average price in September was a little over $260,000 for new homes, $221,000 for all resale homes (Bank owned properties only sales average was down to $163,000), and a bit over $159,000 for the condo conversion sales.
     Prices are dropping!  According to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price report, the Phoenix area lead the nation in home price drop with a fall of 30.7% from August 2007 to August 2008.  In addition, the Arizona Republic reported on October 26, 2008 that their study of the zip code sales data showed that median housing prices in most zip codes have dropped to where they were in early 2005 or late 2004.  With more than 30,000 homes being foreclosed on year to date (compared with only 1,500 in 2006), I would certainly say that price pressure will continue to keep negative pressure on home prices.  Not what anybody wants to hear unless you are a Buyer without a home to sell first in our area.