High Foreclosure Rate And Unemployment Make Housing Recovery Hard To Read

The Phoenix resale market slowed a bit in May when compared to April, possibly because activity spiked last month as the federal first-time home buyer program came to a close, according to Jay Butler, associate professor of real estate and author of the monthly Realty Studies Report from the W. P. Carey School of Business. And though foreclosures as a percentage of the market are continuing to decline, the actual number of foreclosures is still quite high, he said. Even hopeful signs, like the recent increases in median price, are connected to foreclosures — in this case because foreclosures on high price homes pulled the median up. So where will Phoenix be in the fall? Hard to say, according to Butler, because we’ve never been here before. (9:37)