Phoenix Home Prices Rebound, with Records Expected in 2024

Home prices across Phoenix have rallied with renewed demand, with “record highs” forecast for the new year.

The price of a typical Phoenix house rose 0.9 percent in October from a year ago, after inching up 0.6 percent from September following a 0.5 percent uptick from August, the Phoenix Business Journal reported, citing a report from CoreLogic.

“The Phoenix housing market continues to outperform at the end of 2023,” Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic, told the newspaper in an email. “With consistently strong demand in the region, home prices are likely to fully recover in 2024, posting new record highs in the coming year.”

After home prices in Phoenix ebbed over the past year, the city sprang back in the fall for year-over-year price gains. Prices for homes in Las Vegas also rebounded.

Still, the gains in the major markets of the Southwest were outpaced by the rest of the nation as a whole, as interest rate hikes subdued real estate transactions in 2023 following the region’s boom during the pandemic.

Across the nation, home prices in October rose 4.8 percent year-over-year, up from 4 percent in September, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index.

Prices in Detroit rose 8.1 percent, the highest gain for any city in Case-Shiller’s 20-City Composite. Portland, Oregon, was the only city in the group where home prices fell year-over-year.

The CoreLogic report points to an ongoing trend for Phoenix real estate.

New home sales in Phoenix rose slightly in October even as they fell 5.6 percent nationwide, according to research by R.L. Brown Housing Report. The company also found that 1,833 housing permits were issued in October, more than double the 785 permits issued a year earlier as interest rates began to take off.

Alan Jones, Phoenix division president of Miami-based home builder Lennar, told the Business Journal in November that his division was experiencing a 15 percent increase in home sales year-over-year.

He attributed the trend to the company’s willingness to buy down interest rates to better appeal to buyers.

— Dana Bartholomew