Southeast Valley housing market shows signs of hope

The bad news: housing prices as a whole in 2011 declined in 25 of the 29 communities in Maricopa County, and in the Southeast Valley, Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert are among those 25. The good news: new-house prices in that time were up in seven of the 15 communities that added new homes, and Gilbert and Mesa are among those seven while Chandler and Tempe are starting to see bidding wars for some properties. The better news: there has been a general increase in median resale prices in the past six months, with much of the increase coming in the past weeks. "The buzz in the real-estate business now is how difficult it is to get an offer accepted," said RL Brown, an Arizona homebuilding analyst and publisher of the Phoenix Housing Market Letter. "The trend is definitely up." The reason, according to housing-market analyst Mike Orr, is that housing supply has dropped dramatically across the Valley in recent months.

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