Realty Trac: Institutional Investors Leave Arizona

By Dennis Lambert
Published: Thursday, February 27, 2014 - 3:07pm
Updated: Thursday, February 27, 2014 - 3:20pm
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Institutional investors, or companies that buy at least 10 properties in a year, are leaving the Arizona housing market in larger numbers, according to new data released Thursday morning by RealtyTrac. The stats show institutional investors buying nearly 8 percent of the homes sold in Arizona last month, down from nearly 13 percent a year ago.

But, RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist said at 16.6 percent, Arizona continues to have one of the largest percentages of bank-owned homes being sold.

“Because of the low inventory overall that we’re seeing, and in Arizona the banks aren’t competing against as many other sellers when they’re selling these bank-owned properties," said Blomquist.

He said that is why the share of the marketplace for the sale of bank-owned homes was so high. Home prices in metro Phoenix, were down 1 percent last month, but Blomquist said he would not read too much into that, since prices were up 19 percent from January of last year. He said the pace of home price appreciation was not sustainable, because wages are not going up at that rate.