Housing market is booming for properties $2 million and up
When someone asks–How’s the housing market…the correct answer is… it depends. The housing market depends on EXACTLY where you are looking. The small pocket of the world you are examining is the key. The neighborhood housing market varies. Every neighborhood has its own flavor. Right now the uber-luxury real estate housing market is booming in Phoenix Arizona.
Metro Phoenix’s uber-luxury home market is bucking the area’s slowdown in sales.
Sales of houses priced above $2 million were up 63 percent in August compared with a year ago, according to the latest monthly report on the northeast Valley from Walt Danley Realty and real-estate analyst Mike Orr’s Cromford Report.
The increase in the sale of pricier homes has come as some well-known Valley residents have listed multimillion-dollar mansions for sale.
Future Baseball Hall of Famer Randy Johnson is selling his Paradise Valley mansion. The left-handed pitching legend is asking $25 million for the 25,000-square-foot Tuscan-style home near Mummy Mountain. And jazz musician George Benson is selling his 2½-acre Paradise Valley estate for $2.995 million.
Last week, the price dropped from $10.79 million to $7.9 million on a 10,000-square-foot estate near the Camelback Golf Club. Personal-injury attorney Glen Lerner is selling the house he purchased for $2.7 million during the housing crash in 2010.
Bobby Romero of Realty ONE Group has the listing.
In August, 18 Phoenix-area houses sold for more than $2 million, up from 11 during August 2013.
Overall, high-end home sales in the northeast Valley spanning from Phoenix’s Biltmore area to Carefree are down. In August, 238 houses priced above $500,000 sold in the northeast. That’s down 17 percent from July and down 9 percent from August 2013.
Prices for luxury homes vary greatly by size, acreage and location. The Danley/Cromford report uses a monthly moving average of square-foot costs to track luxury-home prices. The average sales price was $254 a square foot in August, up 19 percent from August 2011.
The average price per square foot of a metro Phoenix home sale in August was $124 a square foot, according to Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business.