Why did she pick the City of Maricopa? You may not have known this but the City of Maricopa was actually the fastest growing city in the US for a few months in a row back in 2005. As such, we had a huge increase in demand for housing while the supply was really low. This is what I call “Stage One”.

“Stage Two”: Builders continued to build, buyers continued to buy.

“Stage Three”: Market shift consisting of a large overflow of homes on the market including resale homes and new builds.

“Stage Four”: Influx of foreclosures and short sales being put on the market.

So where does “Stage Five” take us? That’s where we are today - In a position where there are more than twice as many homes being put on the market each month than there were back in 2005. This combined with the existing inventory is leading to an overflow of supply with the same amount of demand. YES – the same amount of demand. It’s shocking to some people to hear but comparing month to month data between December 2005 and December 2007, shows there were 7 MORE homes that closed in 2007 and 41 MORE homes that went under contract in 2007.

Want more data? In a comparison between the months of January 2006 and January 2008, there were only 3 less closed homes in 2007 but there were 43 MORE homes that went under contract in 2007.

The sale price compared to list price also has a greater differential meaning that people are negotiating more for their homes instead of simply selling for list price.

All this information shows that there are still approximately an equal number of homes selling in the City of Maricopa today as there were back in 2005 (“Stage One”). The difference is that the number of homes doing on the market is greater, therefore the days on market is greater (triple to quadruple).