Homebuying gets easier in key battleground counties, but voters may not feel it

Maricopa County, Arizona

2020 margin: Biden +2.2

In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, home hunters are finally starting to see “the first little smidgen of any advantage that they’ve had since 2021,” said Tina Tamboer, a senior analyst with the Cromford Report, an Arizona real estate research firm. It’s the beginnings of a reprieve after the pandemic-era buying frenzy that swept the U.S. as low interest rates and surging demand for homes in less-dense areas sent many markets haywire.

As of August, the latest month with complete data, the area scored 61 out of 100 on NBC News’ Home Buyer Index, where higher scores reflect greater difficulty. That’s down 13 points from the year before, mostly driven by reduced competition. Local brokers say buyers are now wringing concessions from sellers in a much less intense race for properties.

Several years ago, open houses were packed and all-cash buyers were making offers well above asking prices. But ever since the Federal Reserve began hiking interest rates to tackle inflation starting in March 2022, “the water was pretty much turned off,” Tamboer said. Sales have fallen to a small fraction of what they were at their peak, homes are sitting on the market for weeks or months, and sellers are sweetening their incentives, like offering to help cover closing costs.

Sheryl Bowden, who has sold real estate in the Phoenix area for 40 years, said she has rarely seen the market this quiet for this long. In some cases, buyers aren’t even coming to look at properties. After mortgage rates started to drop over the summer ahead of the Fed’s first rate cut in four years, she saw an uptick in buyer interest but hardly a tidal wave of demand.

One of her listings – a $400,000, four-bedroom, three-bath house – sat for weeks before the seller reduced its price to stay competitive.

“In any other market it would have been gone immediately. It is the perfect first-time homebuyer property,” said Bowden, who is president of the Phoenix Realtors board of directors.

Homes in Maricopa are spending an average of 53 days on the market, 15 days longer than a year ago and far longer than spring 2022’s 20-day average, according to Redfin. Just over 4,000 homes were sold in September – down 1.5% from a year earlier and a steep drop from three years ago, when around 8,000 homes were selling every month.

Bowden speculated that political uncertainty is contributing to slower sales. “You have one side or the other that thinks the election is going to be the end of the world if the other side wins,” she said.

Other factors are also at play: Sellers have mostly stuck to their prices, which have risen slightly over the past year but are 9% lower than the spring 2022 high. The area’s median sales price of $475,000 in September, according to Redfin, is 58% higher than at the start of 2020, when the median-priced home was going for around $300,000.

Bowden said one of her sellers is a retiree who worries that cutting their price would eat into the proceeds needed to buy their next home.

“They can reduce their price, but there is no guarantee they can get an offer because there are no buyers looking,” she said. “They are in a catch-22.”

So for now, the Phoenix market remains unaffordable for many. A household would need to earn at least $96,000 annually to afford the typical Maricopa County home, assuming it could make a 20% down payment on a 30-year mortgage, with rates now at around 6%. That’s above the median income for the county of around $87,000 a year.

Bowden has also struggled to move rental properties, like a townhouse listed for $1,699 a month that just one prospective renter has looked at in over a month. Bowden counted 66 similar rentals in a 2-mile radius that she’s competing with. 

Maricopa County rents averaged just under $1,500 in September, slightly lower than three years ago after having surged as much as 25%. But they’re still higher than the $1,200 monthly average four years ago. Meanwhile, evictions in Phoenix jumped in 2022 and have remained above their pre-pandemic levels. There were nearly 8,000 eviction filings in August, 33% above their average level, according to the Eviction Lab database.

The number of people experiencing homelessness has also stayed elevated. An annual county survey found 9,435 residents living in shelters, on the streets or in temporary, unstable housing as of January, down slightly since 2023 but 27% above 2020.