Why Is Arizona Unhappy With Rising Home Sales Figures?

Arizona's recent rise in home sales figures represents a disturbing trend.

It's easily one of the most counterintuitive things you'll hear today--the state of Arizona is looking at internal home sales figures, seeing they're going up, and are very, very unhappy. How can this be, you wonder? How can they look at property tax payers moving back into houses that were formerly empty?

The answer is fairly simple, and deeply disturbing--the home resale numbers, so says Arizona State University, are largely coming from people buying foreclosure houses. About sixty five percent of all homes sold in Arizona in the last year were sold due to foreclosure.

This represents several troubles--of course, it means a whole lot of families lost their homes, and that's bad enough for anyone, but it also means that the houses were purchased for a whole lot less than they were originally paid for, which in turn drops home value and from there drops property tax. It's different everywhere, of course, but market value generally does figure in on at least some level.

Real estate companies are glad for the business, not surprisingly, but the state government, already strapped for cash, is quaking in its collective boots. How long will this foreclosure-fuelled market last? No one knows, but it can't end soon enough for the state of Arizona.

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