House hunting? Here’s what you’ll pay per square foot across the Valley

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The real estate landscape has been changing over the past few years.

Before he moved in, Trevor Athay made some changes to his new home in Moon Valley.

“We’ve done little touches here and there,” he said. “We mainly really wanted a larger yard for the kids.”

Athay and his wife had been on the house hunt since December.

“In this marketplace, still we have a low supply and demand is still ok,” Valley realtor Trevor Halpern said.

Interest rates remain elevated, and home prices are, too. In the U.S., the median home price is $407,600, according to the National Association of Realtors. In the Phoenix metro area, it’s more.

“Our median right now is right around $450,000, so unfortunately, it’s hard to get a home in the Valley, a single-family home, standalone residence, for anything around $400,000,” Halpern said.

At the same time, the consumer price index for May shows the cost of shelter increasing by 0.4% from April to May and 5.4% compared to the same time last year.

On Your Side asked Halpern to pull some numbers to find out where local buyers can get more bang for their buck.

The average current list price for single-family homes in the East Valley is $297 per square foot, while it’s $251 per square foot in the West Valley. In Central Phoenix, the average list price for single-family homes is $455 per square foot.

The increased prices are a change. Halper says he’s seeing another shift, too.

“There seems to be a change in the air as far as people coming and going from Arizona. We’re seeing more and more people selling their home and not re-buying in Arizona than I’ve seen any time in my career,” he said. “I think a lot of the reason why sellers are picking up and moving is because Phoenix finally got that bump up in pricing.”

That price bump helped Athay’s family get into their new home, just a few miles from their old place.

“We actually got above what we were hoping for on the old one, so it worked out great,” he said.

A recent Bankrate study shows in Arizona, a family needs to make more than $110,000 per year to afford the median-priced home. That’s up more than 65% from 2020, when an income of about $67,000 would get the job done.

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