Perception is an interesting thing.  Different people can look at an identical situation, and perceive it in completely different ways.  Think of how Realtors perceive today’s market, versus what consumers perceive and the media perceives.

I think that as Realtors, we can become somewhat insular from what the consumer’s perception of the Real Estate market is.  It is usually radically different from our own, and also usually skewed by what the media says the market condition is.

In the Trisha Bonnell Group we use door knocking as a way to stay in touch with our clients.  It has proven to be an effective way for us to get to know and communicate with our client base and for them to communicate with us.  What they have been communicating lately to us as we knock on their doors and talk to them is that they are afraid of the Real Estate market.  Everything they read and hear about from the media paints a horrific picture of doom and gloom in the market, and they are afraid to make any kind of move.

While it is true that the sub prime mortgage crisis has wreaked some havoc on the market and has put a lot of homeowners in terrible situations, the real estate market, for the most part,  is solid.  Anyone who purchased a home during the upsurge in 2005 and would like to sell their home today, probably ought to stay right where they are – prices have certainly dropped since then.  But, anyone who purchased their home before that is in pretty good shape.  In Ahwatukee, the appreciation of homes since 2000 has been significant – somewhere around 80%.  If the media wasn’t telling us how awful the market is, we would be jumping up and down to be realizing those kinds of returns on any investment!  By the way, the decline in home values since 2006 is somewhere around 6%.

I would love to hear the media talking about all the good things that have happened in the Real Estate Market in Phoenix and Ahwatukee in the past 6 or 7 years instead of only focusing on the downswing in 2007.  The truth is that a huge percentage of homeowners in Ahwatukee have realized great gains on their property, and we should be looking at that instead of moaning about how much the value of our homes have dropped since the artificial highs of 2005.