Phoenix new home price now down 25% or $75,000 from bubble peak. And anyone who listened to realtors on commission these past few years got killed

Man, $75,000 in a matter of months, that's just brutal... No matter how the Arizona Republic's Rolodex-of-Realtors Catherine Reagor (she's still employed?), Phoenix realtors on commission or RL Brown wants to spin it.

If you listened to the new-home-ad-supported Arizona Republic or Reagor's always-good-for-a-quote realtor buddies these past few years and stupidly bought a new home in Phoenix, you simply got destroyed.

Here's the latest from Housing Ponzi Scheme Ground Zero, Phoenix Arizona:

Valley new-home permits dip during Feb.

Home-building was down 64 percent from a year earlier, and sales were off by 38 percent.

New-home building permits and sales across the Valley both dropped slightly in February, according to RL Brown's Phoenix Housing Market Letter. Brown said the continued slowing in permits and sales is expected as builders sell off existing speculatively built homes.

The median new-home price in the Valley fell to $225,000 last month, compared with $231,000 in January. In 2006, the Valley's median price hit $300,000.

And here again are the immortal words of a ramen-eating Phoenix six-percenter, the most discredited realtor in America who is still allowed to pollute the Arizona Republic, who has yet to admit to how horribly wrong he was or apologize to HP'ers, Phoenicians or his former clients.

The BubbleBloggers will someday bawl balefully in private, but they will never, ever admit that they have been very publicly very foolish.

You will know and I will know and in the secret chambers of their hearts they will know they were wrong all along. But as long as you don't hold your breath waiting for that contrite admission of error, you should be fine.

Arizona Republic's Rolodex-of-Realtors Catherine Reagor finally admits why she wrote so many housing fluff pieces. She's a homedebtor.

This is called conflict of interest, pure and simple. During the dot-com bubble, stock analysts and reporters like Jack Grubman, Henry Blodget and Dan Dorfman were out there pumping stocks in the media without fully disclosing their ownership positions or conflicts. Those days changed, and when it comes to stocks now you have to disclose your interest.

That's NOT the case with real estate. Housing pumpers like Neil Cavuto, Nicholas Retsinas, Mike Norman etc are obvious homedebtors who do NOT want the value of their real estate to fall. So they get out there and cheerlead, without disclosing their personal financial interests.

Well, Rolodex-of-Realtors Reagor, who did some of the worst reporting I've EVER seen during the bubble, finally admitted the truth today. Gee, what a shocker. Now if the Arizona Republic would also admit to its readers what percent of its falling revenues come from the REIC, we'd be getting somewhere.

Housing prices still in decline - Home prices in metropolitan Phoenix took a healthy drop in October.

No one who owns a home wants to hear that, including me. But real-estate analysts say home prices in many parts of the Valley need to come down after climbing too high during the frenzy of 2004-05. The decline will help the market stabilize, they say. More buyers will get off the fence, and many sellers will still make a profit.

Rolodex of Realtors Catherine Reagor writes advertiser-approved fluff-piece, reader comments are telling

R-O-R-Reagor wrote this piece, which I'm not going to waste your time with. She doesn't mention that the price data is 100% BS and unreliable as builders don't report the value of incentives in final price, and even she knows the cash-back fraud craze that took over Phoenix (that doesn't get subtracted from selling price). But she forgets to mention that.

Phoenix housing prices drop, but freefall not expected

But more importantly, read through the reader comments - and add your own. There are two camps -

1) Desperate Homedebtors and ramen-eating REIC that want the Arizona Republic to stop with any reporting on housing conditions - the "you're ruining it for everyone" crowd

2) Bitter Renters or concerned citizens who just want the Arizona Republic to report the truth.

What people are forgetting is that Arizona is one of the top 3 markets for the risky interest-only option-arm loans, almost all of which convert this year. Convert means the payments at least double or even triple, meaning tons of people who were already living paycheck-to-paycheck will go into foreclosure. Nothing crashes a market like a high foreclosure rate, and there's no escaping it here. - Frank1927

Did you see one builder offering $142,000 discount. Most house sit on the market for 3 to 6 months and all have had "Reduced" added to the sign and still don't sell. The foreclosuers are building up. The ARMs and Sub prime loans are coming home to roost. The Cash Back deals are headed for a little jail time. I look for our area to have what Denver had last year, 19,000 repos. If you have the cash in hand you can buy at a big dicount. I have seen about 4 of these bust in the USA,and it isn't fun. From all I hear and read it will be September or October before any thing picks up. - Ben5239

I am a 20 year veteran Phoenix Realtor, with over 1000 sales, and here is my take on the current and near future residential market in Maricopa County. APOCOLYPSE NOW baby! I don't buy into the rosy soft landing theory. The story will be far uglier than even the Republic can paint. Home prices will drop. 3 factors effect real estate: wages, home prices, and interest rates...nothing else! Are your wages going up?..........NO. Are mortgage rates declining?.....NO. Are home prices declining?.......YES. We have a huge supply of over-priced homes that will take years to work through. - charles8643

Yes the sky is falling. How can one tell? Simple. There are at least 5 houses for sale in about every neighborhood, and not one is selling for their asking price or has been sitting around for ages. Anyone who disputes this is either related to the real-estate industry, or just plain blind. Too much speculation happening the last few years.. payback time awaits. - Cards Fan

California prices...Arizona wages... The market is WAY over-valued and overbuilt. You can spend 500k on a nice place in Phoenix or you can spend 500k on an equally nice place in San Diego where wages are at least 10-15% more than they are here. People will wake up..Prices will fall... anyone 'round here in the late 80s? - ScottsdaleNative

In my opinion...the articles regarding real estate -across the board- in the Republic are an embarassment to the professional journalism industry. Not only are they not accurate, they also induce the general public into notions that the sky is falling. The articles are hidious, get someone who knows something about real estate to write the @#$%& articles, and forget the capitalist crap about selling papers and tell the truth about the market. - rich4311