The Chandler real estate market, one of the areas included in the greater Phoenix Valley region, showed signs of recovery after a period of economic devastation. According to a May 22, 2010 article from the Arizona Republic, “April figures for existing-home sales in metro Phoenix reveal several promising shifts for those searching for signs of a housing-market recovery. The overall number of home sales in the region continued to hover near record levels last month.” The piece, written by Catherine Reagor, continued to state that “Beneath the sales figures were other encouraging numbers: Foreclosures did not dominate sales of existing homes in the Valley for the first time in more than a year. The number of investors purchasing homes from lenders dropped. More buyers purchased homes with the intent of living in them.”

The average purchase price of a Chandler home for sale also rose in the most recent tracking period, according to a May 27, 2010 report from Arizona State University. This piece found that “For the first time in three years, Phoenix-area housing prices are showing an overall year-over-year increase for the market. A new report from the W.P. Carey School of Business contains positive news for Valley homeowners, who have been waiting for relief from dropping home values.” Professor Karl Guntermann, the author of the report, stated that “This report reflects an important milestone in the recent housing cycle, with preliminary April data showing the first year-over-year increase in house prices marketwide. Also, prices for lower-end houses and the foreclosure segment of the market, which turned positive in March, continued to increase on an annual basis.”

The commercial sector of the Chandler and Phoenix real estate markets may have not yet seen the worst of the economic crisis. According to a May 30, 2010 article from the Arizona Republic, “Arizona’s housing market is deep into the process of flushing out its bad mortgage debt. But lenders and borrowers of troubled commercial real-estate loans continue to live a lie. Commercial real-estate brokers have coined a phrase, ‘extend and pretend,’ to describe lenders’ sluggish response to the billions of dollars in bad commercial mortgages on their books.”