Every few weeks someone asks me the same question, just dressed differently: is now a good time to buy? Underneath it, what they're really asking is whether they should keep waiting for rates to drop back below 5%.
Here's what I'm actually seeing on the ground.
Mortgage rates have settled into the low-to-mid 6% range. That's not the under-5% world some buyers are still holding out for, and it's not the 8% panic of a couple years back either. It's a rate you can plan around, which matters more than people give it credit for. A number you can budget against beats a number you're gambling will drop.
Home values in Phoenix are actually down slightly — around 2% over the past year — with prices mostly flat across the state. That's not a crash. It's a market that overcorrected during the frenzy years and is now settling into something closer to normal. For buyers, that shows up as more room to negotiate and less pressure to waive everything just to compete. For sellers, it means pricing has to be honest from day one — overreach on list price and you'll sit.
Inventory is the real story. It's been stuck for a long time, and it's finally, slowly loosening up. Not flooding — loosening. That's the difference between a market that punishes buyers for hesitating and one where you can actually take a weekend to think.
And underneath all of it, the job growth that keeps Phoenix moving hasn't slowed — healthcare, tech, logistics, advanced manufacturing are all still expanding here. That's the piece that keeps me confident this isn't a market cooling off for bad reasons. It's cooling off because it ran hot for a long time and needed to.
So, back to the question. Is now a good time to buy? Depends what you're optimizing for. If you're waiting for 2021 rates to come back, you'll be waiting a long time, and you'll pay for the wait in rising prices once demand catches up to the rate relief. If you're looking for a market where you can actually negotiate, take your inspection period seriously, and not feel like you're bidding against twelve other offers — this is closer to that market than we've seen in years.
"Below 5%" isn't coming back on any timeline worth waiting for. But "stabilizing" isn't a euphemism either — it's just a market that finally has room to breathe. Buyers, sellers, and agents navigating it all deserve a straight answer instead of a headline. That's the whole point of this journal.
— Bri