After the big real estate bust in Phoenix, Arizona, there is a new trend-owners turned renters.
With this desert city enduring one of the largest declines in housing prices for any urban area since the Depression, there is a continuous stream of foreclosures to choose from. On some days, hundreds of foreclosed homes are offered for sale at auctions that take place on the plaza in front of the county courthouse.
There is also a large supply of foreclosed families who can no longer qualify for a loan, which is prompting a flood of investors who want to turn as many of these people as possible into rent-paying tenants in the houses they used to own.
Real estate got just about everyone into trouble in Phoenix, and the thinking seems to be that real estate is going to get everyone out.
The low end of the real estate market here — and in some equally hard-hit places like inland California and coastal Florida — is becoming as wild as anything during the boom.
