The market at a glance: What makes the Tucson real estate market so attractive

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Buying a home can be stressful.

After increasing mortgage interest rates 11 times between 2022-2023, the Federal Reserve has not increased rates this year.

Its a sign that the market could be recovering.

“For people that grew up in Tucson, I've lived here for a long time, that's the biggest thing that people wrestle with is they're looking back at just a few years ago, when median price was 220…….and now that same house is going for 350,” said Derrick Polder, Vice President of The Polder Group, a loaning office in Tucson.

But what does that mean for Tucson? Well, Polder says that the secret is out on what makes Tucson and Pima County.

“It's relatively inexpensive to live here compared to some neighboring places. And so I get a lot of phone calls from Oregon, Washington and people from California, that for them Tucson looks cheap,” said Polder.

This is because the median home price in Pima County is actually almost 30 thousand dollars less at about $365,000 than the national average of $393,500.

So Polder says, this makes now a good time to buy.

“There's a good window right now that if you believe that you're going to be in a home for a few years, it's a good window to move now….you beat the demand, you beat the competition,” said Polder.

But that’s also because Polder doesn’t expect it to get any easier to buy in the short term.

“The problem that we have had is ever since 2008, we weren't building homes at the rate that we were prior. And we basically fell into a deficit. And so we have this big gap," said Polder "It's because at that point in time, we had 14 million more households in America being formed with 3 million fewer homes available. So, even though rates skyrocketed, home prices did not go down."