Welcome to all of you potential Phoenix, Arizona homeowners out there. Whether you're merely thinking about putting up your Rhinebeck homes for sale and moving south to the land of sun and opportunity or you're ready to look at houses, this real estate guide to the Phoenix area should have something that will help you. We've taken great pains to include all the relevant information on prices, trends, popularity, neighborhoods, and market conditions and it's all up to date as of early April of 2010.

No doubt you'll recall that the last few years have been very trying for North American real estate markets. The prices of homes all over the continent, from the Mississauga listings to the ones here in Phoenix, dropped drastically under the influence of the collapse of the sub prime mortgage market and the recession. But you'll be pleased to hear that Phoenix, which was an immensely popular market before the crash, has begun to recover already. In fact, the average price per square foot for a home in Phoenix has gone up 303% since last year.

If such an enormous leap that seems to be unaccompanied by any significant economic recovery in the rest of the country has you worried, it should. This massive jump likely signifies a housing bubble, which you can expect to burst in a few months and return prices to the same bracket that Toronto townhomes currently occupy. If this is true, waiting to buy might be expedient, but if you must move now, the average listing price is currently around $256,000 and the price per square foot is $323.

Listing or asking prices vary quite widely depending on which neighborhood you choose. For instance, among the most popular neighborhoods right now are Camelback East, which has an average price of nearly $470,000, and South Mountain, which has an average price of only $132,000. Most of the other neighborhoods are between these figures, and are comparable to Port Credit real estate. By far the most common (and most popular) type of neighborhood in Phoenix is the planned residential suburb, so expect most of the neighborhoods you look at to be of this type

Time share condos are also available, mostly in tourist-centric developments, and apartments tend to be concentrated downtown. In terms of style, you'll find that Spanish Colonial influences dominate, with red tiled roofs and cream stucco being the most common composition and ranch (or single storey) being more common than multiple storeys. There are some neighborhoods with houses similar to the Oshawa homes you are leaving behind, in the style colloquially known as McMansion. Lot sizes can be quite large, and the lawns (where present) require near constant watering.