The number of pima county property owners who received foreclosure notices reached a 40-month low in July.

Per a recent article in The Arizona Daily Star “Michael Hannley, the president and CEO of Bank of Tucson, said part of the decrease in foreclosures is because homeowners who could afford their mortgages, but chose not to pay, have already walked away from their homes.”

During the peak of Tucson’s real estate market in 2006 and 2007 entire apartment complexes were purchased by developers and converted into condominiums.  With many of these Tucson condo sales going to investors or second homeowners Tucson’s condo market saw a high number of strategic defaults, where buyers made business decisions to walk away from their mortgages because they were underwater on their loans.

Therefore with the glut of strategic defaults being absorbed we can expect to see and have already seen fewer distressed condos coming onto the market.  And once the distressed condos have been removed from the market home prices will begin to rise.