Verdict grades housing conditions; buyer-timing, investor cash-flow, supply-tightness and county macro scores answer different questions — each in its own section.
Buyer / sellerbuyer-timing lens
Balanced Market
Needs 35.5% correction for affordability
DOM: 62d (stable) · Market Dynamics rolling median · hourly
Score Components
Payment Burden (25%)100
Valuation Gap (25%)10
Supply & Demand (20%)20
Buy vs Rent (15%)100
Cancellation Rate (10%)25
Days on Market (5%)75
Balanced market in 85254. List price is roughly fair — focus on condition and value. Payment burden: 45.9% of median income. A 24% price correction needed to reach 30% affordability threshold. Median days on market: 62. Renting is approximately 142% cheaper than buying (price-to-rent ratio: 29.0).
Balanced market conditions. Prices roughly aligned with fundamentals — similar to stable periods in 2014-2015.
WARMINGSELLER SLIGHT
Market is warming with rising prices. Sellers hold a slight edge. Prices up 4.6% YoY.
Turnover Index · Live in this ZIPBacktest: 24.3% of later sellers were already in the top 20% (random = 20%, 37 held-out sales) · 14,997 parcels scored nightly
A single median rises whenever expensive homes become a bigger share of what sells, even if no tier got more expensive. These are the tiers underneath it, computed from recorded arms-length deed transactions in Maricopa.
Aggregate median +15.4% YoY in this ZIP, but the under-$500k tier is -1.6% — the rise is mix shift, not appreciation. Over the same year the under-$500k share of sales moved from 9.8% to 11.1% (+1.3pp) and the $1M+ share from 28.8% to 41.7% (+12.8pp).
Current tiers · 12 months to Aug 25floor 10 sales/tier
1 tier had too few sales in this ZIP and are shown at county or metro level — see the stamp on each row.
Tier
Median
$/sqft
Sales
Share
Source
Under $250k
$200k
$204
2,869
—
COUNTY · Maricopa, AZ
$250k–$500k
$367k
$359
70
10.3%
ZIP
$500k–$750k
$666k
$372
162
23.9%
ZIP
$750k–$1M
$866k
$397
158
23.3%
ZIP
$1M–$1.5M
$1.22M
$460
175
25.8%
ZIP
$1.5M–$2M
$1.64M
$562
54
8.0%
ZIP
$2M+
$2.70M
$713
53
7.8%
ZIP
All sales (the headline median)
$910k
$423
677
100%
ZIP
Share of sales by tier (quarterly)
If the upper tiers widen over time, the headline median rises on composition alone.
Under $250k
$250k–$500k
$500k–$750k
$750k–$1M
$1M–$1.5M
$1.5M–$2M
$2M+
Median within each tier, against the headline median (quarterly)
The blue line is the single number NAR-style reporting quotes. The gold lines are what each tier actually did. Log scale — the tiers span an order of magnitude, and on a log axis equal slopes mean equal percentage moves, which is the comparison being made.
$250k–$500k
$500k–$750k
$750k–$1M
$1M–$1.5M
$1.5M–$2M
$2M+
All sales (headline)
National context — not local
NAR's aggregate existing-home median for the United States and the West census region. This is the figure the tiers above are a check on. It is national/regional and says nothing about 85254.
United States
West
Copyright, National Association of Realtors. Reprinted with permission. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRED publishes a rolling 13-month window for these series.
Tiers computed from Lotvox parcel and deed substrate through Aug 25 (10 later months withheld as partially loaded). Sample floor 10 sales per tier; below it a figure is drawn from the county or metro and labelled, or left blank. Multi-parcel bulk deeds and duplicate records are excluded.
Maricopa County contextmacro · jobs · debt · migration
ZIP score grades housing; county score adds macro distress (jobs, debt, poverty). They answer different questions.
Maricopa County
County-level context for ZIP 85254
Verified — Maricopa County
Healthy (29)
ZIP 85254→Maricopa County, AZ
12-Month Direction
-7Stable
Confidence
100%
DeterioratingStableImproving
Why this score
BuildersLens Market Intelligence
Market Score
41· Weak
Market Score grades housing-market conditions (affordability, valuation, supply). The county Healthy/Moderate/Distressed badge measures economic distress (jobs, debt, poverty) — the two can read differently.