{"id":884640,"date":"2026-10-16T18:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T18:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884640\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T18:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T18:38:12","slug":"arizona-housing-costs-surge-40-50-as-inflation-hits-3-7-asu-economist-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884640\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona housing costs surge 40-50% as inflation hits 3.7%, ASU economist says"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 Inflation is up again, with the Consumer Price Index rising to 3.7%<\/a> this week, driven in large part by the conflict in the Middle East and rising energy and gas prices.<\/p>\n

But in Arizona, housing is hitting wallets hardest, according to Sean Ewen, research economist with the Seidman Research Institute at Arizona State University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ewen says housing costs are up 40% to 50% since the COVID-19 pandemic, among the largest increases nationwide. After the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to 4% in February, 30-year fixed mortgages are holding around 7.4%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe general thought is higher interest rates will cool demand, which will in turn cool housing prices,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ewen says higher rates should eventually bring down home prices, but the pass-through to mortgages happens faster than the drop in sale prices. When rates come down, prices should cool; it\u2019s just a question of when.<\/p>\n

Groceries, gasoline and new cars are also climbing, raising questions about whether Arizona paychecks are keeping up.<\/p>\n

Arizona\u2019s median household income is around $85,000, Ewen said, and has largely kept pace with inflation, including for workers at the 25th and even 10th percentiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do see quite a bit of increase in wages at the same time, maybe not as much as they otherwise would have without the inflation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, he acknowledged raises and new jobs don\u2019t stretch as far as they used to.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe you finally get that raise, or you finally get that new job and the salary doesn\u2019t go quite as far as you expected it to. That\u2019s disappointing,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Despite high prices and rates, Ewen says the U.S. is not in a recession, and he does not like predicting one. He pointed to a saying from former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke that economic expansions \u201cdon\u2019t die of old age, they\u2019re murdered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRecessions don\u2019t just happen out of the blue; something causes them,\u201d Ewen explained. \u201cIn 2020 it was COVID, in 2008 the financial crisis, in 2000-2001 the dot-com bubble. Those things are hard to predict.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 Inflation is up again, with the Consumer Price Index rising to 3.7% this week, driven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[371290,371288,4958,28,11529,101,25744,2402,371291,3,19156,371289],"class_list":["post-884640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-arizona-housing-costs","tag-arizona-housing-inflation","tag-azfamily","tag-business","tag-consumer-price-index","tag-economy","tag-housing-costs","tag-inflation","tag-inflation-index","tag-news","tag-phoenix-news","tag-seidman-research-institute-at-arizona-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}