Fortune magazine has predicted a nearly 4% decline in real estate prices for the Phoenix metro area, ranking the Valley of the Sun near the bottom of the country's 100 largest real estate markets. There's no further explanation but I presume the logic behind the prediction is the continuing withdrawal of investors from the local market, combined with pressure from builders looking to offload their inventory.

We'll be running a reader's poll later today ... currently the poll software doesn't want to recognize any e-mail address as valid.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes