A client texted me a screenshot last week that just said “should I be worried?” above a headline claiming Phoenix foreclosures had jumped by triple digits. I get some version of that message every few weeks now. The honest answer is the one that never fits in a headline. The percentage is real, the panic is not, and the gap between those two things is exactly where you make or lose money in this market.

So let me walk you through what these numbers actually measure, because most of the reporting mixes up two very different events and counts on you not noticing the difference.

Phoenix Foreclosures Start With a Notice of Trustee’s Sale

Arizona is what the industry calls a non judicial foreclosure state. When a homeowner falls behind, the lender does not march into court. It hires a trustee who records a document called a Notice of Trustee’s Sale. That notice is the starting gun. It tells the county, and the world, that a borrower is in default and that an auction has been scheduled.

Here is the part the headlines skip. Under Arizona law that auction cannot happen for at least 90 days after the notice is recorded. A lot happens in that window. People catch up their payments, refinance, negotiate a loan modification, or simply sell the house and walk away with their equity. A large share of these notices never turn into anyone losing a home. When a story counts notices and calls them foreclosures, it is counting warning lights, not wrecks.

What a Trustee’s Deed Says That the Notices Don’t

The document that actually marks a completed foreclosure is the Trustee’s Deed, sometimes written as Trustee’s Deed Upon Sale. It gets recorded only after the auction happens and the property changes hands, either to a third party bidder or back to the lender when nobody bids. That is the real number. That is a family or an investor who lost the property.

And it always runs dramatically smaller than the notice count. In July of last year Maricopa County saw only 131 completed foreclosures. Yes, that was up from 35 in the same month a year earlier, which sounds explosive in percentage terms. Tina Tamboer, the senior housing analyst at the Cromford Report, put it better than I could when she noted she had more people in her college Spanish class and that this is not crisis material. When you want to know how many homes are actually being lost, count deeds, not notices.

The Percentage Trick Behind Every Scary Foreclosure Headline

Once you understand the two documents, the headline math falls apart on contact. Trustee deeds in Maricopa County ran about 317 in the third quarter of last year, up from 238 the quarter before. A local outlet can accurately write that foreclosures are up 137 percent year over year. Another can wave around a 37 percent statewide jump from the mid year ATTOM report. Both figures are true. Both are also close to meaningless on their own.

The trick is the base. When you start from numbers sitting near the lowest levels ever recorded, tiny movements produce enormous percentages. Going from 35 to 131 is a 274 percent increase and also a total non event for a county with well over a million homes. A percentage with no raw number attached is built to make you feel something, not understand something. Any headline that leads with the percentage and buries the count is doing it on purpose.

See the Live Greater Phoenix Foreclosure Numbers

You do not have to take my word for any of this. The chart below pulls recorded foreclosure activity for Greater Phoenix straight from the Cromford Report, updated as new filings hit the county records. Watch where the current line sits against the long run history and the alarm tends to evaporate.

Greater Phoenix, AZ

Foreclosure Activity: Trustee Deeds and Notices of Trustee Sale

Pre-filtered to recorded foreclosure activity in Maricopa County, AZ (Greater Phoenix) · No other filters applied · For a personalized read, connect with a Red Penny Realty agent.View Only

Why Phoenix Foreclosures Today Are Not a 2008 Repeat

Perspective is the whole game here. At the peak of the last crisis Greater Phoenix had more than 10,000 active notices at once, and in March of 2009 the Valley recorded over 10,500 homes in some stage of pre foreclosure. Through late last year Maricopa County carried roughly 1,300 active notices. That sits below the ten year monthly average and well under the 2015 to 2019 norm, a stretch nobody remembers as a distressed market.

The people actually in trouble today look different too. Most of the recent distress traces back to investors who bought at the top in 2022, stretched their numbers, and never built an equity cushion. That is a very different picture from 2008, when ordinary owners were buried under loans they never had a real chance of paying. Mike Orr, who owns the Cromford Report, has pointed out that 2025 saw fewer foreclosures than 1996, and that today’s real delinquency problems live in credit cards and car loans, not mortgages.

What This Means If You Are Buying or Selling

If you are a seller, do not let a scary headline talk you into panic pricing. Phoenix foreclosures are not flooding the market and dragging your value down with them. If you are a buyer or an investor, the opposite discipline applies. There are some genuine deals surfacing among those overleveraged 2022 purchases, but this is a trickle, not the fire sale some people keep waiting for, and the good ones move fast.

Either way the smart move is to read the actual data before you make a six figure decision. I track these Greater Phoenix numbers every month, and I am glad to pull a read specific to your property or your target neighborhood. You can also follow my ongoing market updates as the year develops.

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Trying to read the Greater Phoenix market before you buy or sell? Red Penny Realty tracks the real numbers so you do not have to guess from headlines. Let’s talk through your specific situation.