Good news could be ahead for the housing industry, even as the latest report from ASU’s Realty Studies shows a continued negative trend for real estate, a professor said.

October foreclosures continued to be a large part of home sales in the Valley and home values were still declining, according to last week’s report by Realty Studies, a research and educational department at the Polytechnic campus.

In October, 47 percent of resale homes across the Valley were sold by foreclosure, compared with about 44 percent in September, according to the report.

Non-foreclosed home values in October had a median price of $175,000, while foreclosed properties were about $159,775, according to the report.

This was a decline from last year, when traditional home values were at a median price of $250,000 and foreclosed homes were about $218,225.

But new programs from major lenders to help troubled borrowers may improve the real estate market in coming months, said Jay Butler, the director of Realty Studies and a professor in the Morrison School of Management of Agribusiness.

Butler pointed to lending organizations like Citigroup, which last week announced an assistance program for 130,000 borrowers to keep their mortgages.

The program is similar to assistance programs by Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

“There’s differing standards for these programs,” he said, referring to which borrowers can use them. “But it gives people some time to try to figure out their problems.”

Homeownership assistance programs by major lenders, many of which came into existence this month, could reduce Valley foreclosures, he said.

“We may have a slowdown in foreclosure activity for a while,” he said.

Across Maricopa County, the median price of a home resale had dropped about $70,000 between last year and this year, the report said.

As prices decline across the Valley, some parts of the greater Phoenix area will see more stability in the coming months — particularly cities close to freeways and places of employment, Butler said.

“Location has always been important in buying a home,” he said. “[But] it really wasn’t important in the last couple years [because] people were looking at price.”

Undeclared sophomore Shannon Lewinski said she has noticed a lot of foreclosure activity in her Avondale neighborhood, where she rents a house.

According to the report, there were 160 foreclosure sales in Avondale in October 2008, compared with 55 in October 2007.

“There’s families of all different ages that are moving in and out,” Lewinski said. “We seem to be the only ones that are staying."

Reach the reporter at matt.culbertson@asu.edu.