Three opportunistic home builders are jumping into metro
When Goodyear was incorporated in the late 1940s, the town boasted about 150 homes, 250 apartments and the basics: a grocery store, drugstore, barbershop, beauty shop and service station. Look at the 115 square miles of Goodyear today, and yesterday quickly fades. Thousands of homes have risen from the dirt, cars pack the streets, and plans for a regional mall and spring training stadium are under way. Goodyear’s population, now at 50,000, will grow again with annexation of 67 square miles, the latest sign of the southwest Valley city’s sprawling future. More…
Buyers looking for luxury homes in the northwest Valley now have more options with the opening of models at Blackstone in north
A 6,000-acre swath of state land in northeast
With two “no” votes still ringing in their ears, state lawmakers on Monday agreed to make another run at putting a state trust land issue to voters, this time on the 2008 ballot. Nearly 200,000 acres of state land could be sold for conservation purposes without going to public auction, an exception to the state process for disposing of state lands held in trust for a variety of causes, primarily education. In addition, the rights of way for certain public roads could be purchased, also without auction. More…
The Valley’s elite condo market has never been hotter. A super-luxury condo being built in the Kierland area of the northeast Valley sold recently for $3.167 million in a deal the developer calls the biggest in state history. The buyers paid more than $150,000 over the list price for the three-bedroom penthouse unit has 11-foot ceilings, stonewalls, built-in cabinets and his and her offices. It sits on the sixth floor of Tower II of the Landmark at Kierland, southwest of the intersection of
Elevation
A Scottsdale-based developer is moving ahead with plans for Citro Camelback, a development that would replace a central Scottsdale apartment complex with 288 residential units with prices of a half-million dollars and up. Urban Home Development Corp. said its project on 12.64 acres at
Most economic forecasters in a new WSJ.com survey believe recent turmoil in the subprime mortgage market is likely to spread to the broader mortgage market and they expect a widely followed index of home prices to fall this year. But they still think the U.S. will avoid a recession and even a significant rise in unemployment. More…
A wave of mid-rise condominiums is spreading across the Valley, with prices for luxury units soaring. Condo towers of up to 13 floors are changing the real estate skyline in some key areas in
The luster didn’t wear off metropolitan Phoenix’s million-dollar home market last year, even though the sag in mainstream housing prompted some hard bargaining in Paradise Valley, north Scottsdale and the Valley’s other elite neighborhoods. Agents who work the big-money market say there are plenty of buyers even though rising prices are redefining what constitutes the area’s elite market. They say they are seeing fewer investors, and most of their buyers are people who want to live in the houses. Buyers are negotiating hard on prices, but agents say the market is in good shape. More…
Median home prices hit the high-water mark in 2006 in many parts of the Valley, but they began to slide midyear, a clear sign the market was retreating. In 59 percent of 112 Valley ZIP codes, combined new and resale median prices were lower at the end of 2006 than they were four months earlier, according to The
Phoenix is a mature housing market, so existing home sales are the name of the game. There were 23,884 combined new- and used-home sales last year. The hottest Phoenix ZIP code for combined sales was 85041, a south-central spot that includes a big piece of the
Vicki Johnson, First Vice President, Desert Heritage Mortgage
This year’s prognosis:
2007 looks to be a year of continuing the readjustment toward a balancing of supply and demand in the housing market. The resale market is adjusting gradually as seller’s reduce their expectations from the price levels of last year. As buyers and sellers psychologically adjust to the new reality, we believe the market will normalize in an evolutionary way over the year. More…