Recent News & Blog Entries

David Syndiongco
Phoenix Business Journal

After once being an international high-flyer, Phoenix is beginning a steady crawl towards recovery from the depths of the recession in terms of global economic growth, according to a new global report by the Brookings Institution.

Booking’s Global MetroMonitor report, released today, placed Phoenix in the No. 143 spot among 200 growing worldwide metropolitan areas, analyzing and comparing the Valley’s employment, income, gross domestic product and population rates.

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Jan Buchholtz
Phoenix Business Journal

New home closings in metro Phoenix increased in December, as did the number of building permits pulled by home builders. That’s according to new data provided by Valley-based RL Brown Reports.

There were 855 new home closings in December as compared with 653 a year ago, or a 31 percent increase. There were 492 residential building permits pulled as compared with 383 a year ago -- a 28 percent increase. By comparison, resales were down with 7,707 recorded in December as compared with 7,949 in December 2010.

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Adam Kress
Phoenix Business Journal

Arizona ranked No. 8 in the nation for population growth over the past year, according to newly released data from the U.S. Cenus Bureau.

Arizona added 90,000 residents between April 1, 2010, and July 1, 2011. That equates to a 1.42 percent growth rate. Both in raw numbers and percentage terms, Arizona ranked eighth for growth.

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J. Craig Anderson
The Arizona Republic

Avatar Holdings, a publicly traded community developer and homebuilder based in Coral Gables, Fla., said it has closed on the purchase of a 187-acre parcel in the Estrella master-planned community in Goodyear for $6 million.

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Robbie Whelan
The Wall Street Journal

A venture led by two real-estate investment firms has shown that it actually is possible to make money on land speculation in the Phoenix area.

The group bought a 1,200-acre assemblage in San Tan Valley, roughly 50 miles southeast of Phoenix, early this year for about $23,000 an acre, according to people familiar with the matter. Now the venture—led by Harvard Investments of Scottsdale, Ariz., and San Francisco-based Rockwood Capital LLC—has sold 208 acres of the land to Central Arizona College, which plans to build a new campus there.

The price: $8.9 million, or $43,000 an acre.

That still is a far cry from the market's peak, when raw land was selling in Phoenix's southeast suburbs for between $100,000 and $200,000 an acre, according to Land Advisors Organization, a Scottsdale-based land brokerage.
But market bulls believe those days will return.

The college's purchase is "a sign that things are changing here," says Nate Nathan, the broker who arranged the deal. "Within five years, this place is going to be exploding."

By Adam Kress
The Business Journal

Phoenix is No. 6 in the nation for new job growth, according to new figures released Wednesday morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Phoenix metro area added 31,300 new jobs between August of 2010 and August of 2011. In terms of raw numbers of new jobs, only five cities added more.

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