|
Growth
lull may aid Pinal By
Lisa Nicita and Carl
Holcombe The
Arizona Republic
While
the rest of the Valley slows,
Pinal
County
's housing market may just be settling. And in an area where
homes cropped up out of open desert at a frenetic pace in
recent years,
Pinal
County
could actually use a lull to catch its breath.
County, city and school district officials have said
Pinal
County
's housing market slowdown is a matter of perspective.
Yes, resale homes are lingering on the market longer, and
sellers are desperate to get out. But a receding housing wave
gives officials time to catch up on processing backlogged
paperwork, addressing infrastructure needs and planning for
all the new homes that are still to come.
Skip Brown handles
construction and planning for the Coolidge Unified School
District. Busy as ever, Brown said a slowdown might be a
welcome relief for both building new schools and finding the
staff to fill them.
"I wouldn't mind a little, let's take a breath
here," he said. "Everybody count to 10. And maybe
our HR guy won't jump off the building."
Kristen Landry, public-information officer for the Arizona
School Facilities Board, said a housing slowdown could
potentially mean that funding for certain new schools projects
could be stalled or revoked, but it's not all that common. She
said the board double-checks the need for projects after they
are approved and before funding is disbursed by analyzing
building permits and population projections.
"You never know what's going to happen," Landry
said. "It's a lot of planning. They're projections. They
can be wrong."
Byron Jackson, mayor of Eloy, thinks his city might actually
benefit from a downturn. Developers have committed to 70,000
building permits over a 10- to 20-year period in his city, and
Jackson
said the slowdown might actually help builders sell more homes
once prices become more affordable again.
"It's not going to hurt Eloy,"
Jackson
said. "Is it doom and gloom? Probably not."
Bryant Powell, assistant city manager for Apache Junction,
said the city won't feel the slowdown much because it never
really went nuts when other areas of the county did. He said
consistent growth is easier to handle, and it allows for
municipalities to keep pace with infrastructure needs.
"When it was going gangbusters, we didn't go
gangbusters," Powell said. "It's been nice to grow
steadily."
Jack Malpass, president and chief executive officer of the San
Tan Area Chamber of Commerce, said people need to brush aside
the gloomy forecast and instead look at the opportunities that
are available. He said it's important for people to think
about how this housing lull will play out long term.
"They are not able to look downstream a bit,"
Malpass said. "The negative attitude seems to be
temporary, but it's also infectious."
Pinal County's cooling market also means raw land is becoming
more affordable again, opening the market to investors and
prospectors who until recently have been priced out.
Jordan Rose, a development attorney with Rose Law Group, said
land developers and farmers who sold an acre for $5,000 a few
years ago ran up their starting prices to $80,000 an acre
about nine months ago, often without doing anything to develop
the land: no rezoning, no plans, no nothing.
Most developers might get land rezoned and sell it for $40,000
or $50,000 to other developers or builders, she said, or they
might take it to nearly final platting and then sell for about
$80,000 an acre.
"That made sense because the land was ready to go,"
Rose said. "But you can't sell land for $80,000 an acre
where you can't build for three years because you have to do
all of the planning and land preparation, and then sell a new
home for $150,000 and make a profit."
As sanity has returned, land prices have begun falling back to
the $30,000 to $40,000 range, she said.
Developers like Stacey Brimhall, president of Langley
Properties, who years ago bought land at prices as low as
hundreds of dollars around
Pinal
County
and south
Maricopa
County
said they sensed a coming cooling.
"People kept redefining what low (land prices) meant. To
me it meant $1,500 an acre," Brimhall said. "But to
guys coming off the plane, low was $50,000."
They bought too close in at high prices, making it tougher to
eke out profit and forcing them into tough financial
situations. Depending on how long the downturn lasts, they
won't be able to hold out."
Brimhall went in another direction and is continuing his
long-term strategy of buying cheap land far from the fringe of
development. He has picked up farmland in sleepy areas like
Dateland and Safford. If it takes 10 years or more before
developers start making offers on that land, that's fine with
him.
|
