‘Home Builders Walk Away From Purchases’ In Arizona
A pair of reports on homebuilders in Arizona. “The Valley’s slowing real estate market is giving new real estate players a chance. A Scottsdale firm purchased two prime parcels of state trust land in Peoria on Thursday. It was the only bidder for one parcel and easily beat Toll Brothers, which has spent millions in the past on state land, for the other.”
“Now some land deals in Pinal County and on the edges of the West Valley are falling through as the housing market slows and builders pull back. Darrell Sherman said his group is planning large residential projects on both parcels.”
“The auction room of the State Land Department was packed with builders and land brokers Thursday. But hardly any were there to bid on the two prime parcels of state land in Peoria. They were there trying to get an idea of whether the Valley’s slumping new-home market is poised for a rebound.”
“The state received only three bids for the parcels, just slightly more than what they were appraised at six months ago. Two of the bids were submitted by a relatively unknown developer.”
“It was a far cry from just months ago, when bidding wars among major home builders and developers pushed prices millions of dollars above the appraised value. Construction of new homes is down 18 percent from last year’s record pace. Many home builders now own too much Valley land, analysts say. They won’t be able to develop much of it for a while, so they aren’t in the market for more.”
The Arizona Daily Star. “Phoenix builder Beazer Homes has put off plans to move into the Tucson market, while other home builders are re-evaluating how to deal with a cooling local housing market.”
“The home-builder caution is in sharp contrast to housing activity over the last two years, when the price of land rose quickly and builders enjoyed waiting lists and lines of hopeful buyers leading out the door.”
“‘I really can’t comment on that at this point just because I’m not sure where it’s going to end up,’ said Rancho Sahuarita developer Bob Sharpe. He said generally that new home builders moving into the Tucson market ‘might be a little bit more distressed’ by a more volatile housing market in Maricopa County.”
“Another Beazer official, Guy Melton, said the company would not be coming here for at least the next six months.”
“Andrew Schorr, a lawyer who works with both home builders and landowners, said he has been involved in two other recent large land deals in which home builders walked away from their purchases. In one case, one builder ‘left money on the table’ because they ended the deal after a feasibility period.”
“‘They weren’t giant deals, but they weren’t little, five-acre deals either,’ with purchase prices in the millions, Schorr said.”
“Some home builders are adjusting to a cooling market in other ways, said John Bremond, president of KB Home’s Tucson division. While some builders are offering incentives like free pools and reduced interest rates, others are simply lowering prices.”
“‘I can’t really say, with certainty, what we will do in the near future,’ Bremond said. ‘There have been some price reductions in some areas.’”
“As the inventory of resale homes has increased over the last several months, sale price for some homes has dropped. In Rancho Sahuarita, for example, some KB Homes have been marked down as much as $10,000 over the last three months, Bremond said.”
‘This is an integral part of the city’s planning process,’ Mayor John Keegan said said. ‘We have been prepared for many years to work with whoever the developer will be to bring these properties on line.’ The Arizona state land commissioner serves as trustee of more than 9.3 million acres of Arizona state trust land.’
No shortage of builders willing to do the work and with 9 million acres, no shortage of land in Arizona. And that doesn’t include BLM, Dept. of Interior or Forest Service lands.
Hey Ben,
It look like the “Joint Centers for Housing Studies” is sending out another propaganda message for the realtors.
Here is a quote “Major house price declines seldom occur in the absence of severe overbuilding, major job loss, or a combination of heavy overbuilding and modest job loss. Fortunately, these preconditions are nowhere in evidence across the nation’s metropolitan areas”.
They are so full of it. I wish I had their crystal ball.
So the price can go up without any relational economic reasoning, but it can never go down unless it has condions.
The RE agents are todays snake oil salesman.
And to think all of this was built on a book, the MLS Bible, the holy grail that forced the population to use a “professional” agent.
A note to agents… your days are numbered. You will be replaced with a better, more accurate technology we call the internet. And, you will have to migrate to yet another industry that encourages selling to friends and family.. HELLLLO AMWAY!
I think Google is going to create another tool to help search real estate.
They may integrate culling pricing from various sources, integrate it with census data, and google maps, and satellite, and even news in the area, to give potential buyers and sellers a comprehensive picture of the area in addition to current market conditions, for FREE.
And for this free service they will probably allow vendors in the community to buy placement on a small area to the right, for products and services that these people would likely have an interest in.
They may even negotiate a deal with MLS to allow them to integarte their data into the search results. And if MLS wants some semblance of life, it would probably be in their best interest to negotiate a deal. They could pobably even sell to others such as yahoo or other service providers.
The real estate agents and broker might still have an exclusive on adding new listings to the MLS, but in time the MLS will probably allow anyone to add listings to the MLS for a fee.
And finally, at the end, the MLS will probably, eventually be free. If no, Google will probably create their own MLS to provide people with the service they want. And they have the size and reputation to follow through on that, successfully.
The problem once again is that there will be major job losses as a RESULT of the housing bust, but the spin-doctors will try to make it seem as if job losses, or the recession/depression, or higher rates were the CAUSE of the housing bust. All lies and spin.
Its a full-court press when it comes to propaganda from the RE machine, and we need to get reality out there as much as possible. We can only save a few, but that’s better than nothing.
I agree with the study: in a vacuum, home prices don’t plunge unless there is too much supply or if the job market or economic conditions fall apart.
But they miss a key point: home prices are at risk when they have been inflated dramatically past the point of affordability.
Since most markets in the U.S.—Florida, Calif, Boston are some of the exceptions—have never had a RE bubble before. So I can understand why some of these folks say, “It can’t happen here because we’ve never had a bust.” But that’s because they’ve never had a boom.
The Nasdaq would never have fallen 80% from 2000-2002 if it hadn’t inflated 400% from 1995-2000. That’s how it works.
Not saying RE will be like the Nasdaq, but the pattern is the same. Assets that balloon up, deflate down.
Prime desert land. And what will happen when the water runs out in 20 years or even earlier ?
No, there’s plenty of CAP water for the future growth, and because agriculture uses a vast amount of the water here, it will give way to growth making more water available for non-agricultural use.
Until people get hungry and realize carrots or lettuce tasts a lot better than bluegrass.
New Mexico has almost no water now, but people keep coming and the CA locusts keep buying properties. If the drought continues. things could get interesting.
WE BROKER 50K in Phoenix
7/20/2005 10748
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Thanks Phuck. Truly amazing when one looks at your first inventory number versus the latest:
7/20/2005 10748
6/23/2006 50296
Does anybody claim to have picked the inventory number of 50K plus by the end of June? If so, PLEASE step forward and accept your crown.
That’s it—I now know EXACTLY when to buy a house. It will be when this tower of numbers collapses under its own weight into a random heap at the bottom of my screen.
Talon - sounds like you’re not in any hurry to buy…
400 listings today. Fantastic. What will YOU do to make your 3/2 stucco shack stick out from the five identical models for sale across the street?
Ben, didn’t know if you know this but there’s a Craigslist for Flag/Sedona now. Looking forward to some great listings on that!
WOW!!! KB homes knocked some of their home prices down by a whole 10k! So what do they start at now, 350k?
Anyone have a prediction on when job losses due to a cooling housing market begin to really show in the numbers? 3rd or 4th quarter of ‘06? first half of ‘07?
I saw a video story on News 12 about a bunch of construction workers who havent been paid in a month protesting outside some company….
Is it related to this story: Protest leads to police escort for construction workers?
Or was it the “Union members picket at Loma Linda hospital site“
Two people who jumped into the Real Estate “profession” about two years ago have lost their jobs as of last month. These are friends of mine (and I have a very tiny circle of friends). They are just thankful at this point to get out.
It’s really ugly in Phoenix right now.
First time post but I have been reading for awhile and love your blog Ben! I live in North Phoenix and feel that it is a pending disaster. There are a huge amount of homes for sale in my neighborhood, DR Horton is starting construction on new homes a 1/2 mile away, and a finished Toll Brothers neighborhood 2 miles away is a virtual ghost town. I would guess that 70% of the finished homes there are vacant. It is quite interesting to drive by at night and see no lights on! I feel the inventory situation in Phoenix is bound to get worse.
I wonder how many of those 70% empty houses are owned by “investors”
“As the inventory of resale homes has increased over the last several months, sale price for some homes has dropped. In Rancho Sahuarita, for example, some KB Homes have been marked down as much as $10,000 over the last three months, Bremond said.”
A whole 10%, thats carnage. Give me a break.
Simmssays…weirdest jewlry ever
http://www.americaninventorspot.com/weird_jewelry
The NAR and realtors can’t predict a rebounding or appreciating market for 2007 as they are suggesting pursuant to speculator inventory being absorbed because :
(1) Inventory glut of 2006 is evidence of lack of demand .Currently its not being absorbed but increasing .
(2) Raising interest rates will futher decrease housing demand and affordability .
(3) Lack of appreciation potential will kill investment purchases and first time buyer purchases and move up buyer purchases .
(4) Inventory will not be absorbed by 2007 ,in fact ,inventory will increase in 2006/2007 due to flippers , builders still building ,ARM resets and foreclosures , and more people selling because of “sell now before interest rates go up more .”
(5) Home ownership currently is at 71% nationwide ,which is already at a all time high . For inventory to be absorbed you would need alot of second and third home purchases by current homeowners and investors .
(6) Its false that a strong job base ,aside from real estate jobs ,will support continued absorbtion of inventory at current prices and interest rate .
(7) During prime selling season many markets are dead already with buyers backing off if anything .Its not a buyers market , its a “dead market “.
To sum it up , its false to suggest that the housing markets will rebound/appreciate after a little excess inventory problem is corrected by purchases that weed out the evil speculators,( what is going to replace that 40% speculator demand of 2005 ?).
Also the suggestion that only a 10% correction on prices will correct the inventory glut is wishful thinking on the part of the soothsayers .
This reminds me of the spin doctors are CNBC saying we have had a bull market the last couple of years. Except, if you check the S&P 500 average for the last 5 years, it is up a staggering 1.3%.. The dot.com crash really has never recovered and I remeber how all the guru’s on CNBC said diversify by buying the S&P 500 index. Tell the Realtor’s and their economists the one thing they can’t spin “THE TREND is YOUR FRIEND”!
Far be it for me to offer investment advice, but buying an S&P Index Fund from a good company like Vanguard (espedially if you are reinvesting the dividends, and dollar-cost averaging) is probably the single best investment anyone can make (long term). Past performance is no guarantee of future results, etc., etc.
Sounds like a poor comparison, especially when you pick 5 years ago, right before a major recession. If your time line started in 2003 or 1990, returns would have been significantly better.
I’m not really sure what your point is.
From the update:
‘The auction room of the State Land Department was packed with builders and land brokers Thursday. But hardly any were there to bid on the two prime parcels of state land in Peoria. They were there trying to get an idea of whether the Valley’s slumping new-home market is poised for a rebound.’
‘The state received only three bids for the parcels, just slightly more than what they were appraised at six months ago. Two of the bids were submitted by a relatively unknown developer.’
‘It was a far cry from just months ago, when bidding wars among major home builders and developers pushed prices millions of dollars above the appraised value. Construction of new homes is down 18 percent from last year’s record pace. Many home builders now own too much Valley land, analysts say. They won’t be able to develop much of it for a while, so they aren’t in the market for more.’
The state has a zero cost basis in this raw land. Prices can go much lower.
Just saw a print ad for Patriot Homes in the Metro DC area, and I wish I’d kept the same ads from a few months before. Prices seem to be lower, some marked “Now $460,900″ for example. But are they, and how much?
In any case, Patriot is subsidising the interest rate, with 3.99% first year, 4.99% second year, and 5.99% after that. Not a bad deal, right? Well, if you use that loan to 80% finance a $400k house in the exurbs, it will save you about $16k in the first three years, by my back of the envolope calculations. Nowhere near enough to entice anyone with sense!
Oh wait, it actually works out to about $11k savings in your pocket after the fed+state tax deductions are considered. The way inventory and sales are ppinting, your house will depreciate by that much even before the end of summer!
And more news on DC Metro inventories, published in the Washington TImes today:
May 2005 showed inventory and sales about equal, sales roughly 14,000 and inventory about 16,000. (Hard to be exact with their graph, since
there are no explicit numbers in tha spot, but this is close). Before that, sales and inventory tracked each other closely. But May 2005 is the month where the two values really started diverging.
By June 2005: Inventory 17,245 and sales down to 12,752.
Now May 2006: Inventory 45,118 and sales down to 9,280!
Oh my.
i drive by this townhouse-to-be community everyday off of E Glebe Rd. all they’ve done in the past year is pave a road, no foundations even built yet, dont know what they’re waiting for. anyway it used to say “from the 800’s”, now “from the 600’s”. this is with glebe in your backyard, if there is a yard.
And how many of those sales were orders placed 6-9 months ago? Where the buyer couldn’t bring themselves to walk away from a deposit?
“Many home builders now own too much Valley land, analysts say. They won’t be able to develop much of it for a while, so they aren’t in the market for more.”
But we were told the country was running out of land, and that’s why prices were going up so much.
Long-term $TNX (10-year bond yield) chart for a historical perspective.
http://stockcharts.com/c-sc/sc?s=TNX&p=W&yr=10&mn=0&dy=0&i=p42950328489&a=79348191&r=2077
Bloomberg lists 1-year ARMs at 5.40% today, and were at 3.64% a year ago. When so many people relied on ARMs to buy homes LAST year, what does it say about necessary pricing THIS year?
PAIN is coming.
What is the current water situation in the Phoenix area? I would assume something would give eventually- especially with a drought year.
You mean a ten-year drought. Phoenix has had rain a total of 2 or 3 times this year, and even that was barely enough to keep the pavement wet. Phoenix has been in “drought” condition for going on ten years now..
Long time reader, love this blog. My husband and I decided to test the waters,(or should I say get our hands dirty) about a week ago. New build /spec home buying- Meritage Homes salesman
offering 20,000 in incentives/3.5,4.5,5.5% fixed rate on 375,000 dollar home(which by the way was a listed spec home at 390,000). In the same breath he gave us the new build home prices never fall speal. Right…. My husband gave me a hard time for not unleashing on the guy. Later we went by a newer neighborhood riddled with for sale signs and decided to test the water here. First home willing to reduce by 20,000 from org. asking price, seller has two mortgages right now, turned down an offer 3 months ago on the home not high enough- now priced below… 2nd home family is relocating out of state. As we walked down the road to see a third, a man quickly approaches us and asks us to look at his house-the real gem on the block… okay. Meanwhile neighbors are congregating whispering,smiling,waving. The fourth house we looked at was owned by an Iranian man in some serious financial trouble, the home looked like it was a camp, bed rolls laid out in bedrooms, no furniture, bottled water tanks littering the kitchen. His eyes looked weathered with sleepless nights. Did I mention his BMW was for sale in the drive way. This particular home was prices 30,000 lower than the exact floorplan we were solicited to look at earlier, and on the market since Feb. Yikes. A sureal experience. The neighbors were all to willing to give out personal information regarding each other and their financial circumstances/problems with the new build construction-plumbing, shotty work. The desperation is sad. Asking for a 20% correction in price as a buyer sometimes feels like we are kicking someone in the teeth when they are down, yet we won’t buy unless they concede. There were six more homes on the block for sale- we passed them by returned to our rental home less than a mile away and savored our freedom. Thanks again for the blog, it’s been a real support the last year.
You need a decent income or down payment to afford houses in the $300K and these folks made a choice to buy. Big life-decision choices can have very big consequences which is why you make them carefully.
If you want to blame central bankers, I’m all
for that as they firmly knew what would
happen if they lowered interest rates. That’s
the idea: lower interest rates and get people
to borrow to stimulate the economy. Of course once things are going, the people that borrowed are disposable. If you ever wanted a blueprint for that, it was Japan.
That would make for a great TV show! Instead of Desparate Housewives- we can have Desparate Homesellers.
These morons sound like they’re inmates on death row.
man, i could read that post over and over again. the bit about bedrolls and waterbottles is such a good image. not to mention the sleepless thing.
what a difference a year makes
“Did I mention his BMW was for sale in the drive way. This particular home was prices 30,000 lower than the exact floorplan we were solicited to look at earlier, and on the market since Feb. Yikes. A sureal experience. The neighbors were all to willing to give out personal information regarding each other and their financial circumstances/problems with the new build construction-plumbing, shotty work. The desperation is sad.”
What was that 60’s movie, “The Night of the Living Dead,” where dead folks walked around like zombies. For the current horror flick, just add one word:
The Night of the Living Dead Investors
Ziprealty has Phoenix at 50,296 now! Yipee!
“They were there trying to get an idea of whether the Valley’s slumping new-home market is poised for a rebound.”
What a bunch of impatient pr*cks.
The area has just had a decade (or more) worth of appreciation and RE activity in the past 24 months, fueled primarily by once-in-a-generation reduction in interest rates, bubble fever and EZ credit.
But just a handful of months later, these bozos are thinking that enough time has elapsed to re-inflate the bubble. They are either dumb, desperate or in denial. Probably all three.
Ben,
There was a contest around December- January, with everyone betting on when the MLS numbers exceeded 50,000 in Phoenix. So— who won?
i picked the 15th of june. honest
Yep ,you win cereal because originally I think I said 55k by the end of June .