Housing Doom

For more than two years, the skeleton of the Elevation Chandler project has stood near the Chandler Fashion Mall, a monument of sorts to the late, great real estate market in Phoenix.  Now it looks like Chandler could have another "ghost development" just down the road: [Thanks M!]

Construction equipment is off and workers have left what was supposed to be a 21-acre project called Chandler Piazza, a Tuscan-style mall with a hotel, shops, restaurants and offices.

The Scottsdale-based owner didn’t return phone calls Wednesday, but those involved in the project, including city officials, said work stalled on the construction site at the southeast corner of Frye and Ellis roads in Chandler.

Plans for Chandler Piazza - owned by Chandler Piazza LLC, according to the Maricopa County Recorder’s office - included a four-story Westin-brand Element hotel, a two-story, 77,000-square-foot office building and 31,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

The project isn’t officially dead yet:

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Not only are Arizonans having a hard time selling their properties, it seems the State of Arizona can’t unload their property either:

The State Land Department has halted almost all land sales "for quite some time," a state official said.

The last attempted land sale, for a small parcel in northeast Phoenix on July 9, drew no interest.

Several previous sales attracted no bidders, including large parcels in or near the desirable Desert Ridge area of northeast Phoenix.

The State Land Department controls almost all undeveloped land in north and northeast Phoenix. It hoped to begin selling land north of Pinnacle Peak by now. That land, several Desert Ridge parcels and other pieces of land are now tentatively scheduled for sale in 2009.

Department officials have blamed the decline in interest on the economic downturn and the housing crisis.

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M is feeling a bit smug on this one.  He thought sales would be up year-over-year this summer, and it looks like he’s right. Unlike the reports done by Dr. Jay Butler of ASU’s Realty Studies, these figures are based on MLS sales, and do not include trustee sales. [Although Kudos to Butler for now separating those out.]

Here’s Doom’s unofficial figures for June, and may vary slightly from official MLS figures: [Thanks M!]

ALL MLS

Active     52,269
UC            8,313
Sold          5,699    5,439 June ‘07   +4.7% YOY
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QC and Maricopa only:
 
Active    2,565
UC            807
Sold          519      226 June ‘07   +129%  YOY

It’s important to remember a couple of things.  Even with a slight YOY improvement, these numbers remain below even 2001 numbers. [6164 homes sold June 2001] The market now is largely foreclosure driven- many, many of these sales are REOs or short sales, so the market continues to be especially difficult for resellers. M pointed out the difference between the old "owner occupied market" and a "foreclosure market".  M had the following comment on price drops:

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