You’d think from the East Valley Tribune that my old hometown of Gilbert was just booming:
Once again, the U.S. Census Bureau has named Gilbert one of the 10 fastest-growing cities in the nation. What’s perhaps more surprising in today’s economic climate is a jump in the number of new housing permits being issued by the town over the last two months.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday that Gilbert was the eighth-fastest-growing city with a population larger than 100,000 in the United States from July 2006 to July 2007, gaining 11,308 or 5.8 percent. The only other Arizona city that made the top 25 on this percentage-based list was Peoria, No. 23 at 3 percent.
The plummeting housing market of the last six months may have led some to wonder whether Gilbert will sustain that level of growth, but officials saw a substantial jump in the number of single-family housing permits pulled in recent months: 170 in May and 156 in June, compared to 87 in April and 43 in January.
Of course, Arizona Doomers have learned to be a little skeptical about population growth figures. It turns out that the estimates aren’t always that reliable:
For decades, everyone assumed Arizona’s population-projection figures were reliable. Turns out they are not.During the height of the boom in 2005, state and census estimates showed a record 196,000 people moved to the Phoenix area. That startling figure led to projections for the Valley’s population to more than double to 12 million as soon as 2030.But those projections, based largely on housing permits and occupancy numbers, didn’t accurately reflect how many people were moving to the Valley.The large number of investor-owned properties inflated figures. And the number of building permits exceeded the number of houses actually sold. For example, a record 62,000 new homes went up in metro Phoenix during 2005 but only about 40,000 of those were bought by people who moved into them.
