Hacienda Plaza sold for $2.4 million The Denali National Trust has purchased the Hacienda Plaza in the Scottsdale Airpark for $2.4 million. The plaza is a 32,327-square-foot office and showroom at 15613 N. Greenway-Hayden Loop. View article…
Village at Madison Meadows development gets new lease on life In this distressed housing market, buyers with means have their pick of homes. But finding newly built construction in north-central Phoenix hasn’t been easy until now. Frank Residential, a builder of single-family homes and multifamily complexes around the Valley, now is building homes at the Village at Madison Meadows at Third and Maryland avenues. View article…
Westgate developer, Glendale will split $25M in escrow account Glendale will split $25 million with Steve Ellman and get the Westgate City Center developer to sign on as part of a special taxing district to help finance the city’s Phoenix Coyotes deal. Glendale officials have long sought to include Westgate, which includes most of the area’s commercial development, in the new taxing district that council approved last spring. View article…
Mesa‘s POOL Together marketplace closing its doors Mesa’s POOL Together marketplace, a novel concept designed to fill an empty big box store with start-up businesses, is scheduled to close Feb. 5. The closure dashed the dreams of small business people, many of whom were going into business for themselves for the first time. No explanation was provided for the closure. POOL Together, at Main Street and Stapley Drive, occupied a closed Mervyn’s department store. It was once viewed as a promising experiment on how to re-use empty big box stores shuttered during the recession. View article…
Wellness concierge to open in Cave Creek A wellness concierge designed to offer alternative medicines and practices in one location will open next month in Cave Creek. Co-founder Alice Kunka said the cooperative called HealthWorks, set to open Feb. 5, will bring the wellness community together to heighten awareness of complementary and alternative medicines and provide resources to those interested in such services. View article…
Mesa seeks to brand ‘Power Knowledge Corridor’ Eleven miles of Power Road will get an image boost later this year as Mesa looks to better promote a corridor of higher education, research and aerospace. View article…
HOUSING UPDATES:
Chandler worried about drop in real-estate values Real-estate values are dropping more than Chandler officials expected, and that’s going to hit years of property-tax revenues used to pay for streets, parks and city vehicles. In a preliminary budget presentation to the City Council this week, Management Services Director Dennis Strachota said he expects a nearly $30 million decline in property-tax revenues over the next five years because the assessed values of Chandler real estate fell by more than 19 percent for the 2011-12 tax year instead of the anticipated 15 percent. View article…
Phoenix 4th in foreclosures for 2010 as numbers shrink Phoenix landed fourth in RealtyTrac’s Year-End Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report ranking 206 markets by the percentage of total housing units hit with foreclosure filings. In the Phoenix area, 124,720 properties, equating to one out of 14 homes were hit with foreclosure filings last year. View article…
Phoenix-area real-estate market may face new reality As the Phoenix-area housing market’s shift from boom to bust approaches its fifth anniversary, a number of real-estate analysts have replaced optimistic terms such as “recovery” with sobering talk of a new market reality. The landscape of tomorrow’s housing market, as depicted in recent research papers and forecast meetings, is only a rough sketch, but three notable features have taken shape. View article…
Phoenix-area housing recovery pushed back again as jobs lag, foreclosures mount Metro Phoenix home values won’t recover to pre-boom levels until 2015, according to industry experts. The latest forecasts for the housing market’s recovery have been pushed out by another year because of slower-than-expected job and population growth and a bigger glut of home foreclosures than anyone expected. View article…
NATIONAL NEWS:
Distressed Debt Investors Turning to Real Estate A survey of 100 distressed debt investors found that this year many will increasingly devote their money to real estate. The survey, conducted by Debtwire and commissioned by Bingham McCutchen LLP and Macquarie Capital, polled investors from companies such as hedge funds, private equity firm, bank props or trading desks. View article…
Five myths about US interest rates Interest rates, which have been so low for so long that US consumers and businesses have come to consider it an entitlement, are starting to creep upward, prompting new concerns and debates. Will higher rates undercut the economic recovery? Should the Federal Reserve do more to hold rates down…View article…
11 Failed Institutions so Far in 2011 First Community Bank, Taos, NM, is the largest of four banks to fail on Friday, Jan. 28. The $2.31 billion institution was subsequently acquired by U.S. Bank, National Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was the 11th failed bank so far in 2011. View article…
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