ARIZONA CORNER

                                                                                 August 8, 2011

America's 10 sickest housing markets

Combination of crushed prices, lots of vacancies and down economy have these cities reeling

1. Tucson, Ariz.
Homeowner vacancy rates: 6.8 percent (1st)
Rental vacancy rates: 15.9 percent (6th)
Total housing units: 440,909
Unemployment: 7.8 percent

Tucson’s homeowner vacancy rate was 3.2 percent one year ago. It is now over double that. The city had a booming residential housing market before the crash. Since then, demand is so low that median home prices have dropped 18 percent in the past year and 33 percent since 2008. In addition, the city has among the highest rate of foreclosures in the country.

Methodology
24/7 Wall St. pulled Census data on the 75 largest U.S. metropolitan areas and ranked the cities with the highest overall vacancy rates for both homeowner vacancy and rental vacancy for the second quarter of 2011. We picked the cities with the worst rates in each of the two categories to create meta-data ranks. We then removed the cities that had either improved homeowner vacancy rate in either the last twelve months or the last quarter. We believed that any sign of improvement in homeowner vacancies, the more telling of the vacancy rates, should disqualify a city. To improve our analysis, we also looked at unemployment rates for these cities provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We also used historical median home prices, as provided by the National Association of Realtors. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44005383/ns/business-real_estate/

Stuck in Phoenix, the Epicenter of Housing Crisis

by Barry Wood
Thursday, July 28, 2011

It may take years for housing to bloom again in desert

In metropolitan Phoenix, two-thirds of all residential mortgages are underwater. Of these, some 200,000 are 50% larger than the current market value of the properties. Many homeowners have come to doubt whether they'll ever retrieve their lost equity.

In this city of 4 million, the 14th largest in the United States, the median home price is down 53% since the bubble peaked in 2006 to just over $120,000. Only smaller cities such as Las Vegas and Orlando have witnessed equally catastrophic drops. http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/113212/phoenix-epicenter-housing-crisis-marketwatch?mod=realestate-sell

Arizona, as we know, is deadsville for decent jobs. Our only robust industry seems to be unemployment.

Still there is always hope, and so today I offer a suggestion: Go to law school. Become a prosecutor. Specialize in political corruption.

It's a great gig, investigating political corruption in Arizona. For one thing, we never run out of it. For another, we never seem to actually do anything about it.

Nice job: Investigating political corruption in Arizona

by Laurie Roberts, columnist - Aug. 5, 2011 10:52 PM
The Arizona Republic

We just investigate . . . and investigate . . . and, well, investigate.

It's been more than three months since Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery launched an investigation into a dozen or more Arizona legislators who accepted free football tickets and failed to disclose fabulous weekend getaways, courtesy of the Fiesta Bowl.

It's illegal for legislators to accept free football tickets under most circumstances, including, I suspect, the circumstances under which our freebie-loving legislators find themselves. Failure to disclose junkets is also a violation of the law.Read more: 

Flake Draws Wealthy GOP Primary Opponent

By Kyle Trygstad

Business investor Wil Cardon said Friday he will challenge Rep. Jeff Flake for the Republican Senate nomination in Arizona. Full Story