Arizona Sucks

If you have spent any sort of time in or around Arizona over the last few years then you had to have seen the eventual decline in construction out here coming. It was only a few years ago that the ‘Great Arizona Gold Rush’ would arrive in the Phoenix area. It prospered more than anyone would have ever imagined, promptly vanished, and would end up spoiling Arizona’s economy for years to come. It was during these golden days in Arizona that the Arizona housing market and construction industry felt as hot as a beautiful, August day out here. Loans were available for anyone and everyone, and the abuse was not about to stop there. Money was essentially being given away and everyone was encouraged to buy, buy, buy! Arizona home builders, Realtors, and home flippers were making tons of cash and many believed they were on the fast track to early retirement. Arizona residents were selling their homes for soaring profits, but quickly realized they were priced out of the market just weeks later. Construction workers were being bused in just to keep up with demand and many had projected that we would have construction jobs out here to fill for years to come. It was a crazy time in Arizona as construction flourished, property values were always higher than the day before, people were smiling, and there was a ton of money to be made if you played your cards right. For a short while, Arizona looked like the place to be or at least the place to invest your money in. So many people including Arizona Realtors, outside investors, home builders, and casual investors were certain this streak would continue and there was no way anyone was about to lose in this erupting Phoenix market.

It turned out that the only hot streak that would continue across Arizona would be our record setting number of days over 110 degrees just a couple years back. The state of Arizona and its inhabitants were left in quite a predicament once the housing bubble finally burst, banks tightened their lending practices, and the ‘free’ money had finally run dry. People were no longer moving to Arizona, the majority of residents were now priced out of the market, many builders had gone bankrupt, partially built developments were deserted, and there became little reason to continue building anything. Arizona’s economy had always been tied directly to population growth, construction, expansion, and the growing real estate market which was suddenly no longer here to assure us that the Arizona economy would continue moving right along. These days, the state of Arizona has no money left, the vast majority of Arizona residents have no money, and outside investors have all but vanished. We now have a surplus of moderately filled and deteriorating apartments, vacant office buildings all over the place, just about every strip mall in Arizona is half empty, and foreclosed homes line our streets. As artificial as it may have been, the construction boom in the Phoenix area is effectively over and wiped out a number of jobs a lot of people had always counted on being available out here.

The numbers are out, and the number of construction jobs lost in Arizona during 2009 is nothing short of depressing, especially for a state where the job market is non-existent to begin with. It has been reported that 26 percent of Arizona construction workers, or 40,300 individuals lost their construction jobs during 2009. That is a lot of people no matter how you slice it and our construction numbers had already been dwindling for the last few years. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this downturn will not affect you just because you might have no direct ties to the construction industry. The housing bubble bursting, the sharp decline in Arizona population growth, and the loss of jobs around the state is hurting everyone right now. The state, quite a few local businesses, and countless folks have run out of money and don’t know where to turn. Many people and even the state of Arizona are fishing around right now for a bailout. Numerous businesses including restaurants, car dealerships, movie theaters, and grocery stores have closed their doors and were forced to lay off a number of people. Even a number of state parks and rest areas in Arizona are in the process of shutting down for the time being. We have so many unemployed across Phoenix right now who are all stuck fighting for the same jobs that the situation becomes increasingly worse every time another industry or organization suffers a blow. The massive decline in the construction and real estate industries have effectively saturated our Arizona unemployment lines for years to come. There are just too many applicants and not enough jobs out there for everyone looking for work.

The major setback for these Arizona construction workers who are now out-of-work is that the number of construction jobs in Arizona probably won’t be picking up again for quite some time. It has been said that the Arizona construction industry is showing small signs of improving this year, but just take a look around you at all the vacant homes, office buildings, restaurants, and strip malls and it should give you an idea of just how much Arizona was overbuilt. Everyone in Arizona will pay for the overbuilding and greed which consumed so much of Arizona just a few short years ago.

Many thanks to member, Out of AZ, for recently posting this invaluable, honest look at how life really is in Arizona. I wanted to be sure everyone got a chance to read it, so enjoy!

I lived in the Phoenix area of AZ for eight years and just moved back to CO this summer. There are definitely negatives about anywhere, but there seems to be more in Phoenix than most. I’ve lived in NY, CA, CO, and NE and AZ is definitely the worst of all the places I’ve been.

For the nation’s fifth biggest city, there is absolutely nothing to do. You can go to one of 1235 shopping malls around the valley to escape the heat or go watch a movie, but you can do that anywhere in the country. You can go to an indoor baseball game if you can afford it. If you don’t have a swimming pool, your time in Phoenix will be miserable. If you do have a pool, expect crazy APS/SRP electric bills due to the pool and 24-hour air conditioning your house will need to keep it livable.

Your car will take a beating, the heat notwithstanding, but also the AZ drivers that you’ll drive defensively to avoid slamming into. Constant road construction is also a negative. There is approximately 15 miles of valley freeway closed every weekend for construction.

The job scene isn’t all that great. Not only is this place a right-to-work (more like right-to-get-fired-for-no-reason) state, the economy is heavily dependent on construction, which has all but ceased to exist right now.

There are like 21236 strip malls in Phoenix that look exactly like the 21235 others in the area. Same stores, same restaurants, same landscaping. It’s pretty hellish. And now, roughly half of most of the strip malls stand empty because of Arizona’s economy (and the broader US economy as well).

There’s no culture here. I’m not kidding. The best Mexican food here comes from chain restaurants. Or at least that’s what most Phoenicians think. Most Phoenicians love spending long weekends in Mexico but look down on Mexicans, Mexican food, and Mexican culture. Any other culture? Forget it, the best Italian food in the valley is at Olive Garden, the best Chinese is at Panda Express. For a metro area with a population over 4 million, it’s pretty pathetic.

The homes/neighborhoods/cities all look the same. Stucco brown boxes with eight tons of crushed rock in the front yard. You don’t know if you are in Ahwatukee, Tempe, Peoria or Chandler. It’s all the same.

I don’t know about public schools, I don’t have kids. But I will say that if you really think you’re going to receive a world-class education in a college with 70,000 others like at ASU or by paying tens of thousands for a degree people may or may not take seriously like at University of Phoenix, this may be a good place.

Phoenix is a waste. Truly. They waste water for miles of grass for golf courses or huge resorts. There are fountains and fake lakes everywhere. It’s great if you want to live near a body of green water so you can be eaten alive by mosquitoes. They waste electricity. How else do you justify living in a town that can get upwards of 120 degrees?

Phoenix is a demonstration of human accomplishment and hubris all at once. The fact that you can take a desolate, uninhabitable desert and turn it into the nation’s fifth-largest city shows what we can accomplish as a society. But for what purpose? So your kids can stay indoors for six months watching tv and playing video games because it’s too hot to play outside. So you can drive in your air conditioned car to your air conditioned office and back to your air conditioned home. So you can earn less money than most people doing the same job in the rest of the country. All this, with fluctuating real estate values, increasing crime, decreasing job opportunities, it’s all reason to stay out of Phoenix.

The secret is out – the quantity of quality jobs in Arizona is extremely low. Finding one of the few great job opportunities in Arizona is nearly impossible, but these days people are struggling in their hunt for any sort of job out here. Obviously, the economy across the country isn’t doing too great right now, but the employment situation in Arizona probably won’t be rebounding any time soon as it will be in many places. Arizona has always been known for its call center and construction jobs, along with a number of positions tied directly to the building, leasing, and selling of local real estate. There are very few companies headquartered in the area and a limited number of jobs out here outside of the construction, real estate, and service industries. The majority of Arizona residents have always relied on working these retail, foodservice, and construction jobs and many were happy to do so – remember, the majority out here have little desire to get ahead. The great Arizona housing crash has not only successfully dropped Arizona housing prices back to reality and then some, but has also led to a depressing situation in the Arizona job market for many residents here.

As Arizona experienced record population growth in recent years, it led to a false sense of security for many and a very temporary job market. Construction teams were busy building up house after house, along with the adjacent community shopping centers. More and more service jobs were created to service all the residents in these newer communities and strip malls which shot up around Phoenix. Many people jumped into real estate and mortgage jobs in order to keep up with the temporary demand and most saw it as their gold ticket to early retirement. The mindset in Arizona seemed to to be that the population growth would continue, home values would continue to go up, and jobs were more than secure. So, now that the real estate bubble burst and took tons of real estate and construction related jobs with it, what is your now out of work Arizona Realtor or mortgage broker to do? Well, you have probably seen many of them out and about as many now work at Safeway, Burger King, Bashas’, or Applebees – jobs that a lot of people in Arizona had always relied on being available. And in a place like Arizona, this trend is likely to continue for quite some time as all those excess mortgage and constructions jobs just aren’t needed anymore.

Times are tough for your average Arizona resident and they aren’t going to be getting better any time soon. More jobs aren’t going to appear out of thin air – if anything, the number of available jobs in Arizona is actually declining. Next time you head out, count how many strip malls have vacant openings or how many grocery stores have closed down or the now empty fast food restaurant buildings. And it seems like someone finally wised up to the fact that it might be time to slow down all the new home and commercial property builds – many of which sit vacant regardless of location. These retail and service jobs were the jobs Arizona’s people had relied on for so long and many of these jobs are now done by out of work Arizona Realtors and construction workers. It was bad enough that there were never really any good jobs in Arizona, but now that there is pretty much NO jobs in Arizona – good luck!

Just a few years ago, there were so many in Arizona who didn’t have a complaint in the world except for the hot weather, the abundance of rude people, and a severe lack of anything to do. Homes were selling quicker than they could go up, Arizona Realtors were making unheard of commissions, and others were successfully flipping home after home to out of state investors. The construction industry was moving right along and there were tons of new construction jobs and retail/service jobs in the endless communities which shot up around Phoenix. Just about everywhere you looked in the Phoenix area – if there was flat, open land – there were homes or strip malls being built. Logic tells you this couldn’t go on forever, but it was as if some in Arizona were actually under the impression that everyone across the country would relocate to Arizona at some point in the near future. It is quite comical to watch this suburban sprawl in Arizona especially since everything looks exactly the same except for maybe the color of the street signs.

Community after community went up, with the adjacent strip mall, fast food restaurants, and the corner Chilis restaurant in typical Arizona fashion. As each community was built, each became increasingly farther and farther away from the central hub of downtown Phoenix – which is what I would call just about the center of this mess we call the Phoenix metropolitan area. Fortunately, few people are actually tied to the downtown area and there really isn’t shit to see or do there – maybe with the exception of the Suns and the Diamondbacks when they are having better than average seasons. However, I would wager most of your larger job centers in Arizona are within a 15-20 mile range of downtown Phoenix. What does this mean for people who bought homes in the newer communities built out in Buckeye, Queen Creek, far North Phoenix, east Mesa, Surprise, and Maricopa – long and extremely dangerous commutes if you actually have a job. If you happen to live in one of these communities and work there too, then you have really lucked out, especially by Arizona standards – you have a job, you spend less time on Arizona’s unsafe roadways, and you have access to much cheaper real estate. The question is how will these communities survive? Now that the Arizona home rush is over, less people are moving here, and home prices are back to reality – who is really going to want to live that far out from everything that some say Phoenix has to offer? What is going to happen to those communities where every other house is in foreclosure and houses have been sitting vacant for months? How low are home prices in these areas going to go?

If you’ve been to or lived in Arizona, then I am sure you know that many of the newer home developments and apartment/condo complexes are now gated. I’m also sure that if you watch just a few moments of the Arizona local news, you have seen the growing and obscene amount of crime within state lines. Stabbings, shootings, rape, abductions, robberies, and children being maliciously abused are all on the news every single day out here – and these are only the stories that make the Arizona news. You watch just a few of these stories and you might start questioning your own safety in Arizona. Commercial home and apartment builders quickly caught on and started building communities with electronic gates for access in-and-out of the community. Being in a ‘gated community’ has become a main selling point when it comes to Arizona real estate since there really is nowhere to hide from all the violence in Arizona . Many feel these gates keep the bad guys out and some actually say that they feel safer while being imprisoned within their own community. If you must live in Arizona, is it really worth your time to look around for a place in a gated community or to rule out a home because the community is not gated?

The easy, quick, and simple answer to this one is, NO. Take a look around – most of these gates don’t even work properly, and even if they do, most have no mechanisms from preventing someone from following someone else in or from coming in through the exit lane when someone else leaves. If someone wants to get in, they will find a way. Really, the only benefit to a gated community is it prevents most of the thru traffic – how often do people cut thru residential roadways anyways? In the end, it is not that Arizona gated communities are a bad thing – it is just that they give you a false sense of safety and security which is not really there at all. Want to really feel safe – get out of Arizona and away from the illegals, Mexican gangs, drug lords & mafia, white trash, drug dealers, and the rest of the meth heads out here.

The shadow market has been getting a lot of media attention here in Arizona during the last few weeks. Some of you might wonder what it is or how it could affect you if you own an Arizona property or plan on purchasing one. It is important to point out that these shadow properties always exist in the market to some degree, but nothing like the current level and you have to wonder how long anyone can keep these properties on their books. Anyways, first the facts:

Arizona has come pretty close to leading the country in number of foreclosures in recent years and this trend is likely to continue for some time. Too many people, bought too many houses in Arizona which they knew they had no chance of ever making the payments on. Remember just how low the average Arizona salary is and that equates to a large percentage of people being priced out of the Arizona market even when prices are the lowest. This would prevent most rational people from trying to purchase a home, but not in Arizona. Back during the Arizona gold rush of 2005-2006, everyone, and I mean everyone, in Arizona thought they would become real estate tycoons and retire early. The plan was to buy Arizona real estate and flip it for a profit, since prices are only going to get higher, right? And it did work, except for the tens of thousands who were late to the game and stuck in a mortgage or two they could never really afford. Even if you were one of the few good people who actually took out a loan you could afford, you were now stuck with an Arizona home that you considerably overpaid for. And a new weekend activity in Arizona was born – driving through neighboring subdivisions and counting the number of homes in foreclosure.

With so many foreclosures in recent years, the majority of Phoenix homes are now owned by banks and many estimate this number could be 75% or higher. A huge percentage of these Arizona properties going into foreclosure are not even making to the market. Instead, Arizona homes and condos are being held and sit vacant, or they are being rented out for the time being. Why? Banks and homeowners are trying to cut their losses on these failed investments as much as possible and trying to wait for the market to inch upwards. And, if you have yet to sell your investment for a loss yet, then it would still be considered an asset, right? Short-term this will prevent home prices in your neighborhood from dropping as much as they really should be right now – don’t get too excited though.

As the market really begins to show signs of moving upwards, a lot of these homes will hit the market. It is predicted a lot of those people who are actually not in foreclosure may also try and sell when the market starts to really turn around. What happens then? Prices go back down. What happens when the foreclosures in your neighborhood hit the market? The value of your home goes down too. There were so many new homes that shot up during the Arizona gold rush that there is far too many homes and not enough qualified home buyers in Arizona. As hard as foreclosures hit the Phoenix area, it is going to take a long time to really recover. It may never recover in some areas – many aren’t going to jump at the chance of moving to Buckeye, Queen Creek, far east Mesa, Surprise and other fringe cities unless they are in retirement or work at the local Safeway.

You really probably aren’t ever going to win again in the Phoenix real estate market. If you must live here – buy what you want, where you want, and plan on staying for a while.

Thought Arizona real estate prices would be leveling out by now? Think again – these foreclosures can and will continue to drive down the prices of homes across the Valley. Some areas will be affected more than others, especially outlying areas like Buckeye. What does this mean if you plan on buying a home in Arizona? Home prices will continue to drop – there is no reason to rush into buying anything except for your absolute long-term dream home. What will this mean for those trying to sell a home in Arizona? Unfortunately, as lenders are forced to slash prices to unload these foreclosed properties the value of your property will go down as well. When will the Arizona housing market stabilize? The Arizona real estate market will not stabilize until the foreclosure rate drops down to more average numbers. Prices will continue going down as long as there is an excessive amount of homes being foreclosed on. Once again, you can thank your neighbors for buying homes which they could never afford and thus lowering the value of your home as well.

In the past, one of the very few reasons for actually relocating to the Valley was the low-cost of living. Everything was cheap, and real estate was extremely affordable – just about anybody could actually afford to buy a decent sized home with a pool and actually make the payments. As time went on, Arizona real estate prices would become increasingly more expensive and many Arizona locals were effectively priced out of the market – or forced to try and buy in the far, far outskirts of town. Obviously, real estate has risen in price across the entire country and not just in Arizona. However, the job market and average Arizona salary has remained quite stagnant over the years and has left many people struggling to buy their own home and actually make the payments.

Home prices across the Valley have not (and may not) fall back down far enough where the majority of Valley residents will actually be able to afford to own their own home. Many have been priced out of the Arizona real estate market due to the abundance of poor paying jobs in the area.

Arizona can attract tons of people and we can continue to build tons of new housing developments – but if there are very few who can actually afford their own home, then what will happen to all these homes? Who is going to buy them? How many people will be forced to leave Arizona due to the lack of high paying jobs?

Unless you are retired, actually work in the area, or you work from home – you may want to think twice about buying that home on the Valley’s fringes just because the initial investment sounds quite a bit cheaper. Arizona has a ton of relatively open land so the real estate trend has always been to build out, and not up – resulting in suburban sprawl which spreads for miles and miles. These new areas often offer brand new housing, shopping centers, restaurants, and schools – but are they just too far away from everything else and do they offer many jobs outside of retail/restaurants? How successful can these fringe cities be if they can’t offer good jobs in the immediate area?

For the most part, the majority of jobs in these fringe areas are service-oriented to meet the daily demands of the residents in these new areas. Many of these jobs include grocery stores, restaurant chains, movie theaters, and gas stations. If you are planning on working for any of the few big employers in the Valley, you are almost guaranteed a lengthy commute every single day. The roads leading out of these fringe cities will be extremely congested as just about EVERYBODY has to commute elsewhere for work.

Many of these fringe cities may have grown too fast and too far out because of the recent housing boom. How much planning actually went into these cities or were they rushed to meet the Arizona housing demand of recent years? Will they stand the test of time or will they be abandoned by people hoping to move closer to everything else?

Arizona homes built in fringe developments may seem a lot cheaper initially, but are they really cheaper in the long run? What do you think?

I had a yard sale at a house I rented just north of downtown Phx. I’ve had plenty of yard sales in my life and NEVER had any one try to pass a counterfeit bill. At this one yard sale, I had THREE different people try to pass fake bills! I accepted one (tried to spend it at Taco Bell and found out when they didn’t accept it), my roommate accepted one, and I caught the third one because it had gotten wet and the ink was running. – Furreal

I guess this is what Arizona residents have to resort to now that the real estate boom is over and their HELOC has been frozen or canceled. Can’t even afford to shop around at yard sales anymore … sad and pathetic.