Arizona and West Poised to Beat National Job Numbers

Arizona and West poised to beat national job numbers
from the Business Journal of Phoenix, reports that while the national economy is expected to remain sluggish through the rest of the year with a projected 1.3 percent employment gain, projections for the West, including Arizona, are much stronger. Arizona is expected to see a 3.5 percent gain in wage and salary employment for the year, behind only Nevada which is expected to gain 4.3 percent. The information came from the latest Western Blue Chip Economic Forecast put out by the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU. The Blue Chip Forecast also looks at 2008 with Arizona jobs expected to grow 3.4 percent. As long as we keep gaining population and jobs, our market will be fine.

Many investors feel like running away from homes, from USA TODAY, reports that many real estate investors are switching back to stocks in a complete flip-flop of what occurred in 2002, when investors tired of the bear stock market and began investing in real estate. People doing that were the subject of a USA TODAY cover story in December 2002. Dave Yeske, a San Francisco financial advisor, was featured in that 2002 story because he was being barraged with people selling stocks to buy homes. "The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction," he says now. "The clients that sold stocks to buy spec homes in Arizona are telling me they're under water, can't rent them and wish they had left all the money in the stock market." Many investors are now landlords, getting calls from tenants to fix leaky toilets in properties that are not worth as much as the investor paid for them. The plight of the real estate investor is even the topic of a web mockumentary, called Flipper Nation, that pokes fun at two wannabee real estate speculators who ended up making a $1 profit.

Housing Bubble and Real Estate Market Tracker from SA for 6/6