By Mary Jo Pitzi, Casey Newton and Matthew Benson / The Arizona Republic
July 6, 2009

Lawmakers made a temporary fix to the state budget Monday to ensure continued funding for public education, but a bigger battle awaits as they face a deficit of at least $2.1 billion for the current year.

A rare wave of bipartisan action carried the day as lawmakers scrambled to restore the public-school system’s $3.2 billion budget. They also added funding that again qualifies the state for federal stimulus money. Legislators still must negotiate a plan to balance the overall 2010 budget.

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By Dan Levy / Bloomberg.com
July 7, 2009

July 7 (Bloomberg) — Home prices may fall in more than half of the largest U.S. cities through the first quarter of 2011 as unemployment and foreclosures rise, mortgage insurer PMI Group Inc. said.

Thirty of the 50 biggest metropolitan areas have at least a 75 percent chance of lower prices through March 31, 2011, Walnut Creek, California-based PMI said in a report today. The decline is likely to spread to “all regions of the nation” from California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, the states most affected by the housing slump, PMI said.

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Phoenix Business Journal - by Mike SunnucksArizona’s home building industry is backing a bill to place a moratorium on new building code rules and development impact fees and would require voters to approve any increases to construction sales taxes.

Senate Bill 1035 has the support of the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, which contends new rules, fees and taxes on the struggling real estate and construction industry would further weaken Arizona’s fragile economy.

Arizona cities and towns oppose the plan that would restrict their ability to impose charges on new developments and subdivisions and change building codes for safety and other reasons. The moratoriums would start June 1 of this year and run through May 2012, if the bill is approved.

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More homeowners than ever before are falling behind on their mortgage payments and sliding into foreclosure, according to figures released on Thursday, a sign that the country’s housing crisis is spreading through the ranks of previously stable borrowers.

About 5.4 million of the country’s 45 million home loans were delinquent or in some stage of the foreclosure process in the first three months of the year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. About 12.07 percent of all mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure, up from 11.93 percent at the end of 2008.

Temporary halts on foreclosures imposed by lenders and mortgage underwriters have mostly ended, and banks are moving quickly against delinquent homeowners.

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The rate of property price falls in some states in the US is accelerating, according to the latest national data to be published.

And it is not the states that were worst hit in 2008 that are suffering now. Indeed Nevada and California are experiencing a slowdown in devaluation although they are still the top ranked states in terms of annual price falls.

Property prices continue to fall across much of the nation with Nevada seeing an annual price drop of 25.9% and California down by 24.9%. In third place is Rhode Island with a 21.2% depreciation rate, the figures from First American CoreLogic show.

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New figures from the Arizona Department of Commerce show the tri-city’s unemployment rate fell a tad in April.

The seasonally-adjusted rate fell from 8.9 percent in March to 8.8 percent in April.

A couple of economists said Thursday afternoon that the modest dip is nothing to get excited about.

Jack York, senior economist for the ADOC, said the April unemployment rate is basically static.

“It looks like our seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate model basically left the whole state, in every area, essentially unchanged,” he said. “It looks like things remain relatively stable in Prescott.”

Yavapai County continues to sit third behind Yuma County’s 23.3 percent unemployment rate and Mohave County’s 9.6 percent rate.

Statewide figures fell from 7.8 percent in March to 7.7 percent in April.

The national unemployment rate rose from 8.5 percent in March to 8.9 percent in April.

PRESCOTT - The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors Monday plans to discuss setting a future hearing date for a Development Services’ “permit amnesty program.”

It plans also to discuss the county’s economic condition and payment plan for construction projects and could vote on a five-year road plan.

A permit amnesty program would allow homeowners and property owners that built a building or addition without a permit, or bought something built without a permit, to apply for the required permits without having to pay a penalty. It would not waive the cost of any permits, but would for a period of time save the applicant from paying a fine, Land Use Manager Steve Mauk said.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Strives to bring levels into compliance

PRESCOTT - Even though the real estate market is in a slump, the Yavapai County Assessor’s Office raised the full cash value (FCV) on some commercial property owners, while at the same time lowering the FCV on residential property.

“We went up on commercial values in some areas because we have been historically too low,” County Assessor Pam Pearsall said. “Commercial properties have been selling higher than their assessed value, and the Department of Revenue told us to bring the values into compliance.”

Treasurers use the assessor’s 2010 value to calculate property owners’ 2010 tax bills.

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Like all Arizona cities, Prescott is being challenged by steep reductions in three major sources of revenue: sales tax, development fees, and payments from the State. Anticipating even less revenue in the next year, the City has effected additional employee layoffs, bringing total reductions to 9% of the labor force over the past 14 months through a combination of attrition, retirements, and in some areas, layoffs.City Manager, Steve Norwood terms the result “right-sizing”—instituting shifts in organization and methods to fit the times.  “We’ve gone through the City’s budget, line-item by line-item, department by department, identifying and eliminating both underperforming programs and those available elsewhere in the community.”

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