By Peter Corbett / AZCentral.com
August 8, 2009

Arizona’s desert dwellers with summer cabins are the lucky ones.

They can escape when dawn breaks with temperatures uncomfortably close to triple digits.

Cabin owners flee to their high-country retreats near Flagstaff, Prescott, Payson and the White Mountains for a weekend or a week.

They drive a few hours to where daytime highs are more than 20 degrees lower than in the Valley and overnight temperatures dip below 50.

“It’s the best of both worlds,” said Tom Taggart of Gilbert and Flagstaff. “Down here we have our pool and palm trees, and up there we have our cabin in the woods.”

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By Catherine Reagor / The Arizona Republic

Here are some more positive signs from metropolitan Phoenix’s housing market, which may not be recovering but doesn’t appear to be deteriorating any more.

Home sales climbed again in June to reach 9,614, according to the Information Market/Cromford Report survey. That’s an 11 percent increase from May’s home sales. June is the sixth straight month home sales have climbed in the Valley.

The median Valley resale-home price also climbed in June, the first monthly price increase since late 2007. Last month, the median ticked up to $125,000 from $122,000 in May.

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By John Miller / The Associate Press

MERIDIAN, Idaho (AP) — Developer Frank Varriale hoped his plans to build shops, apartments and a hotel in this sprawling Boise suburb would have become reality by now. Instead, about the only things standing on his land are knee-high wheat and corn.

But the city has taken steps to help revitalize those projects by eliminating what are commonly known as “impact fees” — charged by municipalities nationwide to pay for the additional services that come with increased development, such as schools, sewer lines and roads.

Meridian is among a growing list of hard-hit communities across the country that are lowering or suspending impact fees. Measures have been debated in Washington state, Texas, New Mexico, New Hampshire, California and elsewhere. Florida made it easier for residential developers to challenge fees; Arizona lawmakers froze them for two years.

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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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