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Some housing experts and economists say Arizona's housing market won't be back to normal for another four to five years, perhaps even longer depending on what happens with other parts of the economy.
Before normalcy, the slow-growing state must absorb nearly 100,000 houses that shouldn't be on the market now but are up for sale. That's because they were foreclosed on, their mortgages in default from owners who lost their jobs, were in over their heads or otherwise suffered the unforgiving pummeling of the financial meltdown.
If the market weren't glutted with those foreclosure sales, would it be operating at a decent pace?
That's a question we will ask Arizona Real Estate Commissioner Judy Lowe for this Friday's Arizona Week.
We also will ask her if trends she is seeing in real estate broker and agent licensing and other statistics portend any positive trends in the market, how the real estate industry may have been permanently altered by the housing bust and if she is noticing signs of stability in pricing and other aspects of the real estate market.
June 1st 2011 at 16:21 —
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By DIANA SOKOLOVA
Arizona Week Intern
Arizona’s housing market is struggling to improve after home values collapsed in the last three years.
The state is second after Nevada in foreclosure rate. A total of 93,413 foreclosed homes were on the market as of today, according to RealtyTrac, a real estate data provider.
Arizona is among six states – Nevada, California, Florida, Illinois and Michigan are the others – accounting for well more than half the nation’s total foreclosure activity with nearly 1.6 million properties receiving a foreclosure filing in 2010, according to the United States Foreclosure Filing report.
The foreclosure rate in Arizona jumped 22 percent from April 2010 to this April.
RealtyTrac reported that one in every 205 homes in Arizona received a foreclosure filing this April. There were 13,419 new foreclosure properties on the market for the first quarter of the year, the organization reported.
Pinal County had the worst rate of foreclosures in April. 1,034 homes or one in 143. Maricopa County had 9,324 home foreclosures, one in 170. Pima County had 1,686 properties, one in 254, according to RealtyTrac’s report.
On average, homes in Arizona sell for $129,032, RealtyTrac reported.
April 2011 was the second month in a row for Phoenix-area foreclosure rates to drop, an Arizona State University professor of real estate and finance reported. Associate Professor Jay Butler said the drop is not significant enough to improve the overall situation of high the foreclosure rate in the market.
The Arizona Republic in a May 11 story reported that “In April, the Phoenix area had 3,745 foreclosures. That’s down from 4,145 in March but more than the 3,490 foreclosures in April 2010.”
May 31st 2011 at 11:58 —
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Arizona Week's story focusing on how the 15 counties in the state are coping financially presented us with a significant logistical issue.
The concept was to look at the big picture situation across the state and then focus on a couple of counties, one urban and one rural. But how to do so and capture county officials on camera without having to drive hither and yon was the dilemma.
That is, until Craig Sullivan of the County Supervisors Association of Arizona entered the picture. A Tuesday call to Sullivan was part of the routine, requesting that he appear on camera. He said he preferred that the association's president, Navajo County Board of Supervisors Chairman David Tenney, speak for the group.
How to get Tenney without a drive to Show Low was the question. But not for long.
"He will be in Phoenix later this week for our board meeting, as will supervisors from all over the state," Sullivan said. He then proceeded to set up interviews for us with Tenney and Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Andy Kunasek for Thursday after the association board meeting.
Tenney, speaking for the association and giving the big picture, plus being from a rural county, filled two of the three needs for the story. Kunasek, from the biggest county, fulfilled the third.
And with all counties working on their budgets -- Maricopa County gave tentative approval to its this week; Pima County did the same last week -- the time is right for the story.
We were prepared to do it and were favored by the fortune of having the key people to talk to in one convenient place at the same time.
Watch Friday at 8:30 p.m. MST on PBS HD, or catch it at www.azweek.com.
May 26th 2011 at 16:15 —
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In the pile of state budget trimmings in Arizona this spring were $93 million in cuts and pass-along costs to the counties.
They came despite the counties’ consistent objections, most of which involved pleas that it would be the fourth straight year of cuts in state-controlled funding to the 15 counties.
Now the counties are working to put together their budgets for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, leading to resurrection of what is a predictable and yet mysterious political discussion.
The predictable part of the discussion is conservatives saying government must be smaller, and it’s their job to impose fiscal restraint, and liberals saying that budget cutting alone isn’t a good way to make government smaller, and we should tax the rich more.
The mysterious part of the discussion is why there isn’t yet any serious talk of ways to reform the system from top to bottom – including tax reform and a realistic look at what is and is not needed in government structure and services.
The opportunity for true reform is here, with everything from the job market, the housing industry and even the overall economy in need of reinvention.
Yet adherence to party line ideology on both sides is the obstacle to making headway for reforms that will require everyone to let go a bit of their now entrenched positions in favor of compromise that makes the system better.
That's why in the rhetoric over budgeting, it's disheartening to hear the predictable comments on both sides. That continues the obstacles and problems we have.
A company that employed me for many years had as part of its philosophy and culture that there were no problems, only opportunities.
Is that how our political leaders with their predictable sound bites see current circumstances? Or do they see the opportunities in those circumstances?
May 25th 2011 at 15:03 —
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posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel
Here are a couple of reviews I wrote a year or two ago for Fanfare covering discs that make unusual use of multichannel sound.
BRAHMS String Quartets: No. 1; No. 2; No. 3 • Auryn Qrt • TACET D155 (multichannel DVD-A: 102:26)
Richard A. Kaplan reviewed the conventional two-channel CD issue of this set in Fanfare 32:2; he rightly praised the group’s “remarkable ensemble, intonation, and rhythmic precision,” but found the readings to be “consistently unbreathing and inflexible.” I wouldn’t go that far; I hear sufficient tempo differentiation from one section to another, although moment-to-moment phrasing is not very loose. Like Kaplan, one of my longtime favorites in this matrial is the Melos Quartet on DG, which employs a more relaxed, elastic Central European style. Still, I find the Auryn Quartet’s traversal quite satisfactory. It’s also your only choice if you’re looking for the Brahms quartets in DVD-Audio.
The problem here for some listeners is that each instrument of the quartet comes from a different direction: the first violin from the left front, the viola from the right front, the cello from the right rear, and the second violin from the left rear. This is a configuration that you will never hear in nature, unless you are a music stand in a practice room. Somehow the effect is not claustrophobic; there’s a bit of distance between the listener and the instruments. Not surprisingly, the individual lines are remarkably clear, and the viola has an unaccustomed prominence. But if you insist on a realistic concert-hall perspective, this DVD-A is not for you; nor should you consider it if you’re using cheap “effects” speakers in the rear, because the instruments’ timbres won’t match and you may be creating balance problems. For many listeners, a better high-resolution-audio choice would be the Prazák Quartet’s Brahms series on Praga, if the label ever releases everything on SACD (it hasn’t as of this writing).
One final two-part question: Why did Tacet release the Auryn Quartet’s collaboration with Peter Orth in the Brahms Piano Quintet on a separate DVD-A? Wouldn’t there have been room for it on this single, long-duration disc? James Reel
VIVALDI The Four Seasons (two mixes). Concertos: in g, RV 317; in E-flat, RV 257 • Daniel Gaede (vn); Wojciech Rajski, cond; Polish CPO • TACET 16342 (DVD-A: 98:16)
In Fanfare 32:2, David L. Kirk declared the SACD version of this release to be “extraordinarily pleasing to the ear and the performances were equally pleasurable.” This DVD-Audio version is not simply the same thing in a different format; The Four Seasons appear twice, the second time in a surround-sound remix that will captivate a few Fanfare readers and send many others into a state of high dudgeon.
First, let me just reinforce my colleague’s positive reaction to the modern-instrument performances. Some of the solo work is absolutely fierce, and many of the fast passages—tutti as well as solo—really fly by, but elsewhere the playing eases off and lingers over the programmatic details. The opening sequence of “Spring” is especially arresting; the orchestral portion comes off like a quick march, which I don’t think is very effective, but then the solo instruments play their birdcalls with extreme rubato. It’s a very hands-on performance of The Four Seasons; the two extra concertos are played less audaciously, but the renditions are still quite nimble and extroverted.
DVD-A never really took off in classical circles, and at this point the only reason to flirt with it is the extended storage capacity. In this case, The 56-minute music program is presented in Tacet’s usual concept of surround sound, which places the listener at the center of the ensemble. Here, violinist Daniel Gaede is positioned front and center, with the first violin section on the left, the second violins and double bass on the right, the violas rear left, and the cellos and harpsichord rear right. The first time around, the instruments stay there. The second time through, things get wild.
What Tacet calls its “Moving Real Surround Sound” mix bounces everything around; sometimes sections hold their positions through a movement, but more often they jump to a new location between phrases. The sense of ambient space is large and reverberant enough that it usually sounds as if a very large orchestra encircles the listener, and only a few players from each direction participate at any time; in other words, it doesn’t usually sound like an electronic stunt. Usually. By the time we’re into autumn, though, the engineers seem to be reproducing some acid trip from the 1960s. They start manipulating the timbral nature of the instruments while they move things around, and that concerto’s slow movement sounds like a quadraphonic Wendy Carlos synthesizer production. Things do ease off thereafter, but it’s less a musical experience than a display of engineering virtuosity. This would work very well as part of an art installation, and some home listeners will love the sonic roller-coaster ride. If you know it will offend you, stick to the straightforward SACD edition. James Reel
Classical Music,
May 25th 2011 at 10:02 —
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Arizona counties are grappling with reduced property tax revenues, driven down by lower property values, and other reduced revenues. Now, they are dealing with cuts and pass-along costs from the state.
Initially, the state Senate proposed cutting and passing along $150 million in costs to the counties as one of myriad ways they sought to balance the state budget.
The final budged had cuts and pass alongs to the counties at $93 million, still a formidable amount. That includes $8 million in Pima County and $1.2 million in Navajo County, to name just two.
And the cuts to all 15 counties are on top of such cuts previously and other pass-along costs to come. The future pass-alongs will include counties taking on more responsibility and expense for state prisoners.
How are they dealing with all these issues going forward? We will explore the issues fully on Friday's episode of Arizona Week, 8:30 p.m. MST on PBS-HD-6 in Tucson and 11 p.m. MST on 8-World in Phoenix.
For the program, we will interview David Tenney, president of the County Supervisors Association of Arizona and a Navajo County supervisor, and Andy Kunasek, a Maricopa County supervisor.
May 24th 2011 at 16:49 —
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