Downtown Phoenix condo craze cooling off
[Source: Jahna Berry and Matt Dempsey, Arizona Republic] — The once-sizzling market for high-rise downtown Phoenix condos has cooled. Phoenix leaders have touted condo dwellers as a crucial part of downtown’s resurgence, saying residents would help sustain nearby shops and their foot traffic would inject the neighborhood with 24-7 vitality. Now, plans to attract those condo dwellers have questions marks.
Although downtown Phoenix real estate has fared better than housing on the suburban fringe, developers say condo sales have slowed to a trickle. Among the signs of a slowdown.
- CityScape, a $900 million mixed-use development, added apartments to the development and pushed back plans for condos to later phases of the project.
- Some planned condo projects have become apartments, including Jet, a proposed 36-story development, and Alta Phoenix, a 375-unit project under construction.
- Nearly 30 of 165 condos at the Summit at Copper Square are unsold. At 44 Monroe, 130 are sold and 66 are for sale.
Countywide, condos sales are down 37 percent compared with the market peak in 2005, when more than 19,000 condos were sold. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
