Real estate expert Jim Belfiore is seeing a new spurt of residential development activity coming to the West Valley.

That includes new single-family home construction slated for the Sun Valley Parkway and Loop 303 corridors as well as new multifamily development sprouting along the Loop 101.

“We are seeing widespread activity in the West Valley,” said Belfiore, who is president of Belfiore Real Estate Consulting.

New planned multifamily complexes will offer newer and upgraded apartments options to West Valley renters, Belfiore said.

He said the new homes coming to and planned for areas north of Interstate 10 as well as the Loop 303 and Sun Valley Parkway corridors will also offer more and expanded single-family home options.

“You are going to see a bunch of new communities open up,” Belfiore of his 2020 expectations for the West Valley.

He points to activity already at or coming to Canyon Views in Buckeye, Sterling Grove in Surprise, Mesquite Mountain Ranch in Surprise and Trillium at Douglas Ranch in Buckeye.

Belfiore see the growth cycle in the West Valley in the ‘mid-innings’ including the Sun Valley Parkway area in Buckeye.

“We expect to see significant development activity in the Sun Valley Parkway over the next 18 months,” Belfiore said.

The West Valley continues to see job growth in submarkets such as Goodyear where Nike (NYSE: NKE) is landing a new manufacturing plant, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has a new data center campus and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) has operations centers as well as planned new commercial developments in areas such as El Mirage. More jobs in the West Valley allows residents there with more options of where to live if they are not having to commute to Phoenix, Scottsdale or the East Valley.

“Housing demand has fanned outward and into many more submarket areas than just 24 or 36 months ago,” Belfiore said.

Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau released its second-quarter estimate of the homeownership rate. The news?  “Homeownership rate falls to 62.9%, half a percent lower than a year ago and reaching lows not seen in half a century!”

This is bad, right?

The economy and the usual homeownership hurdles – student loan debt burdens, access to credit and affordability – must be holding back first-time home buyers. Well, as Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

The economy expanded for 28 straight quarters, added over 13 million new jobs since the end of the recession, and reduced the unemployment rate to below 5%. That the economy is not expanding fast enough, that newly created jobs are not paying well enough, or that wages aren’t growing quickly enough is important to debate, as we should always strive to do better and increase our collective prosperity.

However, the lingering effect of the economic crisis on homeownership seven years after the end of the recession is hard to see.

So, the common theory is that impediments to homeownership are causing the decline. First-time homebuyers are burdened by student debt and can’t afford the homes that are for sale.

Again, the data doesn’t support that argument. Don’t believe me? Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, in a recent report summarized here, argues that despite there being collectively a lot more student loan debt, there are also many more borrowers. In fact, more than 40% of student loan borrowers owe less than $10,000.

The real burden on homeownership? The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland determined recently that the monthly debt burden for borrowers between the ages of 20 and 30 in the second quarter of 2015 was $351 a month. The research also points out that three quarters of all 20- to 30-year-old borrowers have student loan payments of $400 or less. If the extra earnings per month that comes with having a college degree ($750) is higher than borrowers’ student loan payments, then they are materially better off. College is still worth it and, if you finish, you will be better able to pay a mortgage than if you had no debt and no degree.

Affordability must be to blame then? Our Real House Price Index measures the price changes of houses adjusted for the impact of income and interest rate changes on consumer house-buying power.Based on this view, houses are 40% less expensive than they were at the housing peak and even 19%` less expensive than they were in January 2000. The purchasing power of record low mortgage rates is more than offsetting the high nominal price levels. Thank you Federal Reserve and Brexit.

So why is the homeownership rate at a half-century low?

Since the beginning of the recession, the amount of rental households has increased by 22%.  That’s 8.4 million new rental households. In contrast, there are 2% fewer owner-occupied households today. That’s 1.5 million fewer owner-occupied households. A challenge to be sure, but not the reason that the homeownership rate is at a half-century low.

The homeownership rate is so low because there are so many more renters – not because we have lost millions of homeowners.

And why so many new rental households? As the biggest demographic group in American history finishes their education and gets jobs, they are naturally doing what so many generations before them have done – renting a place to live. Will they stay renters forever? Doubtful. Surveys suggest that the dream of homeownership is far from tarnished, just possibly delayed.

In the meantime, the homeownership rate may yet decline further. But make no mistake, once Millennial renters decide to become homeowners it will be a housing boom of a different kind.

It’s time to put an end to the urban legend of the impending death of America’s suburbs. With the aging of the millennial generation, and growing interest from minorities and immigrants, these communities are getting a fresh infusion of residents looking for child-friendly, affordable, lower-density living.

We first noticed a takeoff in suburban growth in 2013, following a stall-out in the Great Recession. This year research from Brookings confirms that peripheral communities — the newly minted suburbs of the 1990s and early 2000s — are growing more rapidly than denser, inner ring areas.

Peripheral, recent suburbs accounted for roughly 43% of all U.S. residences in 2010. Between July 2013 and July 2014, core urban communities lost a net 363,000 people overall, Brookings demographer Bill Frey reports, as migration increased to suburban and exurban counties. The biggest growth was in exurban areas, or the “suburbiest” places on the periphery.

How could this be? If you read most major newspapers, or listened to NPR or PBS, you would think that the bulk of American job and housing growth was occurring closer to the inner core. Yet more than 80% of employment growth from 2007 to 2013 was in the newer suburbs and exurbs. Between 2012 and 2015, as the economy improved, occupied suburban office space rose from 75% of the market to 76.7%, according to the real estate consultancy Costar.

These same trends can be seen in older cities as well as the Sun Belt. Cities such as Indianapolis and Kansas City have seen stronger growth in the suburbs than in the core.

This pattern can even be seen in California, where suburban growth is discouraged by state planning policy but seems to be proceeding nevertheless. After getting shellacked in the recession, since 2012 the Inland Empire — long described as a basket case by urbanist pundits — has logged more rapid population growth  than either Los Angeles and even generally healthy Orange County. Last year the metro area ranked third in California for job growth, behind suburban Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

NAHB homebuilders index highest in 10 years

As we approach the midpoint of 2015, the residential real estate market is on track for its best year since 2006, the peak of the housing bubble. (This time, though, it’s no bubble.)

Job growth is powering the surge in demand for homes. More than 3 million jobs have been created in the past 12 months. And more than 1 million jobs have been created for 25- to 34-year-olds, the age range in which most Americans buy their first home.

We’re seeing record traffic at realtor.com®. Real estate websites across the board are experiencing 15% year-over-year growth in unique users, but our site has seen more than twice that (perhaps thanks to Elizabeth Banks?). The vast majority of our visitors report that they intend to purchase a home.

With rising demand, homes are selling more quickly, too. In May the median age of inventory (homes on the market) nationwide was 66 days—that’s 8 days faster than for last year. The hottest markets are seeing inventory move 18 to 45 days faster.

A rapidly declining age of inventory signals that demand is growing more rapidly than supply. Indeed, we’ve had 32 months in a row of existing-home inventory at less than a six months’ supply. That’s why we’re also seeing above-normal price appreciation.

Year-over-year median home price appreciation reached 9% in April, which has helped existing homeowners see strong gains in equity.

That level of price appreciation would be problematic if it continued, but we don’t think it will. Median list prices, which often predict the direction of actual price changes, moderated in each of the past two months as the number of listings grew.

Meanwhile, rents are increasing at a similar or even stronger pace than home prices. Record numbers of renting households have driven down apartment vacancies, and low vacancies led to higher rents. As a result, it is cheaper to buy rather than rent in 80% of the counties in the U.S.

And now the clock is ticking as mortgage rates are on the rise. With strong employment data in April and May, the average 30-year fixed conforming mortgage rate broke through the 4% level, and in the past week moved above 4.10%.

Is that slowing down demand? No, just the opposite. Consumers can clearly see that affordability is going down for real, so those who are ready and able to buy are searching for homes, looking at listings, visiting open houses, applying for mortgages, and signing contracts.

In April, new-home sales were up 26% over last year. Pending home sales, which are new contracts on existing homes, were up 14%.

At this level of growth, total home sales in 2015 could come close to 6 million, which is a level comparable to 2007 (if not quite at the level of peak 2006). But 2007 was a year of decline for the housing market, whereas in 2015, we’re expecting more good things to come.

NEWS RELEASE: RealEstateRama

The Scottsdale Area Association of Realtors® (SAAR) recently released its monthly May 2015 real estate market report for Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe Market Data Report, which highlights key metrics for residential real estate inventory.

The count of homes currently listed as active for sale continues to decline for the fourth month in a row. May saw a steep decline, with the active listing count dropping 18%. As is typical, this declining inventory is due to the homes currently listed for sale turning to “pending” or “sold”, without enough new homes being listed “active for sale” to replenish the inventory of what is being sold.

7,438 homes sold in May, with a total volume of $2.1 billion. This is the highest dollar volume of home sales in a single month in over two years.

SAAR’s forward-looking indicator, pending sales, which tracks the number of homes currently under contract that have not yet sold, has also increased for the fifth month in a row. There are currently 10,677 homes that are pending sale, more than the valley has seen at one time in over 24 months. Typically, homes are pending for 30 to 45 days before being sold. With sales counts typically in the range of 6000-to-9000 units per month, the large number of homes currently pending could lead us into the largest number of homes sold in a single month since 2012.

Only 8,349 new homes were listed for sale in May, the least amount of new listings in a single month since February of this year. Dwindling active for sale inventory and increased pending and sold inventory typically lead to higher prices, as more buyers compete for fewer available homes.

PHOENIX — The suburbs on the edge of the state’s big metro areas are no longer the places to move — at least not at the rate they once were.

New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show the big population shifts are occurring farther and farther out.

“There’s a fairly steady progression outward of the ring of growth,” said Tom Rex, an economist at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

For example, he said, Chandler used to be one of the boom communities. A decade ago it was growing about 6 percent a year.

Yet the latest numbers covering the year ending July 1 show it adding only 3,882 new residents, or just a 1.6 percent increase.

Chandler did manage to hang on to fourth-place ranking for total population — but just barely. Gilbert is moving up fast, adding 8,662 residents to post a one-year growth rate of 3.8 percent.

That was also good enough to knock Glendale out of the No. 5 slot.

But Rex said even Gilbert’s position is in jeopardy.

“Now you’re moving out, for instance, into Queen Creek,” he said. That town managed to boost the number of residents by 8.1 percent in the last year, the highest in the state; its population is up more than 21 percent since 2010.

The same situation is playing out along the western edge of the Phoenix area, with Buckeye growing 4.5 percent and Goodyear adding 3.8 percent.

And the rest of the state?

“The Tucson area has been pretty much dead in the water since the recession,” Rex said.

The city grew by an anemic 1,450 new residents in the 12-month period, posting a 0.3 percent growth rate. And its population has increased by only 1.3 percent since the beginning of the decade.

How slow is the growth? Marana, which is less than a 10th of the size of Tucson, actually added more people.

Those 1,540 new Marana residents were enough for it to post the sixth highest year-over-year growth rate at 4 percent. Since the decade began, its population is up 14.9 percent.

Even Sahuarita managed to grow by nearly 600, or 2.2 percent.

Yet the closer-in suburbs, including the large unincorporated area of Pima County, managed a growth rate of only 0.7 percent.

Economist George Hammond at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona said the numbers are not surprising. And the key is what’s been happening in Washington, particularly the decision in Congress to balance the budget through “sequestration,” automatic cuts shared almost equally in both civilian and military spending.

“The federal government is a much bigger share of economic activity in Pima (County) than it is in Maricopa or for the state as a whole,” he said, a fact that affected not only the number of civilians employed by the federal government, but also in procurement: what the government buys from private vendors, from simple supplies to missiles.

“That procurement spending fell roughly a third between 2012 and 2013,” Hammond said. “It remains low … about the level it was in 2013.”

What has slowed growth to a crawl in Pima County has actually put Cochise County into negative numbers. Hardest hit is Sierra Vista, which the Census Bureau reports lost 1,315 residents; a 2.90 percent decline dropped its population to below 44,000.

“It’s related to Fort Huachuca and sequestration,” City Manager Charles Potucek said.

On the plus side, he said, the community’s location near Mexico helps attract shoppers from south of the border. And he said a new 100-bed hospital should help keep patients — and the staff to support it — getting their care locally and prevent “leakage” to facilities in Tucson.

But he acknowledged that the location also presents challenges, being miles off the interstate highway system and having no rail service.

The economic problems go beyond Sierra Vista: Every incorporated Cochise County community shed people, as did the unincorporated area, albeit not at a rate as fast as Sierra Vista.

Many rural locations lost ground. Eloy was down 260 residents, translating to a 1.5 percent decline, with Nogales close behind at 259 fewer residents. Elsewhere, Somerton, Parker, Quartzsite, St. Johns, Eagar, Globe and Miami fell.

One curious outlier is Florence, where the Census Bureau said population rose 1,485 in the last year. But state Demographer Qigui Chang said there’s less there than meets the eye.

He said the population of the Pinal County community is governed by what happens at the prison complex located within its limits. And he said that varies wildly from year to year.

One other issue of note: Even with adding 24,616 new residents, the Census Bureau figures Phoenix still trails Philadelphia, which gained only 4,245 new residents.

At this rate it will take at least another year, if not longer, for Phoenix to get to No. 5 nationally.