Ain’t it intriguing how they write up the guy with the gloomiest Arizona economic forecast!
Crocker Liu, an Arizona State University real estate expert, said the Federal Reserve board could offer some relief Tuesday by cutting the prime-lending rate.”And there is a ray of hope that our economy will be growing,” he said of Arizona.
He suggested that by September 2008 the real estate industry could begin to recover from bad loans.
By the way, that wasn’t the gloomy forecast.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Brian McMorris // Sep 14, 2007 at 5:49 am
The national consensus by business leaders is for a flat to declining economy, with the only question as to what the Fed will do to help, and when they will do it.
The quoted economist in the article, Don Reynolds, made some very good points: “Subprime-lending troubles could bring significant changes to the U.S. debt industry, said Reynolds, the founder of a Texas forecasting company with 15 years experience as a portfolio manager and investment advisor.
Commercial real estate also could suffer as lenders scrutinize debt. And to show how those markets would affect consumer spending, Reynolds was able to coax a car salesman from the audience to concede recent sales are “a little slow.”
“Even (Arizona) will begin to feel these effects over the next 12 months,” Reynolds said.
After his remarks, local experts found few areas to cheer, but tempered their comments on recession.”
For a state like AZ that is dependent on tourism and the housing industry, a national recession / weak economy and lending problems for the home industry, spell trouble. AZ is not immune from the national economy, as nice as the weather is in February.
2 John L. Wake - Realtor // Sep 14, 2007 at 12:34 pm
A national recession would indeed be very bad for Arizona real estate.
I don’t want to be greedy since the general economy has been great since the real estate market peaked two years ago… but another two years of a good economy would really help limit the areas of metro Phoenix that are having a hard landing to those on the very outskirts.
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