Arizona Real Estate Notebook

Builders bail as Valley market slumps | athome.evtrib.com

Builders are trying to stack their loses into 2007 so they can show better numbers in 2008 and say the market has turned around.

It sure seems like there are some great prices out there for big monied investors.

A local developer recently bought 887 home sites in Casa Grande for $7.1 million from Ryland Homes, which had purchased the land from that same developer for more than $19 million just last year, he said.

Also in Casa Grande, Scotts-dale-based The Wolff Co. and Gilbert’s Langley Properties purchased more than 6,800 acres of land, which could hold 23,000 homes, from D.R. Horton for $70 million.

Commenter Cbass asked in another post what I think of the saying “land prices lead home values”? I hadn’t heard that saying. Land prices have been falling for a long time now. I first heard of significant declines in land values a year ago, a few months after new home sales tanked.

“(Investors are) sitting on tons of money, waiting for what they feel is the reasonable prediction that this is the bottom,” Fioramonti said.