« Scottsdale, Arizona Traffic Cameras | Main | BlogArizona.com Welcomes the Arizona Mortgage Guru! » Thursday, April 12, 2007What Drives Valley Real Estate?The Phoenix Business Journal is reporting that Forbes magazine just ranked the Phoenix area 55th out of 200 metro areas for best places for careers and business. Last year, Phoenix was in the top ten. The survey cites rising home prices as being the reason for this fall. The full article is here. Before worrying too much about this report, you need to pay attention to the fact that the same report says Phoenix cracked the top 10 for job growth. So, do we need to worry about anything? I think not. I want to share the story of Uravan, Colorado to make my point. Uravan was established by the US Vandium Corporation in 1936 to extract vanadium and uranium ore in the region. Both of these are chemical elements used in nuclear production. The name of the town itself identified its purpose; Ura was short for Uranimum and Van was short for Vanadium. Wikipedia >> Uravan During its peak, almost 800 people lived in the area. From some of the research I did, the area had tree lined streets with residential housing, schools, medical facilities, tennis courts, a recreation center and even a pool. Everything changed in the mid-1980s. The town could not survive the energy crisis of the 1970s and popular opposition to nuclear power after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. Today Uravan is a ghost town. It’s hard to imagine that people once lived there. They bought real estate and enjoyed home appreciation and made plans for their kids. It was almost like Anytown, USA. It’s sad demise is a good illustration of what happens to different neighborhoods, subdivisions etc in our own Phoenix metro area on a regular basis. People offer many complicated answers to the question of what drives Real Estate. However, as the story shows, there is really a very simple answer, it’s job growth that drives the process. So, don’t worry about what some magazine says about the city in a subjective category, if job growth is strong that is all we need to worry about!
Posted by Shailesh Ghimire, AZ Mortgage Guru on April 12, 2007 | Permalink CommentsExcellent post Shailesh!! You're starting to get around the blogiverse.... Posted by: Jay Thompson | Apr 13, 2007 4:55:46 PM Shailesh has a new domain for his blog: Posted by: Shannon Hubbard | Apr 18, 2007 11:57:08 AM The comments to this entry are closed.
TrackBackTrackBack URL for this entry: Listed below are links to weblogs that reference What Drives Valley Real Estate?: |
© BlogArizona, LLC 2005 |