Research

In the U.S. and around the world, the recession is forcing shopping center developers and retailers to re-think the design of the places where we spend our money. Some say the very nature of shopping has changed.

Western analysts scanning the economic horizon for signs of a housing rebound in the region, finding little evidence of recovery in 2009, are now setting their sights on 2010. Since last year was so bad, the consensus is that 2010 can only be better.

Behavior Research Center, a marketing and public opinion research firm based in Phoenix, has been measuring consumer confidence in Arizona via its Rocky Mountain Poll for 30 years.

The latest ASU-Repeat Sales Index suggests that the end of the slide for the beleaguered Phoenix metro real estate market may be in sight, but how close it looks depends on how you parse the numbers.

While the world's economy has been ailing for almost two years, signs are beginning to point to recovery.

Analysts were pleased with the February 26 revision showing that inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product had increased at an annualized rate of 5.9 percent in fourth quarter of 2009.

Foreclosures have traditionally accounted for only a small fraction of the real estate transactions in the Phoenix area market, but in January, as in past months, foreclosures were the whole story. Almost half of the existing-home transactions — 45 percent — were foreclosures.

As the nation continues to endure troubled labor markets and high unemployment, critics of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have become more vociferous.

The market for foreclosed homes in the Phoenix metro area appears to be approaching a turn around, according to a new index from the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at the W. P. Carey School.

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