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Tucson Real Estate Market ‘like running in molasses’

The real estate market in Tucson continues to warm, but won’t be hot anytime soon, local brokers said Thursday.

“It’s like running in molasses,” Tucson Realty & Trust Co. CEO Hank Amos said at the firm’s annual forecast meeting. “We’re moving forward, but it’s kind of slow.”

Lagging business activity — and skittish business owners hesitant to expand — means less commercial leasing in Tucson, Amos said.

“It wasn’t as bad as it has been. We’re definitely off the bottom,” he said.

But residential real estate activity is up, due to pent-up demand from buyers and all-time low interest rates. Foreclosures hit a five-year low in 2013, boosting resale home prices, said Bob Solfisburg, land specialist.

The median price of a resale home was $168,000 in Tucson last year, a 10 percent increase over 2012. And median sales price for new homes is up 8 percent to nearly $245,000.

The rising cost of building — between the state’s higher minimum wage for 2014 and increases in building costs — has helped slow new home construction, experts said.

In 2013, about 2,000 homes were built in Tucson, compared with 12,000 in the heyday of 2006, before the recession.

Before 2006, about 5,000 new homes was considered a good year, said Chuck Blacher, industrial realty specialist.

Leasing and sale of contractor yards and warehouses to contractors like roofers, masonry companies and pavers play a big role of the industrial real estate market, and those contractors have been largely absent lately, Blacher said.

“Until new-home construction picks up to 5,000 units annually, the industrial real estate market will suffer,” he said.

More than 100 buildings are up for sale in Tucson, he said.

“Years ago, if you had a client in town looking for space, it would be tough to find enough buildings to show. Today it’s a two-day project,” he said.

Read the complete article in the Arizona Daily Star by Emily Bregel

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