It's Hot! Real Estate Around Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport

RACK up one more land deal in southeast Mesa - an announcement yesterday from AZ Big Media over the sale of a parcel sold by Demuro Properties [see history below]
CBRE sells 174 acres in Mesa for $19.55M

CBRE completed the $19.55 million land sale of 174 acres near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Ariz.

Real Estate | 18 hours ago | AZRE

 

 

 

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Blogger Note: There's a lot of history to all these land deals that you can read farther down after the press release. There are excerpts from an article by Mark Flatten that was published back in 2005 . . ."Sam DeMuro bought the Meridian land in 1982 for $3,000 an acre, his son says. The land north of the freeway was acquired a short time later, after a buyer defaulted on a deal that was financed by Sam DeMuro. . . "

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HERE'S THE PRESS RELEASE:

"Jason Hyams and Dave Headstream of CBRE’s Land Services Group represented the seller, Woodlands, Texas-based Eugene DeMuro.

The buyer was Signal Butte 24 LLC, formed by W Holdings and Freedom Communities, LLC.

Located at Signal Butte Road and Williams Field Road in Mesa, the site is part of a development called Destination at Gateway.

Originally planned for industrial, the land was recently approved and zoned for a mixed-use development and is pre-platted for 709 single-family homes, a for-rent housing component and retail. 

The land is located south of Eastmark and Cadence, two premier master-planned communities in the East Valley. Today, nearly one-third of Phoenix metro residents live in the East Valley, and population growth in the East Valley is projected to more than double the U.S. annual rate of growth (0.8 percent) over the next five years, according to CBRE Research.

“The location of this site coupled with the planned expansion of State Route 24 in the area, make this a premier spot for a mixed-use development comprised of retail and housing,” said CBRE’s Hyams. “After a several year process working with the buyer, seller and other parties to approve this use, we are thrilled to see this transaction come to a close.”

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HISTORY

Special Report Part 1: The Speculators

Part I - Land barons have locked up empty fields from Mesa to Florence

by Mark Flatten

www.eastvalleytribune.com/.../article_24d4ed3b-6046-5ff1-a9ca-d03ce8988e98.html

Oct 9, 2005 - Arizona was emerging from the real estate depression that hit in the late 1980s .... 

The DeMuro family may be the area’s ultimate long-term land speculators.

The family owns two sizeable chunks of land in the area. The one most prized by speculators is about 160 acres on the northern edge of the Santan Freeway at Sossaman Road. The second is a similar-size property at Meridian and Williams Field roads.
Ten years ago, the DeMuros would have been considered small players in the south East Valley’s land market. But with many of the larger tracts in Maricopa County now covered with asphalt, concrete and stucco, their land is among the prime undeveloped properties in the area.
Arthur DeMuro, who owns the land with his brother, Eugene, and sister-in-law Kathy, says they have no plans to sell or develop the properties.
The land was acquired by their father, Sam, who owned an aerospace manufacturing company in Phoenix in the 1960s.

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". . . A decade ago the far south East Valley was little more than raw desert and plowed fields, a refuge where those fleeing the crush of urban sprawl could still find open spaces and affordable homes.

Today, land barons hold thousands of acres in the nation’s hottest growth corridor. Each of those acres would have sold for about $30,000 in 1995. Today an unimproved acre can be worth $150,000 or more.
While hundreds of investors own land in the area, most of the major blocks of undeveloped properties can be tracked to a dozen or so individuals, families or investment groups, a Tribune analysis shows.
The East Valley’s land speculators generally fall into three categories:
• There are the old farm families whose parents and grandparents locked up large blocks of desert and converted it to fields. Streets throughout the East Valley bear many of their names: Ellsworth, Dobson, Lesueur, Sossaman and Schnepf.
• There are the traditional development companies that buy land with plans to cover it with houses or shopping centers. John Graham has been one of the most ambitious builders through his company, Sunbelt Holdings Inc. In 1995, Graham began building the 2,150-acre Power Ranch that runs for three miles south of Pecos Road along Power Road.
• Finally there are the pure land speculators. They are investors who use the land as a commodity. They have no ties to a particular patch of ground, as the farmers do; nor do they have plans to build on it themselves, as the developers do. They buy land and hold it. Some master plan it and get it zoned. Ultimately they sell it to builders and either pocket the profits or plow it into their next venture.

. . . Playing the land market in the south East Valley has paid off for the speculators who moved in early. Although public records do not reveal exactly how much money the land dealers are making, court records and other documents show that tens of millions of dollars are changing hands in single transactions as the speculators sell off hundreds of acres they locked up a decade ago.

Records also show the speculators are using some of that money to curry favor with the politicians who must approve their plans.
Development interests are the largest class of donors to political campaigns for city and town councils and county supervisors in the area, . . .