Real Estate

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A look at the current state of the Valley Real Estate Market with Jay Butler of ASU’s Real Estate Center.

Michael Grant:
Tonight on Horizon, the housing market continues to fall, but the bottom might be in sight. We'll give you a first look at the new expansion of the Phoenix Art Museum and the life of a cowboy through the eyes of an Arizona photographer. That's next on Horizon.

Announcer:
Horizon made possible by contributions from the friends of 8, members of your Arizona PBS Station. Thank you.

Michael Grant:
Good evening, and welcome to Horizon. I'm Michael Grant. A new poll out tonight indicating Republican Congressman J.D. Hayworth might not return to Washington. Survey U.S.A.'s poll shows Hayworth now trails Democratic Challenger, Harry Mitchell, 48%. 46% a couple weeks ago, the same survey showed Hayworth with a three-point lead. Tomorrow Mitchell will get support from former President Bill Clinton at a rally in Tempe. Housing market continues to decline both nationally and locally. Nationally, the market is seeing its biggest fall in crisis for 35 years. Closer to home, Pinal County's market has continued to slide in the third quarter. Sales decline more than 45%. The Arizona Real Estate Center here at A.S.U. is reporting the median price on a home in Pinal County has fallen to just under $200,000. Metro study report indicates the market could reach bottom in six months. Of course, that remains to be seen. Joining us now is someone whose job it is to follow these trends and also forecast incredibly accurately, I think, the future he is Jay Butler from the Arizona Real Estate Center. Jay, welcome back.

Jay Butler:
Glad to be here.

Michael Grant:
So is this chicken little stuff or what?

Jay Butler:
Well, the problem is, is the last couple years have been so beyond belief that, that this fallback, and really, all the benchmarks everybody uses to how the market is performing, is pretty normal. I mean, we're, basically, back to our 20 some long-term -- 20-year long-term averages. It is just we all remember the great, glorious, you know, when homes sold in a couple days. People were making all sorts of money.

Michael Grant:
We were all stunned.

Jay Butler:
Oh, yeah, we were stunned. And, and the thing was, it was not just happening here, but in Dublin and Paris and Singapore. Housing was the favorite darling of investors, and not only for owner-occupants to keep moving up the ladder, but flippers and landlords and the whole thing.

Michael Grant:
Right. Ok. What about that phenomenon in Pinal County that I just talked about?

Jay Butler:
Well, the basic issue in Pinal County was that people would drive until they could afford it, so they were looking at affordable housing. You had a couple things happen. One, it was very successful. Well, then you have to drive back. There are 1.8 million jobs in the metropolitan area, which includes Pinal County. There's only 50,000 jobs in Pinal County. So, basically, everybody lives in Pinal County, has to drive back to Maricopa County. You want to go and see a movie; you have to drive back, so people are getting tired of the congested freeways and other things.

Michael Grant:
In general, what's the current status of the market in Maricopa County?

Jay Butler:
The resale market is down a bit below the long-term average. Basically, the new home market from sales activities running slightly ahead after year ago, but permits are way down from a year ago as builders shut off the inventory.

Michael Grant:
Yeah, you were telling me that the permits, was it September, dropped to 1,500 in Maricopa County?

Jay Butler:
One of the lowest monthly numbers we have seen in a long time. Basically, the builders are shutting down inventory, and the thing that's really disappeared is that backlog. Builders don't have a nine-month backlog all of a sudden. They are building for what's there. The problem is, is that the buyers are building for, for -- they are not convinced that they are really going to be buyers six months from now when the home is completed, so they are being fairly cautious about the inventory and other things.

Michael Grant:
Prices?

Jay Butler:
Prices for the first time in the resale market in Maricopa County on a year-to-year basis, actually, dropped. We go back 15 years in one database, and we couldn't find another year-to-year drop.

Michael Grant:
That was September of this year - up to September last year?

Jay Butler:
Up to $3,000. You get a couple of phenomenons. One of the problems you have to remember is that we are dealing with recorded sales, homes that sold. Not the vast majority of homes that simply stay there. And what happens is that a market slows. The move up market begins to dominate. These are the people who have the wealth and the capability to find more expensive homes, so the median price tends to move up a little bit because you are seeing more expensive homes, especially in certain areas, like North Scottsdale, etc.

Michael Grant:
That's why the luxury market continues to do fairly well?

Jay Butler:
Well, the luxury market is really two components. Those people who have suddenly gotten wealth. They may be dropping out of the market, but Phoenix has always been a popular area for second and third homes for the wealthy people. Sort of winter here and golf, etc.

Michael Grant:
Right.

Jay Butler:
We now see sort of higher end condominiums that will be an interesting play into this particular market. Again, the high end market is about 2% to 3% of sales activity, so it's growing, but it's not, you know, any strong, significant share of our market.

Michael Grant:
Give me an indication. Phoenix versus other major metropolitan markets.

Jay Butler:
Well, basically, you have seen San Diego and Vegas drop a bit more than us, although prices haven't dropped quite yet. Texas has remained fairly stable. Texas's market values are well below us and remain there. Other areas are doing well. But everybody is slowing down, sort of phenomenon of buying the home for the future, sort of ended throughout the United States as people are concerned, and, and are having trouble. Lot of people calls this a buyer's market, but really, it isn't because most buyers have to be a seller. And so unless you don't have the baggage of a home, you have to unload this. If you can't unload it, then it's not really a buyer's market. But if you can buy, this is a good market to buy in, especially in some of the older areas.

Michael Grant:
Jay Butler thanks very much for the update. We'll probably see you next month.

Jay Butler:
Sure.

Michael Grant:
The Phoenix Art Museum has gone through a metamorphosis of sorts. It is celebrating its $41 million expansion project adding more than 40,000 square feet of space, in addition to increased interior space. There is more than an acre of exterior space. The general of that expansion is the new four-level gallery wing. It has more than 25,000 new square feet for a growing collection of modern contemporary and Latin American art, and as Merry Lucero reports, provides a larger and more flexible gallery space.

Merry Lucero:
A dramatic introduction. Soaring heights. Unexpected alcoves. Mysterious steps. Warm sunlight. Cool water. They are some of the sensory pleasures of the Phoenix Art Museum's new Ellen and Howard's wing for modern art. It is not your standard 17-foot ceiling, white box gallery.

Billie Tsien:
What we wanted to do was make those spaces that are right for contemporary art so that they would be neutral and quiet, but at the same time, make parts of it spectacular and make parts of it connect to the outside.

Merry Lucero:
As you approach the lobby, you are greeted by water.

Billie Tsien:
Of course, water is precious and wonderful to have in Phoenix and in the desert atmosphere, so part of that desire to bring people into a serene atmosphere involves the sound of water, so as you come into the front entry, there's a kind of curtain of water which falls down.

Merry Lucero:
And you see the striking glass entrance.

Billie Tsien:
You come in on Central Avenue. You park. You see this amazing glass box. It's a glass box that has sort of no supporting structure, and an inch and a half you will go by and see this whole thing sort of littering.

Merry Lucero:
The new front desk has six flat panel L.C.D. screens.

Billie Tsien:
You walk through what we call the canyon, which is a very dramatic, narrow space, and it's very clear that you are coming to this space to, to see contemporary art.

Merry Lucero:
The four-level gallery with its tall atrium has the theatricality of height.

Tod Williams:
There are 14,000 square feet without a column in it. It gives it tremendous flexibility, so I think installation of the various pieces will be very, very easy. We have continuous baseboards here where we have opportunities to plug into the power grid. We can hang tremendous works of art from the ceiling.

Merry Lucero:
A floating staircase brings you to the upper levels.

Tod Williams:
We wanted to have an emotional core to it, a kind of resonance that is both on the one hand neutral enough to accept any kind of art, and at the same time, personal enough to allow every person to find their own space and place in the museum.

Merry Lucero:
Sub ground, there is a lower level.

Tod Williams:
We have an opportunity to, to add lots of space in a very simple box, so one of the things that we did is to, is to dig down 20 feet and create a marvelous basement gallery. That allows, allows very, very innovative work to occur. It also gives a kind of secret place for people to go.

Merry Lucero:
The basement gallery has a cool water court.

Billie Tsien:
It's a way of bringing light to the lowest level and also a way of giving a sense, once again, of peace to the lowest level, so you can see the sort of moving water when you are in the gallery below the ground level. You can look up and you can see the sky, so it's the connection between the sky and the water.

Merry Lucero:
Surprise balconies offer sights of the surrounding city and landscapes.

Billie Tsien:
We have made, I think, great spaces for the art, and then we have made these kind of breakout spaces, so you can walk to the edges of the building, and you can go into sections where you can look out to the mountains in the sky because we wanted to make this museum feel like it's in Phoenix because it is the Phoenix Art Museum. And not the New York, Chicago, Paris Art Museum.

Merry Lucero:
Desert landscaping and trees now make the courtyard an urban oasis sculpture garden.

Billie Tsien:
There will be a significant number of important pieces of sculpture located outdoors. Before that, we could never put important sculpture outdoors because it was open to traffic from all different sides, and now it will be protected sculpture court, and I think both a beautiful space to be in and a wonderful place to see art.

Michael Grant:
Earlier I talked to Jim Ballinger, director of the Phoenix Art Museum about the new expansion.

Michael Grant:
Jim, 2003, a capital endowment fund, sort of fill in the bond vote in 2001, and it went very well.

Jim Ballinger:
Yeah. We started three years ago, Michael, in order to, quote, "match the bond of 1802," that we got from the great voters of Phoenix, and we raised close to $30 million over those last three years led by our great board of trustees, and just a lot of energy in the community. It's really exciting.

Michael Grant:
And you were telling me that the fundraising pretty much crossed the gambit. Not just the fat cats, but a lot of smaller cats?

Jim Ballinger:
From the museum point of view, the most gratifying vote, if you will, at this time of season is that we had the voters give us the big. Our leadership within the board of trustees, you know, who have means, have capabilities, gave exemplary across the board, and then at the tail end of our campaign, we went out to our 14,000 members, and over 2,000 of them contributed to, to the campaign, so it's just, just a great vote of confidence to us working at the art museum.

Michael Grant:
Yeah. One of the most significant changes in the refurbishment is the entryway, less confusing. Those kinds of things?

Jim Ballinger:
Absolutely. We set out to do a number of things. Two of them are tied to the front end of the museum, if you will. People who travel, where you go places and you expect a great experience, it starts almost outside the building, and we needed to fix that off central avenue when working as well as possible, and directly to your point, we needed a new lobby because over the years, thankfully, we have had big shows from all over the world that draw a lot of people and kids, and we're having them run over each other in the lobby, so we've been able to create, create a big area, new lobby right on central avenue, create a new, a new lobby for school organizations to come in and, and it's, it simplifies the trafficking in the museum a great deal, so I think overall one of the big goals here was to create a real upgrade to, to visitor's comfort, visitor's amenities and make your experience at the museum work.

Michael Grant:
Speaking of big, what does, what does this allow you to do, perhaps, that, that, you know, you couldn't do previously?

Jim Ballinger:
Our last building campaign, we opened in the mid 1990's. We were unable to finish a wing for modern contemporary art so really, no one has ever been able to see our 20th and 21st century art before. It gets up and rolls over real fast because we don't have that, didn't have that much space. Now we're adding one-third, again, how much gallery space that we had, and this is great space. I mean as good as any gallery you can find in the world, to be able to show our 20th and 21st century collection so people will really be mulled over with modern art.

Michael Grant:
What makes great space?

Jim Ballinger:
Has to do with proportion and feel. In this case we went to museums all over and kind of went, where do we feel most comfortable? And interestingly enough, every time that we had that feeling, we measured the ceiling to 17 feet. We built 17-foot ceilings. Openness. We built a building that has no walls. No columns, so you have total flexibility, so as the collection grows and morphs and we bring in a big exhibition, like this January, bringing a big show from the Ike's Museum with a number of rembrandts; we had total flexibility, and great lighting. Lighting is a huge key to making work come off the wall or a sculpture base, wherever it is, to hit the viewer.


Michael Grant: As you know, the nice thing about a number of museums that I have been to is when the lighting is right, you don't notice the lighting.

Jim Ballinger:
Absolutely.

Michael Grant:
And that's -- that's much easier said than done.

Jim Ballinger:
Yeah.

Michael Grant: It's a difficult art in and of itself.

Jim Ballinger:
We have a whole crew of great preparers who, that's what they do every day is deal with, with design and installation of what we do and how we do it, test different systems. We have low voltage lights, tungsten lights, the different things you do to get it to all work.

Michael Grant:
Is the museum store bigger?

Jim Ballinger:
The museum store we opened early as part of this, four times the size it used to be, so it's terrific. Its location is conveniently near the entrance of the museum for people so they can get into the store whether they are coming to the museum or not. It's given us an ability on the museum store to broaden, just like the museum collection, broaden what we do, have a lot more upper end collect ability, things like that. Feature different craftspeople in the store, so it's been a big boost. People really responded to it, and with the holiday season coming up, the museum stores are a great place to go.

Michael Grant:
It is. And easy to ship, frequently.

Jim Ballinger:
That's true.

Michael Grant:
Where does easy parking -- [laughter] Where does this expansion leave the Phoenix Art Museum in comparison to, to other, you know, facilities and, and in major metropolitan venues, that kind of thing?

Jim Ballinger:
The question often asked, hard to answer. If you take all the kind of measurables we do around museums from size of staff, size of budget, size of facility, endowment support, etc., we generally have ranked over the last decade a kind of the lower part of what I will call the top third, which will be maybe the top 50 museums in America. This probably puts us up 15 slots, something like that, the top quarter, but our exhibition program, I want to bring special attention to, upper -- at a level higher than -- if you look at who the museums are we partner with --

Michael Grant:
Right.

Jim Ballinger:
Because we are a newer museum, 47 years old, and we're not the metropolitan in New York or something, we really put a kind of disproportionate amount of money behind our exhibition programs. The real mission is to bring great art from all over the world to the people of Arizona. We're not going to buy it all or have people here give it to us, so the exhibition program is very, very important, so we operate with, with Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, the metropolitan in New York.

Michael Grant:
Had some strong exhibitions, there's no doubt about that. "Go weekend," November 11 and 12?

Jim Ballinger:
It is more than go. It is a wild weekend. First thing should be said that after the mayor cuts the ribbon at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, we are open that weekend, extended hours, free to the public, and we do that as a way of saying thank you to the voters of Phoenix for voting for us to get jumpstarting this whole campaign back in 2001. Food, music, dance, fashion shows, lectures, architectural tours, all kinds of things happening all weekend. We welcome everyone in the metropolitan area to come down and check out this new facility.

Michael Grant:
Just be careful with the mustard. No mustard on the paintings. Jim Ballinger, congratulations on the expansion. Thanks for joining us.

Jim Ballinger:
Well, Michael, thank you very much for having me.

Michael Grant:
The near mythical life and land of the cowboy witnessed in an exhibition of black and white photography by Jay Dusard, a student of Frederick Sommer and Ansel Adams. Dusard has long established himself as a master technician and consummate image-maker, as well as skilled teacher in his own right.

Jay Dusard:
Actually, was my first trip to this particular ranch, and I only took my smaller camera, the four-by-five. Photography is such an amazing medium. It is capable of capturing an enormous amount of detail. Sometimes in the fraction of a second. It has rendering power that no other art medium has. Those are the kinds of things that excite me about photography. My name is Jay Dusard. I'm a photographer, and I live in Cochise County, Arizona, near the town of Douglas.

Interviewer:
How long did you travel -- was it months?

Jay Dusard:
Yeah, yeah. I was shown the work of Aaron Fisk, and that was, that was the trigger. That was what made me realize that, that I wanted to work in photography because what he was seeing and, and deteriorating urban landscapes was really pretty abstract expressionist images that I was dabbling in as a fledging painter. I took up my own study of photography in the fall of 1965. There were some experienced photographers who were kind enough to, to work with me and give me advice and, and critique my work. My main photographic mentor was the late Frederick Sommer, who lived in Prescott for many, many years. He, in fact, was the person that, that paved the way for me to be able to teach in Prescott College. But having access to this remarkable photographer was, was the greatest gift of all. If I hadn't met Fred and he hadn't taken an interest in me, I would not be a photographer now. For many, many years I've been interested in the cowboy blast. It has plenty of romance to it. It involves the partnership of the people and animals, especially humans and horses, and the care of livestock. To me, it's very important to honor the people that, that do this work, that, that live this life. In the fall of 1980, I applied to the Guggenheim Foundation to do a series of portraits of the working cowboys of Western North America from Canada down into Mexico. They thought that was a good idea, and they got behind me. I got the fellowship, so I traveled from British Columbia to Chihuahua all through the cattle country west. I met a lot of good people. I photographed a lot of good people. I've done my own darkroom work ever since I started. Sometimes it's very intimidating. Sometimes working in the darkroom, or even approaching the darkroom is -- I consider it to be psychological warfare, and sometimes, sometimes win the battle, sometimes the print wins the battle.

Jay Dusard:
Yeah. This is a tough image to do. In fact, I hope I never have to print one of these in the darkroom again because my notes on what I need to do to balance this up is just very intimidating. Now carols, he can isolate this particular area. Recently I have had the wonderful experience to collaborate with excellent digital printer. The gentleman, his name is carols Mendella, and he can have them scanned and get them into the computer and then with his expertise, we sit down there together, come up with how this image should be expressed. How it should look. Technically, the negatives make it possible to make huge print with almost no lack of detail or there's no distortion. It's kind of a technical tour de force, but that's almost beside the point. I wanted to be able to feel like you are really communicating with the people who were kind enough to communicate with the lens of my camera.

Michael Grant:
Thanks for joining us on a Wednesday. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

Jay Butler:Arizona Real Estate Center, Arizona State University;Jim Ballinger:Director, Phoenix Art Museum;

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