Christine L. Romero
The Arizona Republic

Southwest Valley - The southwest Valley’s housing-growth spurt is racing along and looking like one of the metro area’s hot spots in the coming year.

Across the three largest municipalities - Avondale, Goodyear and Buckeye - officials expect to issue single-family housing permits to builders in figures that spell double-digit increases.

Housing experts point to the area’s available land as the reason for the growth. But as old farmland gives way to homes and shopping centers, observers warn that rising prices, including those for energy and supplies, could have the potential to cool the area’s fire.

Rising construction costs also are a hot topic within the industry.

The area’s other leading challenge is the cramped Interstate 10. The area has outgrown the freeway and local leaders are working to accelerate its planned widening. While it’s too soon to tell if that will happen, the bottlenecked freeway hasn’t yet hampered growth.

Buckeye issued a mere 77 building permits in 2000 for single-family homes. Compare that with this year’s anticipated 9,600. Between this year and last, the number of single-family housing permits is expected to jump 23 percent.

In the next few years, such growth will likely push once-small Buckeye to being the southwest Valley’s largest municipality.

Goodyear also anticipates large gains.

Avondale’s expected growth is respectable though not as robust as Buckeye and Goodyear.

RL Brown, publisher of the Phoenix Housing Market Letter, continues to see tremendous growth across the West Valley.

“It’s going to be real neck-and-neck between the northwest and the southwest,” Brown said. “Those two are neck-and-neck with Pinal County. Those are the hot spots. There’s no question about it.”

Brown’s September data show the southwest with 25 percent of the Valley’s permits issued over the course of 12 months. The southwest is topped only by Pinal County, with 26 percent. The northwest garnered 20 percent. Other areas, including Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler, north Phoenix and Mesa, saw much slower rates of growth.

The large swaths of available land in the southwest Valley and in Pinal County are the drive behind such robust growth, said Jay Butler, director of the Arizona Real Estate Center at Arizona State University.

“This is the big growth area,” Butler said. “They have room for development.”

What could soften the growth? Three bucks for a gallon of gas, Butler said.

As metro Phoenix has sprawled over the years, retail has followed rooftops. Major employment centers, however, haven’t made the jump for the most part, he said.

That creates a situation where workers must commute increasing distances for employment.