Want to buy a home in Arizona? Good luck with those rising prices and resulting sky-high monthly payments.
Thinking better of buying right now and planning to rent until you save enough for a down payment? Well, rents are up more than 50% in the past seven years, making it much more difficult to save the cash you need for a down payment.
There is a solution with a history of success in other parts of the country: Make it easier to build more homes.
In Arizona and many other places, there aren’t enough homes to go around — and experts overwhelmingly agree that local regulatory barriers are largely to blame.
Arizona’s housing shortage has been exacerbated by an influx of residents priced out of California by that state’s slow, costly permitting processes and restrictive zoning rules that prevent new housing.
Unfortunately, Arizona has its own zoning restrictions — in particular, ordinances that make it hard to build all but single-family homes on large lots, the most expensive type of housing. These restrictions, along with population growth, have created scarcity in the housing market, which drives up........