East Valley housing more affordable

Amid the worst home-building slump in more than two decades, location has once again become the most important factor for metropolitan Phoenix's new-home buyers. After being pushed to the extreme edges of the region during the housing boom, young buyers are finding that prices have come down far enough to make homes in popular suburbs affordable. The lower prices are driving sales of new homes in the more-desirable areas of the East Valley, and those sales may signal the beginning of the next cycle in the home-building industry, which has traditionally fueled much of Arizona's economy. Nearly half of the 6,000 new houses sold in the region so far this year are in the southeast communities of Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert. First-timers, who no longer have to go out to the Valley's farthest flung developments to afford a new house, are the biggest group of buyers in those areas.

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