1st Southwest Realty

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Scroll down to read the articles of interest. I hope you enjoy this monthly newsletter. Remember whether you are buying a new or resale home it is important to have a realtor to represent your interests. If you know of anyone who is thinking about buying or selling please let me know.  You can search the MLS from my website at  www.greathouseaz.com

If you have a rental property and need a property manager or if your Homeowner's Association is looking for a new management company please email Karen Van Vugt at ftr9558@cox.net. Karen manages over 250 rental units and several Homeowner's Associations in the greater Phoenix area.

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Sincerely,
Pat Hune
Broker
greathouseaz@gmail.com
1st Southwest Realty
www.greathouseaz.com
Search the real MLS from my website!
Cell 480-703-1976
Fax 480-304-9099


Good News
The inventory of bank owned homes has decreased.  May saw the largest ever number of distressed homes disappear from inventory In Maricopa County. Pending foreclosures fell by 3,394 homes while REO inventory fell by 971 residential properties.  This is great news for sellers especially those trying to do a short sale.  Buyers have fewer homes to chose from so they may be forced to consider a short sale despite the hassle and long wait.

Interest rates are still great!  FHA rates have been as low as 4.25%.  Buyers who have been sitting on the fence trying to decide if they should buy or wait for prices to go down need to get moving.  A five thousand dollar difference in price changes the monthly payment  by about $25 while a 1/2% increase in interest rates changes the payment by almost $45.  As one mortgage broker said it is the perfect storm - lowest interest rates in years combine with the lowest prices.

Owners who sold a property as a short sale can potentially buy a home in a little as two years!  This is contrary to the seven years we were told at the beginning of the housing crisis.  Sadly for those who let the property go to foreclosure it could be as long as 7 years per the Fannie Mae guidelines.  If you need help determining if you can buy please give me a call at 480-703-1976 or send me an email.


Bad News
Buyers are finding a totally different market than they did a few months ago.  At 31,346 on June 1, active listings are 9.4% below May 1 and 23.3% below June 1, 2010. Supply is clearly falling fast.  This means buyers must move quickly and make aggressive offers at or above asking if they want to buy a home.  Some buyers have resorted to making ridiculously high offers thinking the property will not appraise and the seller will drop the price accordingly.  This is a dangerous tactic as it could endanger the buyer's earnest money in addition to wasting the money spent on inspections. The better strategy is to offer at or slightly above listing price based on the market analysis of the area.

Investors looking for multifamily properties in good rental locations have a tough time finding anything to buy as well as a lot of competition.  Any reasonably priced duplex, triplex or fourplex will have multiple cash offers and sell within days even if it is a short sale.  Investors trying to buy with financing are shut out by the cash buyers.  Many investors have purchased properties, invested money in the needed repairs, have the property fully rented and are reselling at a profit.  Rents continue to be low but vacancy rates are gradually improving.   Given the limited inventory the window of opportunity to buy a bargain priced multifamily property may have closed.


Articles
1) STAT Newsletter Link
2)  Phoenix-area foreclosure rate drops for third straight month
3) Former Gentle Strength Coop land in Tempe sold for $3.24 million
4) Rocky Point vacation units hit by drop in buyers
5) Many Phoenix area residents can't afford a decent apartment
6) Who's Hiring in Arizona This Year


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1) STAT Newsletter Link

STAT is produced monthly  by the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service - the database realtors use to list homes for sale and that have sold.

http://www.armls.com/Libraries/STAT_and_PPI_2011/STAT-June-2011.sflb.ashx

The ARMLS Pending Price Index™ is a forecasting tool unique to ARMLS which predicts the average and median sales prices three months into the future based on pending
prices of properties in the MLS system in the contract-to close phase of escrow.

http://www.armls.com/Libraries/STAT_and_PPI_2011/PPI-JUNE-2011.sflb.ashx


Highlights from the newsletter are:

Editor's Note:  In a departure from a summary of the information contained in the link to the ARMLS statistics I decided to share stories from my realtor colleagues about where they think the market is going along with a different look at the market from the Cromford Report.

Multiple offers with most offers above asking price - At a recent seminar several realtors reported continually getting outbid on bank owned or normal sale homes.  One example was a normal sale house priced at $310,000 located in Chandler.  When the realtor showed the house, which was vacant, there were 40 realtor business cards on the kitchen counter.  Most realtors don't leave cards in vacant houses so there were probably many more showings than 40.  The seller received 14 offers within a few days of putting the house on the market.  The two highest offers were cash and tied at $325,000. Sadly the realtor who told this story was not the winning offer.  Other realtors reported the same experiences of being out bid, multiple offers and properties selling fast.  The consensus is there is a lot less inventory available and buyers have to be fast and aggressive to have any hope of getting a home.  We agree with the Cromford Report (see below) that sooner or later the reduction in inventory has got to put upward pressure on the prices.  It is basic economics.

Huge Difference in Appraised Values - Almost all the banks selling foreclosed homes are getting both a Broker Price Opinion (BPO) from the listing realtor AND an appraisal to determine the initial list price of a foreclosed property.  Typically the bank selling the home will not disclose the details of the appraisal to anyone but the asset manager and investor.   Once the property is under contract the Buyer's lender orders an appraisal as part of the loan process.  So a foreclosed home is put on the market at a price of $240,000 which we know was based on an appraisal.  The buyer makes an offer at list price and the offer is accepted by the seller.  The buyer's lender orders an appraisal and it comes in at $200,000 - a $40,000 difference!  It appears the appraisers are appraising the properties high for the bank who is selling to help the bank get as much out of the property as possible.  The appraiser for the bank who is lending is being very conservative on the value to try to minimize the bank's risk.

I recently had two appraisals performed on the same day for the same property.  One appraisal came in at $185,000 which was the contract price.  The other appraisal came in at $200,000.   Myself and the other realtors discussing this situation can understand a few thousand dollars difference but $15,000 to $40,000 does not make sense.  If it is an FHA appraisal the seller is stuck with that value for a l80 days.  This mean the house cannot be sold to another FHA buyer at a higher price unless the buyer can make up the difference which is highly unlikely.

Cromford Report - Here at the Cromford Report, we only deal with facts and figures, not beliefs, so here is our take on the market update.
Sales - We are currently recording 9,814 sales in May. This is up 3.5% over April and up 10% over May 2010. This is a very strong sales total because in May 2011 sales are not being boosted by the government bribe (sorry, tax credit) that applied in 2010 for buyers of owner-occupied homes.

Pending Sales - At 13,268 on June 1, pending sales are down 0.4% compared with May 1 but up 6.7% compared with June 1, 2010. Again an extremely strong indicator of demand. In 2010 demand fell sharply during the summer after the tax credit expired, but there is no sign so far that the same will happen in 2011.

Active Listings - At 31,346 on June 1, active listings are 9.4% below May 1 and 23.3% below June 1, 2010. Supply is clearly falling fast. However this understates the situation because a large proportion of the active listings already have a contract against them. In fact there were 7,737 AWC (active with contingent contract) listings as of June 1, 2.6% higher than the very high level we saw on June 1, 2010. If we exclude these AWC listings, we have only 23,609 active listings, down 12.7% in a month and down 28.8% compared with last year. This is almost 60% down from the peak of October 2007.

Supply Versus Demand - The average months supply (active listings divided by monthly sales rate) for the period Jan 1, 2001 to June 1, 2011 is 5.9 months. Right now we have a 3.2 month supply. Yet we read everywhere that there is a “glut of foreclosed home on the market”. What we are reading may have been true in November last year. It is not true now. In fact available supply is really even tighter than this. If we only count active listings that don’t have a contract the months supply number drops to just 2.4 months. Anyone who thinks this is a “glut” is not living in the real world. They should just ask anyone who is actually trying to buy a home right now. Competition is intense, and not just for bank-owned homes and trustee sales. It is also heating up for short sales and normal listings. If you are trying to buy a home that is at all desirable and is priced at market or below, expect multiple bids. If you are a seller, then you only need to price realistically and your home well sell quickly.

(All the above numeric information is for “all areas & types” within ARMLS.)

Records Being Set
In Maricopa County, May saw the largest ever number of distressed homes disappear from inventory. Pending foreclosures fell by 3,394 homes while REO inventory fell by 971 residential properties.  For Maricopa County, May gave us the highest ever percentage of out-of-state buyers. 29.9% of sales went to non-Arizona residents. The average between January 1999 and May 2011 was 11.9%. The absolute count was also a record - 2,648 homes sold to out-of-state buyers. The average since Jan 1999 is 1,446.  For Maricopa County, May saw the highest ever number of foreclosures selling direct to third parties at the courthouse steps. The record set was 1,476, 33% of all the trustee sales.

Paradise Valley
Exceptionally strong market activity is occurring in Paradise Valley where sales are now averaging 52 per month compared with 31 last year at this time. Inventory is down to 319 from a peak of 581 in April 2009 when sales were averaging only 9 per month.

Prices
After a bump upwards between mid April and mid May, average sales price per sq. ft. is back down a little at the beginning of June. Although we are still some 2% to 3% above the market bottom in January and February this year, in most places prices have not yet responded to the huge changes in supply and demand. Why not? Please refer to what happened in 2005, but with everything upside down. The rules of supply and demand have not been lifted. Of course, you don’t have to believe me, but please don’t say I didn’t warn you.


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2)  Phoenix-area foreclosure rate drops for third straight month
June 15, 2011

Homeowners in the hard-hit Phoenix market will be encouraged to hear that foreclosure rates have now dropped for three months in a row. A new report from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University reveals the positive development for those hoping for some stability in their neighborhoods.  In May, foreclosures represented about 35 percent of the existing-home transactions in the Phoenix-area housing market. That’s a big improvement from January and February, when the rate was 43 percent. It’s also a continued decline from 38 percent in March and 36 percent in April. Still, the report’s author cautions the downward trend may not continue.  “Although the number of foreclosure pre-filings has been declining for the last several months, this trend is not unusual in the early part of any year, with a typical pickup over the next few months,” explains associate professor of real estate Jay Butler. “While any decline is positive, fundamental uncertainty remains as to whether foreclosures will cease to be the dominant force in the market.”

Butler points to ongoing discussions about even stricter underwriting guidelines, inflationary concerns, changes in the secondary market and possible lowering of the Federal Housing Administration mortgage limit as factors that could strongly influence the market in the future. He also emphasizes that the job market and economy are still struggling.  More than 3,500 foreclosures happened in the market in May. Despite the recent monthly drops, that’s still up from more than 3,200 last May. When foreclosures are added together with the resales of previously foreclosed properties, they total up to 61 percent of the Valley’s recorded activity in May.  Overall, the number of transactions is relatively high in the market right now, as buyers try to lock in purchases before the start of schools and the holiday season. More than 10,000 existing homes changed hands in May. That’s up from more than 9,600 transactions last May.  The median price for existing homes resold in the market in May (not new foreclosures) was $125,000, the same as in March and April. That’s a big drop from last May’s $144,000 median price.  In the townhouse/condominium market, about 1,600 units changed hands in May, and 460 of those were foreclosures. That’s about even with 470 foreclosures last May. The median resale price for a townhome/condo in the market in May was $80,500, a fall from $83,325 in April and a big decline from $99,775 last May.

Butler’s full report, including statistics, charts and a breakdown by different areas of the Valley, can be viewed at http://wpcarey.asu.edu/realestate/Phoenix-Resale-Market-Reports.cfm


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3) Former Gentle Strength Coop land in Tempe sold for $3.24 million
Luci Scott - May. 27, 2011
The Arizona Republic
The high-profile, sought-after parcel of vacant land that once housed Gentle Strength Cooperative in Tempe has sold for about $40 a square foot. That's $3,240,000 for 1.84 acres on the northwestern corner of University Drive and Ash Avenue, a block west of Mill Avenue. "We were very pleased with the price," said Mindy Korth of the Phoenix office of CB Richard Ellis, which represented the seller. "It was definitely competitive. . . . A number of people thought we weren't going to achieve that kind of pricing."

Barry Gabel of CBRE also worked on the deal for the seller, ML Manager LLC of Phoenix, the lender that acquired the property at a trustee sale in November. ML Manager is the successor to the bankrupt Mortgages Ltd., once a high-flying Valley company.  The buyer, who won out over multiple offers, is Brookfield Asset Management of Toronto, owner of 100 and 150 W. University Drive, totaling 300,000 square feet in the Centerpoint office complex. The company also owns two nearby parking garages, a public one and another used only by employees of JPMorgan Chase.  Brookfield is a large REIT, or real-estate investment trust, and investment firm with holdings throughout North America and an active player in the Arizona market.

"They wanted to own it so they could have the authority over the development of the site since their investment was right there," Korth said.  "They didn't have a specific development plan they had already cooked up and were ready to serve."  Brad Wilde is a broker with Scottsdale-based Land Advisors Organization and an infill expert.  He described the sale for $40 a square foot as a "terrific price."  It shows a lot of confidence in the downtown Tempe market and that Brookfield wants to control the site, he said.  "The buyer is an adjoining property owner, and I believe they paid that high price to cover its flank and protect its interests," Wilde said.  Had the land been sold to an individual retail user, Wilde said, the square-foot price likely would have been $20 to $25.


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4) Rocky Point vacation units hit by drop in buyers
Craig Anderson, May 2011
The Arizona Republic

The vacation-home market in Mexico's coastal city of Rocky Point, Sonora, is bound to the rise and fall of Arizona's economic prosperity, like the ocean's tide to the moon. That fact will come as no surprise to the hundreds of Phoenix-area residents who have purchased an estimated 2,400 beachfront condominium units and detached vacation homes in the city also known as Puerto Peñasco.  Richard Savino, president of the Rocky Point Board of Realtors, estimates that Valley residents own about 60 percent of all vacation properties built in Rocky Point in the past decade. At the moment, the Rocky Point housing market is in a major slump. Of the city's estimated 4,000 vacation condos and houses, about 650 properties are listed for sale, Savino said.  Based on the Puerto Peñasco vacation-home market's average transaction flow of about 16 sales per month, those listings represent a more than three-year supply of inventory.  A healthy housing market generally has about six months' inventory listed for sale.  Although he expressed confidence that the Rocky Point housing market eventually would rebound, Savino said it would have to be preceded by significant economic recovery north of the border.  "We're all kind of waiting for the U.S. economy to turn around," he said.

Savino visited the Phoenix area last week to meet with administrators of the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, which for the past two months has been involved in a mutual exchange of home listings with its Rocky Point counterpart.  Savino, an American who has been living in Rocky Point since 2007 and brokering real-estate deals there since 2008, hopes the sharing of Rocky Point listings with metro Phoenix real-estate agents will bring added visibility to his area's housing market while giving U.S. agents an opportunity to get more involved and potentially earn some additional referral fees.  To represent either the buyer or seller in a Rocky Point real-estate transaction, agents must have a Sonoran real-estate license. Savino obtained his Sonoran license in 2008. He continues to work as a real-estate agent while managing two local condominium communities to make ends meet.  Despite the market's current problems, Savino said he is confident that buyer interest in the Rocky Point vacation-home market eventually will return.

The introduction of direct commercial flights to and from Puerto Peñasco's recently built, but barely used, airport would provide a significant boost to the area's housing market, he said.  One of Savino's goals is to persuade a major airline to add Rocky Point to its itinerary. A small Mexican air carrier had been offering flights about a year ago, he said, but it canceled the service about six months later.  Not enough passengers, according to Savino.  He blamed the dearth of travelers not on the weak economy but on a string of news reports that started coming out just before spring break in 2010.

The news reports linked Rocky Point to a public scare over recent drug-related murders in Mexico, Savino said, adding that most of the drug-related violence has been in major cities and not around Puerto Peñasco, which has a population of 45,000.  "It is a safe place," Savino said. "I would not be living there if it wasn't."


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5) Many Phoenix area residents can't afford a decent apartment
Catherine Reagor, June 2, 2011
The Arizona Republic
Metro Phoenix has been known for its supply of affordable houses, easy to buy and resell. Now, the rental market is dominating the region's housing sector, something many real-estate experts didn't expect.  And rentals in Arizona aren't as affordable as many might expect, either.  A new study from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Arizona Housing Alliance indicates the hourly wage a family must earn to afford rent and utilities for a small home or apartment is $17.45. But the typical Arizona renter earns about $4 an hour less than that. More than 50 percent of all renters in Arizona don't earn enough to afford a decent two-bedroom apartment.  The state's housing wage has climbed 41 percent since 2000, despite the housing crash.

Working for Arizona's minimum wage, a household must have 2.4 wage earners working full-time - or one full-time earner working 95 hours a week - to afford the monthly rent on a modest two-bedroom apartment, $907.  Val Iverson, executive directorof the Housing Alliance, said lower-income families continue to struggle to find decent, affordable housing in communities across Arizona. "While we work to rebuild our economy after the recession, we cannot forget the low-income families across America whose basic housing needs continue to be unmet," she said. Arizona ranks 18th on the list of priciest places for renters to live in the U.S. And the state's housing crash is fueling a lot of the demand for tenants, so rents are likely to keep climbing.  More than one-third of Arizona's residents are renters, and 42 percent of the occupied homes in Phoenix are rentals.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2011/06/01/20110601biz-catherine0601.html#ixzz1O7yk45Lt

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6) Who's Hiring in Arizona This Year
May 2011
The Arizona Republic
The signs are there: The economy is heating up a little. Companies are hiring again.  Small businesses are picking up talented newcomers, whether recent college graduates or seasoned workers laid off from other firms. Larger companies have enough vacancies to host their own job fairs to fill hundreds of positions. There's even this sign, spotted in the window of a Taco Bell in Tempe: "Now hiring for summer positions." Even that kind of sign was a rare sight in 2010 - and especially in 2009.  From health care to mining to engineering positions, it seems Arizona's economy is on the move. After three years of losses, the state has gained jobs for the past three months, and about 10,800 so far this year. More good news: The unemployment rate fell in April to 9.3 percent, from 9.5 percent.

GPE Commercial Advisors - 10 jobs

David Genovese admits that his commercial-real-estate firm is taking a bit of a gamble by expanding its staff and moving into a bigger office during one of the worst commercial-real-estate slumps on record.  But Genovese, president of Scottsdale-based GPE Commercial Advisors, said he is looking beyond the downturn and employment crunch and positioning his company to be at the top of its game when the metro Phoenix economy recovers.  GPE Commercial, a locally owned company founded in 1973, already has expanded its relatively lean staff of brokers and property managers by 20 percent in recent months.  Genovese said he doesn't buy into the notion of commercial real estate as a good-old-boys network. He is building a diverse, high-quality staff of experienced brokers and managers.  His plan is to add at least 10 more employees to the current staff of about 40, which will mean moving into a larger space when the lease on its office, near Scottsdale and Camelback roads, expires in September.  "Right now we are maxed to capacity," Genovese said about the current location.

Several commercial-brokerage firms in the Phoenix area have added property-management staff over the past two years to pick up more business at a time when relatively few sale or lease transactions were taking place.  Genovese said GPE Commercial is doing the opposite, expanding its historical role as a boutique firm specializing in health-care-property management by beefing up the brokerage side of the business and expanding it to all types of commercial property.  "We wanted to grow," he said. "We made a concentrated effort to expand both our property-management company and our brokerage company."  So far, the expansion plan has been a success, Genovese said. The company has expanded the square footage of commercial space under its management to 10 million from 7 million, and its client base has grown by about 40 percent, he said.  Genovese admitted that there are still a lot of problems with the commercial-real-estate market, but that it had reached a necessary first step toward recovery.  "People have accepted what's going on out there, and things have started to pick up," he said.


Vanguard Group - 300 jobs

The Vanguard Group plans to beef up its Scottsdale call center with more than 300 hires by the end of the year.  The financial-services company's expansion is also part of a national trend: Many firms are expanding their customer-service staffs, according to an industry group.  Vanguard plans to use the hires to improve customer service for existing investment clients. Vanguard also plans to relocate some customer-service jobs from other regions to metro Phoenix and drum up new business, said Phyllis Bruner, a human-resources manager.  "Many of our business areas are expanding and growing their presence in Arizona," she said. During a two-day hiring event this month, Vanguard interviewed candidates for 80 positions.

Vanguard has been in Arizona for 16 years and started with 25 workers. Now it has nearly 2,000 employees in Scottsdale, Bruner said. Arizona is good place to build a customer-service staff because the state's time zone allows the firm to offer extended customer-service hours and the desert climate means there are virtually no weather-related communications issues, Bruner said.  Across the country, call centers have ramped up hiring "exponentially," said Paul Stockford, research director for the National Association of Call Centers, an industry group based at the University of Southern Mississippi.  Call-center workers not only help with customer service, they can also sell additional products to existing clients.

"A lot of companies invested in their call centers during the recession as means of hanging on to customers that they had," said Stockford, who is based in Cave Creek. "The strategy was, 'Let's hang on to what we have got, and in order to do that, we need to provide stellar service.' Now, I think the strategy is, 'Now that we held on to our customers, let's go out and get some new customers.' "  During the first six months of 2010, U.S. call centers reported a net gain of 2,292 employees, according to the association's analysis of federal Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. In the third and fourth quarters of 2010, the industry gained 3,929 and 9,695 net jobs, respectively.  Arizona had a net loss of 454 call-center jobs in the first three months of 2010. But it gained 57, 300 and 76 net jobs during the next three quarters, respectively.

Bashas' Supermarkets - 400 jobs

After shedding more than 4,000 jobs as it closed stores and reorganized in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding, Arizona's hometown grocer is growing and hiring again.  Earlier this month, Bashas' held job fairs in metro Phoenix and Tucson in an effort to fill about 400 positions, from managers to customer-service representatives.  "It's such a good feeling to be able to hire again," said Pearl Castillo, Bashas' human-resources manager.  The Chandler-based operator of 130 Bashas', Food City and AJ's Fine Foods supermarkets throughout Arizona was caught when the housing bust and recession put an end to a decadelong building boom.  The 79-year-old grocery chain filed for Chapter 11 protection in July 2009 and emerged 14 months later a leaner, financially viable company.  In the process, Bashas' closed about 25 marginal stores and cut its workforce from 10,753 in 2008 to 6,641 in 2011.

"It's been a very difficult period," Bashas' spokeswoman Kristy Nied said. The company has been slowly paying off its debts and growing stronger. While it's not ready to announce the construction of new stores, Bashas' executives believe the company is in a position to begin hiring again.  "It's such a good feeling to have some good news to share," Nied said.  Castillo said the job fairs on May 3, 4, 5 and 10 exceeded the company's expectations and drew substantially more applicants than they expected.  At the company's May 4 fair in west Phoenix, the company had to bring in extra interviewers and open up more interview rooms to handle the thongs of job seekers. Those arriving after 11 a.m. were told to come back the next day because all of the interview slots already were filled.

Castillo said Bashas' prefers job fairs to accepting and screening applications online.  "It's easier to get a lot of people with a lot of different skills all at one time," she said.  Jay Johnson of Phoenix was laid off in December as a landscaping estimator and applied for a job at Bashas' as a meat cutter.  "I'm willing to try something different," he said, acknowledging he has no prior grocery-store experience. Charyl Vining of Phoenix came to the Bashas' job fair in hopes of landing a better job. She said she works at a convenience store that was recently robbed and she no longer feels safe.


Freeport McMoRan - 300 jobs

Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. is benefiting from the recent surge in commodities prices, which has boosted the value of the metals it mines in the U.S. and abroad.  But the company expects more than a short-term blip from the run-up in prices. Company officials anticipate the high prices will be sustained. With confidence in the prices sticking around for some time, the company has recently been expanding operations at several of its U.S. properties.  Freeport recently listed about 300 U.S. job openings, mostly in Arizona, for a variety of positions.  "Our view on copper markets remains very positive," President and CEO Richard Adkerson said during a recent conference call with investors and media.  "We are running our business and developing our development plans with an optimistic view about long-term demand for copper globally, driven by China and the developing world, as well as an improvement in the economies of the developed world and coupled with the continuing challenges the industry faces in maintaining and developing new supplies of copper to meet that demand."

Even with a limited economic recovery taking place in the U.S., Freeport executives have reported stronger demand for its metal, which is used in automobiles, electronics and is seeing increased demand from the alternative-energy sector in products such as wind turbines and electric cars. Copper prices recently passed $4.50 a pound, although they are closer to $4 a pound now. That is about 30 percent higher than a year ago.  The company has been expanding mining operations at several of its Arizona properties, including in Miami, Morenci and Safford, and also has work available in New Mexico and Colorado.  Not only does the company need people to drive the massive machinery that pulls copper ore from the ground and to manage the explosives used to free up that ore, but Freeport also needs a variety of office and managerial employees to help its operations run smoothly.

Goodrich - 200 jobs

An increased demand for electronic systems in airplanes has officials at Goodrich Corp. in Phoenix looking to hire for as many as 200 positions by the end of 2011.  The company said the bulk of its hiring will be to staff an electronic-systems center with electrical, systems, software and mechanical engineers. Another Goodrich division has expanded operations in Phoenix and will be designing, testing and manufacturing exterior and interior lighting for military and commercial aircraft. "We want to really ramp up to meet the demand that's out in the marketplace, so it's a little bit hard to speculate at this point where things are going to finally land. But we've been talking about scenarios where we get on the order of 200 additional people or so on campus," said Dennis Cronin, vice president of the electronic-systems center.  Salaries will depend on experience, but Cronin said entry-level engineers can make upwards of $50,000. "And the reality is some of the most experienced people are bringing in somewhere close to $100,000," he said.  "These are highly coveted people, meaning it's a competitive world. One of our factors in why we came to Phoenix was we felt there was enough talent in the town to be able to staff with good quality people, which has really borne out to be true."

Charlotte, N.C.-based Goodrich, a Fortune 500 company with 24,000 employees worldwide, made a decision in 2009 to locate its electronic-systems center here. It provides braking, landing gear, actuation (flaps on the wings that control the airplane) and other systems to customers including Boeing and Airbus.  "Those have got a bunch of hydraulics and they're messy and heavy," Cronin said. "It turns out if you take a new approach, you can use electric systems to replace them."  Electronic control boxes that connect to motors give customers the benefit of reduced weight and better reliability. Goodrich created a center of excellence in Phoenix to capitalize on the trend.  "In the past, Goodrich was maybe purchasing these types of components from outside, and today, Goodrich wants to make those," Cronin said.  Besides the hiring Cronin will do, the lighting-systems team plans to add between 50 and 60 positions this year.  Goodrich has been in Phoenix since 1986 on Fifth Street between University Drive and Broadway Road. The Goodrich campus employs more than 500.  "Goodrich is here to stay in Phoenix," Cronin said. "We're investing in the city."

International Cruise and Excursions Inc. - 100 jobs

Over the past few years - a time when many consumers were second-guessing their vacation plans - business at Scottsdale-based International Cruise and Excursions Inc. was booming.  John and Marcia Rowley, co-founders of the company, largely attribute growth during the recession to a travel package that offers customers a resort stay and cruise. John says sales for that product grew 57 percent in 2010, leading to a steady trickle of hiring over the past year.  Now, the privately held company is hiring an additional 100 sales representatives, in part because of the popularity of the resort-and-cruise package and in part because of the February 2010 introduction of a second vacation package, which includes a hotel "city stay" and a cruise. The packages are sold as both a self-branded product and offered through some of ICE's partners, such as RCI, one of the largest time-share trade brokers in the world.  But ICE's vacation packages are just one revenue source for the 14-year-old company.

When ICE was founded in 1997, it swapped time-share stays for cruises. Later, it began to provide vacation inventory to clients such as American Express and USAA from suppliers such as Carnival Cruise Lines and Disney Cruise Line.  Now, as vacation packages grow in popularity, swaps of timeshare and cruise swaps only account for about 50 percent of the company's current book of business, Marcia Rowley said.  "We created this (vacation) package that fueled our growth in this down economy, and is continuing to fuel our growth, because it provides a great value to the consumer," Marcia Rowley said. "If you'll make the commitment to cruise, then we will give you a second vacation (a resort stay or hotel stay) for free."

The new employees who ICE is hiring will act as outbound sales representatives, selling the vacation packages to customers who have previously purchased vacations from ICE or one of its partners.  Rather than buying a specific cruise, resort or hotel stay, consumers have more than a year to make their vacation plans.  To apply for a sales job with ICE, you must be a high-school graduate and have basic computer skills. The starting pay is $10 an hour plus commission.  All positions offer medical and dental benefits, as well as a retirement plan. On-site amenities include a fitness center and an on-site health center.