By Chris Keeley,
Phoenix Commercial Brokers

The first annual Deer Valley Airpark 2020 Real Estate Report was published in 2005. This is a commercial real estate info and activity report for the Airpark; the boundaries being south to the Loop 101, east to 7th Street, north to Happy Valley Road and west to 35th Avenue. Though the Deer Valley Village is larger, these were the commercial boundaries I used to do the study.

In 2005, we reported 14,558,452 square feet of commercial (retail, office, flex and industrial) buildings with approximately 39,291 employees. In my report, I also had the audacity to predict what the Airpark might look like in the year 2020. I never could have guessed that we were headed into one of the greatest recessions of our lifetime starting in 2008, which ended up lasting about eight years. That can sure put a setback in one’s predictions.

I predicted 29,000,000 square feet of commercial buildings with upward of 76,000 employees in the year 2020.

Well, here we are at 2020…the moment of truth.

The chart below shows how we did.
Deer Valley Airpark increased in square footage substantially to approximately 20,168,452 total square feet today with an increase of about 37,000 additional employees raising the total to about 76,500 currently.

Projecting 15 years out is a real stab in the dark, but we were pretty close on the new construction square footage – only missing that mark by 9,000,000 square feet (or 30% – wow)! That’s not surprising since there was practically no new construction in the Airpark for almost a decade. However, we got really lucky on our employment guestimate, with about 76,500 employees currently working in the Deer Valley Airpark daily.

Every graph you look at over the last 15 years is a bell curve of slow, steady growth since the bottom in 2009 -2010 and still rising as of 2020. Sales and leasing have had steady activity of growth in volume and pricing.

Pricing for sales and leasing have yet to reach the peak we saw in 2007 and 2008, but we are close. Back in 2005, we expected pricing to never stop going up. We’re more cautious now, but I anticipate continued growth in 2020. The only bell curve that hasn’t kept up in the Deer Valley Market is New Construction Starts, which actually peaked in 2017 and has dropped off in 2018 and 2019. I would expect a correction in the near future, as demand remains very high.
I’m thinking about doing a 2030 report…what do you think?

Happy New Year!