My main question is how much of this is due to the work from home trend and how much is due to the economy. I would also be curious if there is any location data on vacancies; meaning out in the suburbs or in crowded urban areas. If I was commuting hours each way to work, I would be switch jobs to avoid commuting again.
Or the inverse of that.
One of the fastest growing towns in the PHX metro area is Queen Creek. It's barely even in Maricopa County, and parts of it sprawl into Pinal County. And Maricopa County is larger than many Eastern Seaboard States. People commute from Queen Creek in to jobs in Tempe and Phoenix, and it blows my mind why they do that rather than buy a house closer in, in Chandler/Gilbert/Mesa/Tempe. It'd be one thing if they're getting land and a more rural lifestyle out of it, but they aren't. Postage stamp lots, cookie cutter homes, planned communities with so many neighborhoods per Walmart and Home Depot and strip mall.
They spend an extra $250 a month in gas, lose an additional 20+ hours a month on commute time, all to avoid a mortgage that might be $100-$200 more a month by buying more expensive property in more central towns.
Arizona has recently banned any more massive masterplanned communities state-wide unless the developer can cite the water source for the community other than aquifer, Colorado River, or Salt/Gila River systems. Queen Creek already has large sections of town that have water drama. There's an outfit out there called Johnson Utilities that is apparently just dreadful to be a customer. A decent sized community north of Scottsdale (Rio Verde) along the Verde River just got told they can't buy Scottsdale municipal water any more and they have to source their own water system, and have been out of pressurized municipal water for months. There's an ad-hoc system involving trucking water in, but even then there are hold out communities that think that is too expensive and are isolated from the trucked-in water because they don't want to pay what it costs.
Honestly, reading about the Rio Verde situation is kind of comical. If you go visit the community, it is a bunch of million dollar homes wrapped around a large country club and golf course. Those poor suffering folk are having to shower at the country club instead of at home! The horror.
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that Phoenix is about at max capacity for people (at least for suburbia), barring a major revolution in water distribution processes like bridging the Mississippi and Colorado River systems, or California yielding their Colorado River Compact rights due to a breakthrough in desalination.
Between some folks working from home resulting in less office demand, and inability for new developments to source water, I suspect the next phase in our metro area's development could be renovation of unused office buildings into condos and apartments, increasing urban density and making use of the water allocations given to the established unused commercial buildings.