It's nice to see these stupid projects in Scottsdale failing one by one now.
The Valley Ho was a dump of a 1950's hotel on a busy street. A definite tear down. But no, during the late great housing ponzi scheme, this eyesore was - PRESTO - a great place for $1 million+ condos!
They took the dumpy 2-story hotel part, applied some spray paint and flat-screen TVs and raised the room rates from $50 to $300 - not that any fool would pay that of course. Fake cool when for the same rate you can stay at the Phoenician. You do the math.
Anyway, after the 2-story hotel, they then built a new horrific cellblock tower - the original 1950s design believe it or not (now that's progress), and put up a $1 million price tag on these tiny little "condotel" rooms. About $900,000 more than any fool would or should pay.
(Check out their laughably predictable website
here)
And there here's the story today on what happened. I hope the two people who didn't get out are enjoying their last few days of solvency. And the authorities should be on the lookout for this place to suspiciously burn to the ground one day soon - and I think they already have two good suspects...
When Scottsdale's Hotel Valley Ho announced it would build condominiums on top of the hotel and sell them for about $1 million apiece in December, buyers didn't hesitate to bite. They slapped down money on all 37 condos and formed a waiting list 300 units long.
But now that Phoenix's hyper housing market is slumbering, half of those buyers have pulled out and the waiting list disintegrated. Experts say the phenomenon is playing out nationally, just several months after "condotels" were touted as all the rage.
Jesse Thompson, sales director for the Valley Ho, said the market shift was detrimental to sales. But the hotel considers itself lucky that half of the buyers remained. Two people have moved in and 17 more are in the process of closing.
"There was no turning back," he said. "We started building before the economic climate changed in the real estate market here."