Eight Cents On The Dollar
I have been in the basement over the long weekend.  This Bloomberg article (and related Calculated Risk post) from over the weekend caught my eye.   I'm no Arizona geography expert, but sixty miles southwest of Phoenix sounds like the middle of scorching Nowhere:

A 10,200-acre (4,100-hectare) desert site in Arizona sold for $32.5 million this week, five years after a group with investors including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System paid $400 million for the land.

Arcus Property Solutions LLC, a private-equity fund with about $100 million under management, paid cash for the property in Goodyear, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Phoenix, said Kent Kleinman, a spokesman for the Gilbert, Arizona-based company. The site, now called Amaranth Land LLC, had been planned for a 42,000-home community by the Calpers- financed group when it was purchased in 2006.

The plan for the 42,000 homes is on indefinite hold, with cattle grazing the current use and potential future revenue sources that include selling water rights or allowing Goodyear to expand its landfill.  I like this part of the article:

The 2006 buyers were a joint venture of MW Housing Partners III LP, a real estate fund with money from Calpers and Weyerhaeuser Co. (WY); and Scottsdale, Arizona-based Montage Land LLC, according to Arizona Corporation Commission records. The deal was funded by a $250.1 million loan and $150 million in cash, according to Terry McDonnell, publisher of Business Real Estate Weekly of Arizona in Scottsdale. 


“Of all the speculative deals I’ve seen here, this was right at the top,” McDonnell said in a telephone interview. “It’s hard for me to think of a more speculative deal of this magnitude in Maricopa County.”