TRENDS IN ARIZONA’S POPULATION
by By Stan C. Strom
September, 2007

Last month I wrote an article titled, “Throwing Darts When Buying Land: Water is the Bulls-eye!” and that was preceded by five other articles about land investment, hot spots for growth, using your qualified retirement plan to purchase land and lost opportunity stories about the would’ves, could’ves and should’ves. Now I want to share with you some growth projections that further support my bullishness on the real estate market here in Arizona from a water perspective.
While some consider me to be a specialist in Arizona water rights, my real mentor is Karl Kohlhoff from HDR Engineering who holds designations as P.E. and B.C.E.E. and has been an Arizona water guru for years. Along with his associate, David Roberts, Manager at Salt River Project in the Water Rights and Contracts Department, they just had a paper published in the Arizona Law Review, volume 49, Number 2 entitled, “Beyond the Colorado River: Is an International Water Augmentation Consortium in Arizona’s Future?”.
I want to share with you some of the reliable, yet staggering growth numbers that take into consideration where and how our state’s population trends will go.
No doubt you have heard that Arizona’s population growth is one of the fastest in the U.S. and has grown by 600% since 1950. Since 2000, the state has grown by over 1,000,000 residents, or some 200,000 per year and there are now nine cities or towns with populations over 100,000 people. Phoenix is now the 5th largest US city, Tucson ranks 32nd and the state ranks 16th with a population of over 6,000,000 people. Within 10 years, Arizona will rank in the top 10. Eighty percent (80%) of the people live in the “three county area” of Maricopa, Pinal and Pima Counties.
The Department of Economic Security projects that Arizona will surpass 10,000,000 people in 2028 and reach over 13,300,000 by 2055. By 2,100, researchers predict a state population of 18,000,000 and Pinal County will replace Pima County (Tucson) as the second most populated county. As one of the 10 “Megapolitans” in the US where over $25 trillion dollars will be invested by baby boomers in the next 18 years, Arizona land and real estate will continue to rise in value due to supply and demand.
By 2050, Phoenix and Tucson will have merged, and the corridor from Prescott south to the Mexican border, including Sierra Vista, will grow into a megapolitan, or super-sized metropolitan area referred to as the “Arizona Sun Corridor”. In that same period, Pinal County is expected to quadruple in population to over 1,100,000 people while the population in four other counties will double in Maricopa, Mohave, Yavapai and Yuma. The attached Table 1 illustrates the projected population by county in Arizona. Next month I will follow this article with a detailed look at where the surface and ground water is for these counties and where I project the greatest opportunity for land appreciation. Last week, the Arizona Republic printed an article on possible future regional transportation corridors between Willcox and Benson that link up to the Phoenix area, bypassing Tucson. Further, there are discussions for one of the nation’s largest railroad switch yards located on the east side of I-10 at Picacho Peak that will serve as the commuter rail line for this corridor. Go to my website at www.acres4u.net and download the various JPEG maps and articles that support these growth projections. All the concern about the cooling Arizona real estate market is just for the short term because the long term outlook is nothing but “green”.