Content about Phoenix

It stands to reason: The pool of consumers willing to invest in home improvement projects dramatically swells when home prices are increasing. Under those conditions, not only does a new kitchen look nice, it promises a nice ROI.

That's why the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, released late March, was hailed by the industry as a positive sign. Not only did two widely watched indices of home prices climb to the highest marks since the burst of the housing bubble, but all 20 cities on the list posted year-over-year gains — eight of them in the double digits.

Phoenix-based Meritage Homes has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2013 Energy Star Partner of the Year – Sustained Excellence Award. The award recognizes ongoing leadership across the Energy Star program, including energy-efficient products, services, new homes, and buildings in the commercial, industrial and public sectors. 

A blend of education, entertainment and relaxation highlighted the recently completed Do it Best Corp. Winter Conference held in Phoenix.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the trade mark "SummerWinds" to SummerWinds Garden Centers.

SummerWinds Garden Centers is a Boise, Idaho-based high-end retailer of garden and nursery products. SummerWinds operates retail nurseries in the Silicon Valley of California; Phoenix; and St. Louis. The retailer says it appeals to both the serious and casual gardener with a broad selection of premium gardening products and knowledgeable staff. 

EnduraMax,a high-performance wall system by Oldcastle Architectural, is a sponsor of the Green Schoolhouse Series project, an effort to construct green schoolhouses across the country.

The first Green Schoolhouse Series project is a 6,000-square-foot school in Phoenix, Ariz. It serves as the launching pad for state-of-the-art green schoolhouses across the country on Title 1, low-income, public school campuses. 

Few stances have riled employers this summer more than the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) position that employee handbooks with language about at-will employment may violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This position, which Kent Jones, an attorney with Nixon Peabody in San Francisco, characterized in an interview with SHRM Online as “a terrible stretch,” applies to all employers -- unionized or not.

The NLRB floated this theory in a pair of cases earlier this year at the Phoenix regional office.

During the Reliable Distributors 2012 Annual Management & Marketing Conferences in Phoenix, president Allan Meyer offered the following advice: “Members need to embrace change.” 

Meyer also said the 26-year-old group is still growing and attributed the success of the group to the fact the Reliable Membership is comprised of small to middle-sized distributors that have each found a special niche in their marketplace. 

Data through December 2011, released today by S&P Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index, a leading indicator of U.S. housing prices, showed a 0.9% rise in home prices in July 2011 compared with the previous month for both its 10- and 20-city composites. This is the fourth consecutive month of increases for both indices. 

In July 2011, the 10- and 20-City Composites recorded annual returns of -3.7% and -4.1%, respectively. 

San Francisco -- Gov. Jerry Brown, mired in the biggest battle of his new term as governor of California, took time to stop in at the PCBC show here to deliver a keynote address that touched lightly on housing but staked out his determination to pass a balanced budget for the nation’s largest state.

“We must continue to retrench, but it’s going to get ugly,” Brown said.

A study released today by CoreLogic, a real estate data and analysis firm, indicates that 38% of homeowners who took out home equity loans on their houses were “underwater” at the end of the first quarter of 2011, compared with 18% of borrowers with no home equity loans. More than 40% (4.5 million) of all negative equity borrowers have home equity loans.