At the height of Phoenix’s excess, in 2005, homebuilders were constructing 4,000 homes a month, bulldozing one acre of land every hour.

By 2008 the city was the epicenter of the country’s housing market crisis. Prices rose more precipitously and fell faster than most anywhere else.

It was among the most overbuilt of the overbuilt sand cities, optimistic right up until the collapse. Home values fell by 55 percent from 2006 to 2011.