Last Years Buyers “Completely Upside Down”: Arizona
A housing report from the Arizona Republic. “Pinal County’s nascent resale housing market continues to reflect the Valley’s as it backslid in third-quarter 2006. Sales volume was off by nearly half from the same period last year and the median price dipped under $200,000, according to a report by Arizona State University.”
“The median price on a year-to-year basis dropped 6.4 percent to $199,900 from $213,500, and fell 5.3 percent from second-quarter 2006’s median of $211,000, the report said. Pinal County’s median resale price peaked at $220,000 in fourth-quarter 2005 and has dropped for three straight quarters.”
“Sales fell 45.2 percent to 850 homes, from 1,550 homes sold in third-quarter 2005, and by 28 percent from last quarter’s 1,180 transactions.”
“Bill Murdoch, an associate broker-manager at ReMax’s Queen Creek office, said the market is cooling from ‘last year’s insanity.’ He predicted that first-time buyers and investors would return to Pinal County’s resale market once the median price dips under $190,000.”
“Buyers and refinancers who did deals last year from July to November, at about the market’s peak, and want to sell now will find themselves ‘completely upside down,’ Murdoch said.”
“Probably the biggest loss is Pinal County’s image as a quick-turn cash cow, ASU’s Jay Butler said. ‘(Buyers) figured they could turn around and sell and make a lot of money,’ he said. ‘That market is gone now. There is a loss of expectation.’”
“Sweet deals from new home builders, infrastructure and traffic problems, and higher prices than first-time buyers and investors can afford continued to push Pinal County’s resale housing market downward in third-quarter 2006.”
The East Valley Tribune. “The resale prices of single- family homes in Pinal County, including Apache Junction and portions of Queen Creek, are declining partly because of buying incentives being offered by builders for new homes.”
“‘New homebuilders have been aggressively pursuing buyers through incentives such as specially priced upgrades, free pools and gift cards,’ said Jay Butler.”
“Butler said new homes have become a ’strong competitive and attractive alternative’ to resale homes in Pinal County. As a result, the market for the resale of homes is also slowing.”
Arizona State University. “Although the average 30-year mortgage for third quarter 2006 was 6.2 percent (5.5 percent for a year ago), the declining home prices allowed the monthly mortgage payment for the median price, based on an 85 percent loan-to-value, to be very comparable at $1,040 versus $1,350 for a year ago.”
“‘Because investors were drawn to the inexpensive housing in Pinal County, higher prices have limited the investor’s role in the local housing market,’ said Butler. ‘There are many reasons for the slowing market and issues that will have to be overcome for any future recovery.’”
The Tucson Citizen. “The Tucson market has seen cutbacks in new homes, aggressive incentives by home sellers, the exit of many speculative investors, said Mike Inselmann, president of Metrostudy.”
“About 10,062 new homes were built in the 12 months ending in September 2006. That’s a 9 percent decline from the market peak six months before.”
“The median resale price in September was $210,000, a decline of 6.7 percent from June, when the median price peaked. During the 12 months ending August 2006, the median price hovered near $220,000, so the September price decline is noteworthy, said Ben Sage, director of Metrostudy’s Arizona division.”
The Business Journal of Phoenix. “The Phoenix area posted an annual rate of 54,747 home starts at the end of the third quarter, a decline of 12 percent from the record 62,000 starts recorded at the end of the first quarter of 2006, according to the Metrostudy.”
“‘Builders’ efforts to liquidate inventory have been successful, but starts are likely to continue dropping until inventory declines further,’ said Sage.”
From AZ Family. “If you’re looking to buy real estate in the Valley, you may want to wait a year. Last year, as many as a third of new homes sales went to speculators and investors. Now, many of them are competing with builders to dump their holdings. As a result, some developments have dropped by more than $100,000.”
Also in Tucson:
‘Got $5,000 to splurge and a whim to move downtown in a couple years? The Post condo project slated for Congress Street will start taking reservations Nov. 17. The Presidio Terrace condo project on Paseo Redondo west of the Tucson Museum of Art started taking reservations in October.’
A reader posted this from a couple weeks back: ‘Bill Yakobovich’s ritzy north Scottsdale estate sat vacant for nearly five months before he decided to ditch his real estate agent and put the home up for auction. Next month his 4,500-squarefoot Desert Mountain home, which was originally listed for $2.9 million, will sell regardless of price, for no minimum bid and no reserve. The house is guaranteed to sell to the highest bidder when the gavel drops. Desert Mountain home auction When: Nov. 1. Registration begins at 4 p.m., auction at 6 p.m.’
But the auction site still doesn’t have the results.
gotta love it!!!
It is amazing how many ‘amateur’ developers entered the fray in 2004/2005 hoping to get rich quick along with the RE agents and mortgage brokers.
It is going to be comical to see what happens when all of these homes hit the market in 2007, 2008, 2009 when there is ALREADY a huge OVERSUPPLY of homes on the market.
Simply amazing!
BTW…look for a new post in a the next day or so. I know it has been a while…SORRY!
SoCalMtgGuy
http://www.housingbubblecasualty.com
Ben,
I called the auction house (800)473-2292 to get the winning bid. She said the auctioneer is not due back in the office until tomorrow and she has no info yet.
“Last Years Buyers “Completely Upside Down”: Arizona”
You heard it here first but 2 years ago!
TXC57, weren’t you going to bid $400k for that house?
Fed’s Fisher (Dallas) saying that the housing “correction” is affecting monetary policy.
Not too much of a surprise considering that the Fed has been accepting MBS as collateral in open market ops since around 2003. Garbage attracts garbage I guess.
BTW-Just got back from Pittsburgh and the one thing that came up in conversations, and I swear to the heavens that I didn’t start the topic, was the softness of the housing market. The mantra being spouted is that it is a buyers market. I was told about one old friend that is living in a hotel and trying to get out from under a $500,000 flip. Now anyone that knows the ‘Burgh should be laughing as trying to flip a $500,000 property there is like trying to ice skate in July on Lake Erie. I think prices will be much lower by the time I get back there in the spring.
I grew up in Pittsburgh. You can buy entire city blocks for less than $500K… and still have paid too much.
I’ll bet you can get something VERY nice in one of the better school districts (Fox Chapel, USC, Mt. Lebo, N. Allegheny) for WELL under $500K.
But Pittsburgh never really saw any price appreciation, didn’t it?
Hasn’t in about 50 years. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but not in real terms, not at all.
Ha! Tell that to this scam artist:
http://dallas.craigslist.org/rfs/229072078.html
WOW! I have never heard of Pittsburgh being compared to SF before. The ‘Burgh has seen some price appreciation but not anywhere near the 100% mark. It also seems that they were one of the first areas that the new home builders were undercutting the existing home markets in the $250-$500 range. Lots of new houses up the I-79 corridor.
There has been some price appreciation but certainly not like in here in Santa Cruz.
Passthebubbly- I grew up in Fox Chapel and a lot of people there aren’t even trying to sell now. Of course most of the people that own there always have the money to stay around and ride out any real estate storm. There also seems to be a lot less kids around than ever before in the Borough. Of course with taxes running about $21,000 a year on some of those homes it kind of pushes out young buyers that want FC school district edumication. There is always Sharpsburg I guess
Well, I grew up in FC too. My sisters and I got sent to private schools (I went to the one in FC, you know which one). I guess my family was rich. Some lot of good it did me.
Hey, if you don’t like Sharpsburg, there’s always Blawnox.
Anyway, if you don’t care about public schools (ie you are single, DINKs, empty nesters, send your kids to private schools etc) the Burgh can be dirt cheap. Watch out for that city payroll tax, though, and don’t plan on making any money buying houses.
The link has been removed. This blog must be gaining is power.
Speaking of Santa Cruz…this house was two door down from me when I lived there. Originally listed at 1.7million in June, now going for 1.55mil.
http://www.tiny.cc/3KVUb
Oh yeah…back in 1999 the house was valued between 400k and 500k.
‘the declining home prices allowed the monthly mortgage payment for the median price, based on an 85 percent loan-to-value, to be very comparable at $1,040 versus $1,350 for a year ago.’
My calculator shows this to be a savings of $111,600 over the life of this loan. Hows that for rewarding patience!
And for all the gloom coming out of Phoenix, the builders have barely slowed down:
‘The Phoenix area posted an annual rate of 54,747 home starts at the end of the third quarter, a decline of 12 percent from the record 62,000 starts recorded at the end of the first quarter of 2006, according to the Metrostudy.’
I think it was a typo. I bet they meant $1340.
Nah, I think they just took liberties with the interest rates they used. They may have used a 6.5 fix for last year and a 5.75 fix for this year, for example.
“Hows that for rewarding patience!”
Sweeet…and you know it’s going to get better.
Is anyone else tiring of these brilliant predictions?
————————————————————
“He predicted that first-time buyers and investors would return to Pinal County’s resale market once the median price dips under $190,000.”
And it’s plain wrong, you can’t have cash flow on a $190K house. Try $120-140K and we’re getting there.
Well, he’d still be technically correct. Those prices will still be under $190K.
My brilliant prediction is that it will take around 4 to 6 years for first-time buyers to return in numbers, and longer than that before ‘investors’ jump back in.
You are on to something here. If we don’t have enough buyers to support current price and supply levels, it will take several years to literally ‘grow’ them. Meanwhile, the lot of upside down bagholders will mushroom as prices drop, drop, drop.
I agree. No more froggies left in the buyer’s pool — even the young froggies bought on toxic loans. Homebuilders will just have to wait until the next generation of tadpoles grows up.
Or they might just, um, croak.
Dagnabbit, mrktmaven beat me to the analogy.
With all the excess housing out there, why would you even continue to ‘invest’ in an area? All those numbers need to come down, including the number of investors.
That one got me too. What a crock. Where are these speculators going to come from and where will they get the funding when most are busy bailing out at a loss - IF THEY EVEN CAN BEFORE GOING BK!
Gonna be a long road here, as lenders join the crowded field of sellers dumping REOs and cutting the legs out from under the comps. WHen banking regulators begin to peer into lender finances, that’s when the game get interesting. Until then we’ll see a grind lower…
“Sweet deals from new home builders, infrastructure and traffic problems, and higher prices than first-time buyers and investors can afford continued to push Pinal County’s resale housing market downward in third-quarter 2006.”
Infrastructure and traffic problems? This pretty much sums up the last 25 years of “problems” making Phoenix and Tucson a nightmare for commuters. I expect the next 25 years will only get worse.
OT, hope there isn’t a ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident in the Persian Gulf. Gold is acting up again, ostensibly due to declining economic conditions, while oil/gas/natgas is no longer in the news. The immense size of the oil market, coupled with a 20%+ haircut in the price/bbl would seem to me to have hurt a few more players than just Amaranth.
If infrastructure and traffic problems really did have a negative effect on housing prices, then Los Angeles and New York should be dirt cheap by now. That has to be one of the more ridiculous excuses I’ve heard yet.
It’s actually harder for Pinal County residents to get into Phoenix in the a.m. (especially from Gilbert Road to Dobson) than it is to get to downtown LA.
Can we adjust the price changes for all the incentives builders are throwing in now? Say a builder sells a $200K house after throwing in $15K of incentives (granite countertops, pay closing costs, no HOA for a year etc.). Adjust that down by what these things REALLY cost — maybe you could’ve really gotten that “$10K” Jacuzzi for $6K — and call it $11K in incentives.
So add the incentives back into last year’s prices and that $211K house would’ve been $222K. $200K vs. 222K is a 9.9% cut, rather than the reported 6.4%.
Yes, I know I’m comparing new to new, but it’s still a hidden price drop. Point is, actual value declines are STEEPER than are being reported, especially in a place like exurban Phoenix.
“Bill Murdoch, an associate broker-manager at ReMax’s Queen Creek office, said the market is cooling from ‘last year’s insanity.’ He predicted that first-time buyers and investors would return to Pinal County’s resale market once the median price dips under $190,000.”
“Buyers and refinancers who did deals last year from July to November, at about the market’s peak, and want to sell now will find themselves ‘completely upside down,’ Murdoch said.”
C’mon Murdoch…you don’t think ‘new buyers’ won’t be alarmed by what happened to 2005’s upside down buyers and postpone their purchase decision do yuh? As soon as new buyers get wind of the predicament upside down owners now face, they will clam up and tighten their fists. Good luck unclenching these tight-wads!
go to zip realty and check queen creek there are new homes for 150k.no doubt flippers trying to get out.how far is queen creek from the big city and is there anything out there?
FYI, Queen Creek is in the farrrr southeast reaches of the Phoenix metro area - down below Chandler and Mesa, way east of I-10.
I have a good friend who bought out there in 2005, got a full acre, and quite a few people own horses on his street. The situation works for him and his wife because he travels and/or works from home, and his wife works for a local school.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine commuting to downtown Phx from there. Wayyyy the heck out.
Well well well, it’s playing out exactly like I told my son it would when he moved to Phoenix two years ago. I advised to NOT buy and he heeded that advice. Good for him! Of course his buddy (also from the Bay Area orignially ) along with this guy’s mortgage broker brother, bought a home for himself in Anthem. Together they bought a couple of flipper homes. He borrowed against the equity TWICE in the last year. Bought a car & a truck, paid off credit cards AGAIN….and gee today they’re upside down. What a surprise…WTF were they thinking?? He mused to my son that he could always live in the truck if they take the house. Hope it has a camper shell.
The daughter of one of my “clients” left Marin last summer (’05) and moved to Scottsdale. Of course, she could not wait and just HAD to buy a house there. I did everything I could to stop her, sent articles, historical graphs, etc. but no dice. Crying the blues now about what she could have gotten if she’d just waited.
Some people just do not listen or don’t have the discipline to wait.
Norcal Ray posts “Some people just do not listen”
I am over 50 and I can say damm few people really listen about anything.
Sorry, I was distracted (I’m over 50 as well). Could you please repeat that? -
Alltogethernow: You can live in your car, but you can’t drive your house.
You can if it’s a mobile home. Plenty of those in AZ.
If things get really bad, you may find yourself living in your car.
Why are lender giving equity loans so soon after someone has bought a house with hardly anything down . Are the lenders stupid or what .
The lenders wanted the fees connected to the loan, I guess. The equity could have come from rapid appreciation and disappears now into depreciation.
It’s not even a seasoned loan yet to be making another loan on it so soon after a house is purchaed . You don’t even know if the person can handle the original loan taken out let alone a additional debt .The Lenders are nuts and like you said it was the fees and just sell to the secondary market because they will be the bagholder .
I chuckle every time I see the words “Queen Creek.”
A better name would be Up the Creek.
Or “Sh!t Creek”.
Or “West Hollywood Creek” -
“Although the average 30-year mortgage for third quarter 2006 was 6.2 percent (5.5 percent for a year ago), the declining home prices allowed the monthly mortgage payment for the median price, based on an 85 percent loan-to-value, to be very comparable at $1,040 versus $1,350 for a year ago. It would be $1,335 for a home in Maricopa County.”
Ah ha! That’s exactly as I expected, monthly mortgage pmts are less even at higher interest rates b/c of falling home prices. Wait ’till home prices fall further and interest rates fall too. Sweeeeeeeet!
OK, radical idea, I decided to actually do the math.
On a 30-yr fixed, 85% LTV:
Last year: $181,900 loan (85% of 214K), 5.5%: payment is $1032
This year: $169,915 loan (85% of 199.9K), 6.2%: payment is $1040
Where do they get $1335 for last year’s payment? That would assume an interest rate of 8% (.666% per month) ceteris paribus.
Killjoy
The article says they compared medians or maybe they just got the numbers wrong. However, if you add the cost of insurance and taxes into the mix plus a return on the money you saved, you might make up the $8 difference.
I predict that after this comeing storm clears out, many sea changes in the way RE is bought will be different.
This “Seller pays closing costs” are one, it is going to be hard in the future to brake buyers from this.
Anyone else see long term changes on the horizon.
Seller paying closing costs has always been around in prior real estate down cycles . When homes become more affordable and markets tick upward it tends to go back to buyer and seller paying for their own costs .
I foresee states enacting some kind of compulsory blanket financial waiver statement at/before closing (in response to lawsuits by FBs against lenders, RE agents, etc.) which must be repeated under oath by the buyer in front of the appropriate authority and basically says “I may lose any and everything because of this transaction, including but not limited to . . . ” - kind of like taking an oath in the courtroom.
Another one - buyers are going to come in (on 2nd showing) with a tape measure and notepad. There’s probably no better bargaining position that to know the exact square footage of the house better than the seller.
PINAL, the very place where your az_lender does business. The last time I made a loan on a real house (as opposed to lot-and-trailer), a brand-new 3BR/2BA cost my client $126000. That was already 2005. If the median price subsequently went over $200,000, the builders must’ve sold an awful of those McMansions to idiot specuvestors. I agree with Mo Money above who said it would take $120,000 prices to induce buyers back in.
“If you’re looking to buy real estate in the Valley, you may want to wait a year. Last year, as many as a third of new homes sales went to speculators and investors. Now, many of them are competing with builders to dump their holdings. As a result, some developments have dropped by more than $100,000.”
RE Inferno…Burn baby burn…
It’s AZ - its’s burning all year long.
Can someone please freakin explain this?: http://phoenix.craigslist.org/rfs/229017723.html
Uh, read the “fine print.”
This is a 5 Year Fixed Payment Rate of 1%
Rates, terms, and conditions may change without notice. O.A.C. - 7.50 A.P.R.
its called a buydown… points for rate… look at the apr… then the seller buys your rate down even more. these loans probably have 10 points in the deal
They said its actually a 5 year fixed at 1% . At that point you either have a due and payable loan or it changes to market rates or whatever rates they want to put in the contract . It might be a bought down loan rate for a while ,or they might be saying the payment is fixed for 5 years but not the interest .
In addition they might be inflating the price of the home to pay for the loan buy-down .
Anyway, there isn’t enough information to be able to pin-point what the loan really is . It might be someone just trying to get attention and than they give you the bad details after they get you interested . And it could be a con .
1% for the first 5 years, but you’ll likely pay above true market for the home. This is a buydown. Centex is doing this in SoCal. I’d be willing to bet the buyer barely qualifies even at the 1% rate!
Sounds like Indymac’s 5-yr fixed PAYMENT (note the ambiguity of the poster’s “payment rate”) Option ARM with the start rate bought down from the usual 2-2.5%.
Also note the “call for details” sales blurb. In salesman speak this translates to “call me and I’ll confuse the heck out of you, glossing over the fine print (negative amortization) and emphasizing your low, fixed monthly payment”.
“Last year, as many as a third of new homes sales went to speculators and investors. Now, many of them are competing with builders to dump their holdings. As a result, some developments have dropped by more than $100,000.”
The same thing is happening in Texas right now - we are seeing tons of speculators buyung everything from downtown condos to vacant lots. Most of these speculators are moving money from Nevada or Arizonia. You would think they would notice that there is an end to every good story but I guess just like the tech boom - people are doomed to get burned inspite of God given common sense.
The end of an anchor chain is referred to as the “bitter end”. Texas is just that for the equity locust crowd. Maybe we should change our license plates?
My buddy is buying in TX right now, hoping to grab some places to get more passive income. I told him that he should wait a couple of years, just to see what develops with regard to prices and even the rental market (I would think that tons of investors trying to rent out places would drive rents down or at least make it harder to find a renter).
However, he doesn’t even care about the price of his properties going down as long as he can get positive cash flow from their rent. Is this insane or am I just too naive/conservative/short-sighted etc?
I own a duplex here in Austin. I bought it several years ago before all this nonsense started. Right now, I keep getting post cards in the mail offering me huge payoffs if I sell to an out of town investor. It seems that rents in Austin are rising. We have a 95% occupancy rate. The average rent for a mid range apartment is $0.93/sq-ft. Also, land is pretty expensive and there is a lot more interest in building upscale condos (to sell to investors) than building affordable apartments. With high occupancy and not a lot of new apartments, there may be some upward pressure on rents.
However, as a cap to the rising rents is the relatively cheap housing. A starter home can be purchased for $115 to $130. And of course these days, the no money down loans make it very easy to buy a place. From what I am seeing, we have a huge amount of people buying investment property including duplexes at prices that are not going to cash flow (assuming 20% down). Who knows what the future will bring but at today’s prices / rents for duplexes, he may be better waiting. If prices go up much more - I’ll probably sell b/c I would be getting a better return in an index fund and not have to worry about repairs, runaway renters, bounced checks, etc…
Thank you for verifying what I have suspected: That even in Austin it is hard to achieve positive cashflow on an investment property even wwith 20% down.
My wife and I visited friends there a few months back and we looked at some homes. Yep, (comparatively) dirt cheap but the mass in new development was evident, all the models cookie-cutter and, from asking around, rents would be insufficient to break even.
If he has cash flow to cover all expenses and the loan is off a fixed variety for the length of the loan, then everything is great. I doubt it works out that way though.
“Bill Murdoch, an associate broker-manager at ReMax’s Queen Creek office, said the market is cooling from ‘last year’s insanity.’ He predicted that first-time buyers and investors would return to Pinal County’s resale market once the median price dips under $190,000.”
HOLY CRAP! There I was worried as all get out and now, if it gets to 190K it’ll start going back up. I feel SO MUCH BETTER NOW!!!
http://phoenix.craigslist.org/rfs/227564676.html
Here we go again…………..”threat” made by a seller unless you buy it before december he will pull it off the market and rent it…..buuha, guys I know California is bad, Florida worse, but Phoenix has to take the cake either for the ugliest houses ever built, purhcased by the “dumbest investors” mothers ever gave birth to.
Is that a fair rent ($1800)? It doesn’t look too cashflow-negative to me, “only” a few hundred a month.
That is funny, though. Oh no, I might use my $400K to buy one the hundreds of other houses for sale in the neighborhood! And BTW, if you really do have $400K you can pretty much pay that rent with the interest on it.
Well, a 1800sf 2 car without pool would go for about $1200 so it’s not unreasonable. I question the HOA fees. Hard to know the cashflow without purchase date though.
Let’s take out the old rental equation.
150 x monthly rent = home value
150 x $1,800 = $270,000
I bet he would be glad to take the first offer over $400,000 for a house that is technically worth $270,000.
The equation works. The equation is your friend. Unless you are a stuck flipper.
This McMansion does not appear to have granite counter tops. I think I’ll pass.
just found out that one of my sister-in-law has just signed a 3 yr contract for a renter to rent out her place for $2,500/month. This is somewhere in N LVegas (something Ranch). She claimed that her place is worth $700K, not sure how much she paid for 2 years ago. At least she admitted that the rental income will cover the principal and interest only. Not enough for property taxes and insurance. She couldn’t sell the place for her asking price, hence she’s renting it out. She just moved to another place near Summerlin.
I got a feeling that she took out an ARM or some sort of exotic loans. She wouldn’t divulge any more info. All she said was that she’s happy that she could rent her place out.
The tax effects of rental income and mortgage interest pretty much cancel out, so I’ll assume a mtg payment of $2500.
Assuming a 30-yr fixed around 5.5 or 5.75%, the principal would be around $430-440K. I’ll be gracious and assume a 10% down payment, which means she paid around $500K.
Her “pretend price” of 700K was probably based on last summer plus a fudge factor. This checks with paying $500K for the place in 2004.
“This is somewhere in N LVegas (something Ranch” If you know the sq. ft. of the house, or the address…and you really want to know the truth, I can do an MLS search for rentals of $2500.
David Cee
I am sure the Florida land scams of last century, had the same irrational exuberance and “hopeful” expectations.
Witness:
Old-fashioned land scams go high-tech
Nice try, but those houses will sit for a looong time because…. drum roll please….
very few buyers actually want to *live* in these AZ “investment” properties.
Exactly. See what I don’t understand is who wants to live in these horrible homes built by non-union labor, cheap ass stucco, dark boxes(very few windows) that are only distinguished by the type of a real estate sign in their front yard(remax, century 21 etc). No landscaping, no curb appeal.These homes are attrocities in “master planned” subdivisions with 30+ percent vacancy rates.
Heh - I just started getting this stuff in the mail again:
“Hurry before it’s all gone! Beautiful 35 acres in the Arizona desert, blah blah blah..”
Same pictures of sparse land in the middle of nowhere, just higher prices now. About 3 years ago these went for like 30k; now the newest advertisement I got was for 145k… same old wasteland too.
Looks like the credit crunch isn’t happening yet:
Rates on 30-year mortgages dip to lowest level in a month
But prices sure are coming down here in Tucson. Or at least they’re poised to; inventory is way up, everythings sitting, DOM are double last year.
Speaking of Tucson, here’s Arizona Slim reporting in with the latest results from Count the For Sale Signs. Earlier this week, I had an appointment near Tucson Medical Center. My route home took me past those two Sam Hughes neighborhood houses that have both been on the market for more than a year. They’re listed with their second real estate agents, and they’re still not moving. (The curious can MLS them — they’re both on Third Street at Country Club Road.)
Sam Hughes is supposedly one of those desirable areas near the University of Arizona, and it used to be one of those places that “everyone” wanted to move into. Well, folks, not so fast. In recent years, Sam Hughes has gone from mostly owner occupied to around 50% rental. That’s not a good trend.
This whole thread has made me feel much better about the large amount of paper I am still holding on Pinal County properties. The reason why I am feeling good (at least today) is that every one of the Pinal County properties on which I hold paper is actually occupied by its “owner”, at least seasonally.
This whole thread has made me feel much better about the large amount of paper I am still holding on Pinal County properties. The reason why I am feeling good (at least today) is that every one of the Pinal County properties on which I hold paper is actually occupied by its “owner”, at least seasonally.
just found out that one of my sister-in-law has just signed a 3 yr contract for a renter to rent out her place for $2,500/month.
—————————————————————————-
Yikes! Talk about being tied to the aligator! The maintenance and negative will keep eating away all the while the “investment” continues to sink in value.
“Last year’s buyers (2005) completely upside down.”
Coming soon. Either late this year or early next:
“2004 buyers completely upside down.”
Coming later in 2007:
“2003 buyers completely upside down”
Coming in late 2007 or early 2008:
“2002 buyers completely upside down”
Coming in mid-2008.”
“2001 and some 2000 buyers completely upside down”
Finally, newspaper headlines:
“Trillions of dollars lost in the biggest boom and bust in US real estate history. Government to hold hearings and bring in laws to prevent predatory lending which eventually caused massive foreclosures and bankruptcies. Senator Bull*hit Artist said, “We cannot allow this to happen again. We in government are going to work hard to protect the american people and find a way forward. Personally, I am going to break of any ties I had to the NAR.”
Kind of OT. We’ve been tracking Kingman Arizona via Realtor.com for over a year. We use the site mainly because no realtors will/or are able to send us listings and we aren’t really interested in buying until/if the prices come down considerably. Until recently Mohave county listings came from 3 MLS groups, Kingman, Bullhead City and Lake Havasu. They decided to combine all three into one MLS and did this about 10 days ago. Still no new listings on realtor.com and their public MLS is shut down, so I started looking around the internet to see if the listings were available anywhere. I came across the blog of the Kingman MLS president and found the answer. Apparently they now consider the listings confidential and may not allow uploads to realtor.com or any other public service. Since it is a new group, they have no existing contract with realtor.com. They are also trying to figure out how to prevent companies like Zillow from stripping out the data without permission. They are not the only MLS doing this. I found that the nwmls which serves WA and OR has not renewed their contract with realtor.com to pull their feed, which expires in the spring. http://tinyurl.com/yjjfo2 Poking around the RE blogs of realtors, I found that several want their MLS to do the same.
Kingman - home to Timothy McVeigh’s “bomb testing range”.
Wow - that’s very interesting - the realtors are starting to realize that the internet is undercutting their whole reason for being. So, to cut off their nose to spite their face, they are essentially saying, “If we can’t get money for it (showing listings on-line), we just won’t show it at all!”
I just don’t see how this is going to help with sales AT ALL. Goes in the face of every single proven theory on sales & marketing. But then again, this genius plan was dreamed up by a bunch of realtors. So we shouldn’t be surprised by it.
In the case of Tempe, they really arent building any more land! Plenty of new condos being built..if you want a nice view of the 202 and the Tempe Town “Lake”. As an ASU Grad student, I look forward to when I can actually buy a home in the Valley (although not in Tempe, Maricopa, Suprise, Cornville)
I would also expect to see a lot of land scams from New Mexico. Lots of desert land here in the middle of nowhere (much of it is reservation land for the native Americans). Apparently a big one was done in the Rio Rancho area (just north of Albuquerque and between Santa Fe) in the 1950’s that over the last few years people have been seeking those buyers from years ago to get land that is now actually worth something since it is the growing area in NM.
I made an offer of $500K to that Phoenix flipper for his $400K (in fantasy land only) house. $5 down and $499, 995 in 60 years (my daughter can pay it since I assume I won’t be here then). LOL
We have also been tracking the Kingman area-thinking about moving there instead of Vegas-
I still seem to be able to access tons of listings thru realtor.com-been watching the prices come
down-about another 20% and I think we’ll buy:):)
The original listings are still there. No new ones have been added for at least 10 days. The prices are coming down, but are still 2-3 times what they were 2 years ago. The smaller new homes are the ones coming down. Larger houses in the more upscale areas are still way overpriced and new listings seem to come on at higher and higher prices. Houses that were about 65. a square foot are 150. and more. One area where we had looked 3 years ago, houses on 1+ acre lots sold for about $85. a square foot including land. A house just came on the market in that area for 298. a square foot. Lots that sold for 30,000 have sold this last year for 250,000. We’re waiting for about 30%, I think they will eventually drop up to 50%. Nearly all the sales this past year and a half have been to out of state speculators.
Well if you find out some other way to access
the Mohave Valley mls I sure would like to know-didn’t realize all the stuff I was looking out was not any new listings. Sometimes I go to the newspaper there and see what is in
there in the way of houses. It’s the Kingman Daily Miner
The realtors better look out because if they pee away their one good asset which is the mls as a universal resource, that opens up the field a lot more for discounters and other websites to build competing databases, and then there goes their beloved 6% standard. What do you think, Google with their own deep pockets or Zillow or another startup to the rescue? If they try to stop others from listing the info on a competing web site I’d think that’d cause some serious antitrust concerns.