Sun City real estate - sell, buy, invest, relocate

Category: Buying Your Home (page 2 of 3)

Timing the bottom of the market? For home-buyers, the trade-off may be a lower interest rate now versus a lower purchase price later

I won’t be able to rely on the numbers for another few days, but March will turn out to have been a very busy month. Volume of sales will be up substantially over February, and April promises to be even stronger.

The bad news? Prices were down again in March, and I’ll bet April will also be a down month.

The good news? Mortgage interest rates are at historic lows.

The worse news? The foreclosure pipeline is still very full, and 10,000 more homes are being lined up at the entry point.

And that’s the trade-off confronting owner-occupant home-buyers. We’re looking at two more years of foreclosures, which argues that prices will continue to decline, at least for a while. But it’s hard to imagine interest rates going much lower — or staying this low.

About half of those newly-foreclosed properties will end up as lender-owned resale homes, hitting the market in 60-90 days. FannieMae and FreddieMac had a moratorium on foreclosures in the fourth quarter of 2008, so some of these new foreclosures will reflect that delay. Even so, there are plenty of other troubled mortgages still to hit the pipeline.

I see two issues that matter:

  1. Will new foreclosures come onto the market more quickly or more slowly than they are coming off? Right now, overall inventories are declining, which argues that sometime soon prices will stabilize or even increase.
  2. But do we have enough heads for the bedrooms? We’re overbuilt, and if we don’t have enough people to put into these homes, we could see an echo bust as inventory newly absorbed by investors sits vacant.

We know in the long run we will recover, but we don’t know where the long run is. The question for owner-occupant buyers is the one addressed above: Will you save more by paying a higher purchase price now, at a lower interest rate? Or are you better off waiting for better prices, even if you end up paying a higher interest rate?

Is it possible that the home of your dreams could be selling for $10,000 less three months from now? Yes. Is it also possible that, three months from now, interest rates will be high enough that you won’t be able to qualify for that home, even at the lower price? Sadly, yes.

These are all questions for a lender, so let me know if you want me to put you in touch with one.

Phoenix real estate bargain of the day: “I’m looking for a decent home in the Phoenix area that I can buy as a rental for now, but then use later as a getaway home — or maybe even retire to.”

I hear the request in the headline about twice a month. It’s a doable proposition, and it all really depends on price. Spend enough and you can have golf. Spend more and you can have gated golf. Spend way too much and you can have gated golf on the side of a mountain.

This house, in Ryland at Heritage Point in Tolleson, is the bargain-priced expression of that ideal. No gates, no golf, no mountains, but a nice-sized three-bedroom home with a pool in a near-in suburb of Phoenix.

For the record, I don’t love pools for rental homes. If you’re going to have one, then you simply must carry a liability rider while you’re housing tenants.

Beyond that, this house has a lot going for it. Bedroom number two has a closet, but it doubles as a den, a very practical configuration. The landscaping needs attention, but it was decent to begin with, so it should come back fairly easily. The pool was built by Paddock Pools, a reputable company.

We need appliances, along with flooring and paint, but the home is in pretty good shape overall.

The home is listed at $87,900, which is pretty aggressive. I might start at $80,000 and see who salutes. With $5,000 to whip it into shape, it could be rent-ready (or move-in-ready) for $85,000. It should be able to command $950 a month in rent, maybe even $1,000, very comfortably cash-flow positive.

And then, someday, you can lay on your back on your air mattress in your own backyard pool, watching the silent progress of the jets taking flight from Skyharbor Airport. There’s a beer or a margarita somewhere in this scene, but you’ll have to paddle over to the cool-deck to find it.

In the mean time, email me or phone me at 602-740-7531 and let’s go take a closer look at this property…

Real estate bargain of the day: The Lavendar floorplan at Coldwater Springs could be yours for $90,000…

I’ll make it back to Coldwater Springs sometime soon, but, for now, this house is making me crazy. I’ve been following it for six months, and, despite a very sweet pricing history, it just won’t move.

What’s this property’s Achilles’ Heel? It’s missing its dishwasher, and I think the lack of a $600 item is sending buyers elsewhere.

If you can make a mental leap, you’re in for a nice bargain. The home faces south, and you’re just steps away from the Coldwater Springs Golf Course. There’s ample shopping nearby, and the public school is right in the middle of the subdivision. Kids can walk or ride their bikes to school without ever crossing a busy street.

As a starting bid, I like this home at $85,000. It has competition at $88,5000, but the recent low sale in the Lavendar floorplan was $105,000. The all time high for a Lavendar without a pool was $267,107.

You’re looking at around $5,000 after closing to whip it into shape — dishwasher, range, refrigerator, carpet, paint, landscaping and touch-ups.

How will it rent? It should go for $950 a month, comfortably, throwing off around $7,200 a year in before-tax cash-flow.

This is a smokin’ deal in an Avondale neighborhood that should be a pace-setter, once the real estate market starts to recover.

If you want to give it a closer look, email me or phone me at 602-740-7531.

Not home yet? Not to worry. We’ll talk about another great deal tomorrow.

Phoenix real estate bargain of the day: Sweet suburban homes with a community pool. Schools, shopping and jobs nearby, with easy access to Phoenix and the West Valley — all for $60,000 — or less…

These houses are making me crazy. The Phoenix real estate market is awash in incredible bargains. I’m going to start writing about them until they’re sold.

Here’s the way it is: Decent-quality homes are for sale for fire-sale prices. Interest rates are at all time lows. Whether you’re buying a home for your family or a rental home — perhaps to produce income now and serve as a retirement home later — opportunities abound.

Today’s bargain is actually four bargains, four homes in the same floor plan in the Ryland at Heritage Point subdivision in Tolleson, Arizona.

If you follow that link, you’ll find photos on eleven houses, but today we’re just going to talk about the four that are selling for the lowest prices.

The photos I’m showing you are “warts and all” pictures. These are lender-owned homes, and all of them will need some work before they are move-in- or rent-ready. But, as you’ll see, most of them won’t need much work, and we can help arrange for contractors and handymen to get these minor jobs done — quickly and economically.

So let’s take a look at our four houses. Tolleson is a near-in suburb of Phoenix, and Ryland at Heritage Point is the jewel in its crown. There is a community pool and ample green belts, some with playgrounds. There is great shopping nearby, and freeway access could not be easier. You’re in the heart of the West Valley warehouse zone, so there are lots of good-paying jobs in the immediate area. In short, this is a nice place to live and a profitable place to own rental homes.

8330 West Hughes Drive Tolleson AZ 85353

This house is in decent shape overall. Alas, the air conditioner compressor will probably need to be replaced. The most recent sale in these units is $55,000, so $50,000 would be a fair offer on this home. You should figure your net entry cost at around $60,000, although it could be less.

2612 South 84th Glen Tolleson AZ 85353

This house is better than it looks right now. The lister promises to do something about the front-yard landscaping, and the rest of the house is not in awful shape. The carpet needs to go, and the house faces east — which means the back of the house will get very hot on summer afternoons. I like it at $52,000 to start.

2620 South 84th Glen Tolleson AZ 85353

Not awful, but it faces east, and there is a lot of bad decorating to be undone. I like it at $50,000 as a starting offer.

8433 West Preston Lane Tolleson AZ 85353

I see this one as a reject, but you might see it as a challenge — and a bargain. The kitchen has been gutted, down to the walls and plumbing. The water heater is gone and the AC compressor is damaged. It’s going to take $15,000 – $20,000 to whip this house into shape, so I think $35,000 is a fair place to start negotiations.

Why not lower on all these? Because the list prices on these homes are already so low that you will have competition in bidding on them. But each one can be made turn-key livable for about $60,000, gross, and this exact floorplan in this subdivision has sold as high as $237,000 in the past. They’ll rent for around $850 a month, so they’ll be cash-flow positive from the first tenant.

These are smokin’ deals. If you want to jump, email me or phone me at 602-740-7531 and we’ll get cracking.

Are these homes not for you? Fear not. I have thousands more available. We’ll talk about another great deal tomorrow.

Are you thinking of buying a home in metropolitan Phoenix? Here’s some good news: FHA loan limits are back up to $346,250

Until this week, if you were shopping for a home in greater Phoenix, if the price got too near $300,000 you were stuck going for a convention loan — 5% or even 10% down, with monthly private mortgage insurance payments.

But as of this week, the limit for FHA loans in metropolitan Phoenix has been bumped back up to $346,250. With 3.5% down, you’re shopping in the $350,000 to $375,000 range, with a purchase price coming in at $358,000 or lower.

And you can buy a whole lot of very wonderful house for $358,000 right now. I just looked. There are 417 homes in that price range within 20 miles of Downtown Phoenix — not counting short sales and lender-owned homes.

For buyers who have been sitting on the sidelines, great homes at all prices ranges are available in abundance. But if you can find a home you can love beneath that FHA limit, you can get a ton of house for just 3.5% down.

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The bottom of the Phoenix real estate market may be in sight — but, alas, the end is not near

This is from my Arizona Republic column (permanent link):

When will the Phoenix real estate market finally hit bottom?

Believe it or not, I can answer that question with a high degree of precision: When the number of homes being added to the available inventory each month is generally lower than the number of homes sold each month.

But that’s a sleight of hand, isn’t it? I can’t say which month on the calendar will be the market’s nadir, I can only tell you what kind of market activity to watch for.

So here’s one way of looking at things. A newer suburban tract home in the West Valley is selling for $100 a square foot, on average. Practically speaking, this makes new home building unprofitable. Very few new homes will be built, so that source of new inventory is cut off for now.

Meanwhile, various loan workout programs are depleting the foreclosure pipeline. Where before a house might be offered as a short sale and then as a lender-owned home, now there will be an interregnum for the workout. What had been a gusher of lender-owed homes may slow down to a trickle, at least for the next few years.

Meanwhile, the low prices of currently available lender-owned homes are providing incentives for monied investors to come to Phoenix to snap up bargains. The nationwide economic slowdown might put the brakes on our normal in-migration patterns, but if people do move here, they’re going to be soaking up inventory as well.

So we should see some slowing in newly-listed homes, and we have upticks in demand. Are these enough to stop the general decline in home values in the Phoenix market? Ask me in three months.

But even if they are, we’re very far from being out of trouble. The loan workouts, particularly, may well keep home prices from plummeting. But because they will stretch out what in most cases will be an unavoidable foreclosure process, they will probably keep home prices low for years to come.

Buy and hold? No problem. Profit on resale? Don’t bet on it, not for a while.

Foreclosure homes are sold “as-is” — but most need only minor restoration to bring them back to fully-livable condition

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
Foreclosure homes are sold “as-is” — but most need only minor restoration to bring them back to fully-livable condition

If we were to have a contest for the Valley’s most-gutted home, judging might take a while.

A significant number of homes for sale in the Phoenix area, especially at the low end of the price spectrum, are in the foreclosure process. Not all of these homes are in rough shape, but a lot of them are. At a minimum, buyers of short-sale or lender-owned homes should anticipate painting the walls and replacing the carpets.

But virtually all foreclosure homes will be sold “as-is.” This means, first, that any defects discovered in the inspection process will be the buyer’s responsibility to repair after close of escrow. But the “as-is” addendum also often implies that there may be serious deferred-maintenance issues.

Still worse, many lender-owned homes will have been looted, either by the former owners on their way out or by burglars. Missing ranges, microwave ovens and dishwashers are common. Air-conditioner compressors and hot-water heaters are also absent from many homes. It is not uncommon to see that all of the ceiling fans or all of the knobs on drawers and cabinets have been removed.

My pick for the most-gutted Valley home? The entire kitchen was gone — even the kitchen sink — and the air-handler had been removed from the attic.

I would not want to refurbish that last home, since there is no telling what else has been taken. But for most lender-owned properties, the cost of bringing the home back to livable condition is fairly low.

A new set of kitchen appliances is maybe $2,500. A brand new air-conditioner compressor is around $4,000. A decent water heater is perhaps $1,200 installed. Paint, carpet and tile in the high-traffic areas should run $5,000 for a typical suburban home, less if you do the work yourself.

There definitely are homes to avoid in this market, but there are many, many others that are selling for very low prices. These properties need only very minor restoration efforts to bring them back to fully-livable condition.

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This just might be the optimal time to buy a home in Phoenix

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
This just might be the optimal time to buy a home in Phoenix

Who should be buying residential real estate in Phoenix right now?

If you have been planning to buy a home sometime soon, and if you know for certain that you won’t need to sell it for at least five years, this just might be your magic moment.

Interest rates are still deliciously low, but both current events and long term trends suggest they’re headed higher. You’ll probably have to sell your current home for less than you wanted to, but you’ll be buying your next home at a bargain-basement price.

Sadly, you may not have enough equity in your home to move up. But if you do, there are some amazing homes out there selling for unheard-of prices. Houses that sold for $375,000 in 2005 are going for $175,000 three years later.

If you do have substantial equity in your home, even at today’s prices, moving up now may make a lot of sense. The rules for the capital gains exclusion on primary homes change on January 1st. If you’ve been in your home for more than the last 24 months but fewer than the last 60 months, moving before the end of the year could save you a significant amount of money on your taxes.

It makes sense to me for college students and their parents to snap up condominiums and starter-homes while prices are so low. After the start of the year, if the student holds title, it will take five years to realize the full benefit of the capital gains exclusion — approximately the length of a college career.

First-time home-buyers are taking advantage of this market, as well, with low-down-payment or even nothing-down government-sponsored loans.

Who else should be buying? Investors, of course, but the smart ones have already figured that out. For now, it’s very easy to acquire a premium home in a commuter-friendly suburb that will be cash-flow positive from the first tenant. Investor loans can be hard to obtain, but prices are so low that many investors are simply paying cash.

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August was a great month for real estate sales, but when 40% of buyers are pushed off the playing field, home prices could plummet

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
August was a great month for real estate sales, but when 40% of buyers are pushed off the playing field, home prices could plummet

We won’t have reliable numbers for a few days,* but preliminary results leave no doubt that August was a huge month for real estate sales in the Valley of the Sun. Not for prices, alas, which continued to slide by around 1.5% last month. But, of the bread-and-butter suburban tract homes we track, around 200 will have sold, a two-year high.

September promises to be a banner month also, with nearly 280 homes currently under contract. Not all of those homes will make it through the escrow process, but most of them will.

What accounts for all this activity? The single greatest factor is seller-paid down-payment assistance programs like AmeriDream and Nehemiah. An FHA loan requires a 3% down-payment, and these grant programs permit the seller to fund the grant, along with up to 3% more for closing costs. The upshot is that buyers can take possession of the home for “nothing down.”

In recent months, down-payment assistance programs have accounted for as much as 40% of sales of resale homes, and as much as 90% of new-build sales.

Here’s the catch: Under the mortgage relief act recently signed into law, seller-paid down-payment assistance will be forbidden. The restriction takes effect on October 1st, but most lenders have already closed the window on new AmeriDream and Nehemiah loans.

It’s possible these programs will be reinstated by future legislation, but, even if they are not, it’s not the end of the world. It’s no great challenge to find a decent starter home for $100,000. And if buyers cannot manage to save up $3,000 for a down-payment ($3,500 after October 1st), acquiring a huge new debt may not be the best solution to their financial problems.

But the short-run prognosis seems pretty obvious: When 40% of resale buyers are forced onto the sidelines, the downward pressure on prices should accelerate.

The bottom line: If you’re prepared to buy a house in the Phoenix area, either as your residence or as an investment, prices could be very attractive.

 
*Final results for August 2008 are reported in the BloodhoundRealty.com Market Basket of Homes.

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Amazing bargains abound in the Phoenix-area real estate market — and here’s a web site full of photos to prove it

I wrote last week about the incredible bargains to be had in the Phoenix resale real estate market. Dumpy homes in bad neighborhoods are very, very cheap, but there are so many Short Sales and Lender-Owned homes on the market right now that you can buy choice homes in choice neighborhoods for amazingly low prices.

If the run-up in prices in 2005 was caused by “irrational exuberance,” then our current market is driven by “irrational despondency.” The question for people who are not irrational is this one: How low can these prices go?

I’ve been shopping for a getaway-home for an out-of-state buyer. I’ve built a web site to show off some of the homes I’ve been previewing. The winner so far? A newer three bedroom, two bath home with a pool — on a golf course — with custom tile mosaics — for $110,000.

It’s a sad thing for the folks who lost these homes — and their lenders are no doubt shedding salty tears, too. But if you have the means to buy a home in the Metropolitan Phoenix area right now, you can get incredible values for your money.

You can visit the web site or just click on one of these links to see these homes:

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Musical chairs: You can buy a home on leased land for a bargain price, but you must be prepared to sell before the music stops

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
Musical chairs: You can buy a home on leased land for a bargain price, but you must be prepared to sell before the music stops

We’re preparing to list a condominium that sits on leased land. Land leases aren’t common in the Phoenix area, but they do exist.

The most common way to own real property in the Valley is in fee simple: You own the land and all the structures on it, plus any mineral, water and air rights that haven’t been alienated by legislation or previous sale.

A very distant second way of owning property is the condominium plat: You own the airspace described by your interior walls, and you and all of your neighbors own the land and structures in common. Most often you will also own the air conditioner, and possibly also the roof. These are expensive to replace, so crafty developers and their HOAs socialize the risk to you.

We have a few co-ops in the Phoenix area, but very few. In a cooperative, you and all of your neighbors own the land and the structures in common, and you have a right to occupy your living space.

In a land lease, the structures can be owned in any one of these three ways — by individuals, by a condominium HOA or by a cooperative corporation. The important difference is that the land is owned by a landlord, and the landlord will be taking that land back someday.

What happens to the structures? They revert to the landlord’s ownership, and the former owners of those structures are left owning nothing.

In essence, it’s a game of musical chairs. The structures on the leasehold pass from owner to owner, but, when the music stops, no one then on that land has a place to sit. This tends to depress property values on leased land.

But land leases are written for very long terms, and a lot can happen in that time. If the landlord gets a huge offer for the land, the people who own the structures could get bought out early at a huge premium.

In the mean time, in exchange for taking the downstream risk of a depressed resale price, buyers can purchase a home for a bargain price.

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The challenge for Realtors and lenders in the future: How do you sell to consumers who don’t want to be sold?

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). The lender in the story? Brian Brady, America’s #1 Mortgage Broker.

 
The challenge for Realtors and lenders in the future: How do you sell to consumers who don’t want to be sold?

We represented a cute couple in the purchase of their first home late last year. That much is not news: First time home-buyers are the bread and butter of the real estate business. What was interesting to me was how internet-focused they were.

The husband, Michael, is an internet adept, but his wife, Danielle, is a true wizard. Her primary interface to the commercial world is the world wide web.

They found me on the internet, of course, and I referred them to a lender that I know through the nets.

Consider this: There are 30,000 Realtors in Phoenix, and at least that many lenders. All of them are advertising at a furious pace — newspapers, real estate magazines, supermarket shopping carts, bus benches, billboards, radio, TV — plus balloons, free pens and scratch pads and coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, flower seeds, recipe cards and Halloween pumpkins.

Real estate professionals spent millions of dollars trying to get Michael and Danielle’s attention, and all of that money was wasted. They are not paying attention to advertising.

To the contrary, if Danielle cannot completely research a product or service on-line, she won’t have anything to do with it. They never once went into the home they were buying without a digital camera. I watched Danielle crane around in impossible contortions so she could read and write down the model and serial numbers from the washer and dryer so she could research them on-line.

Looking forward, nothing changes as fast as we expect it to. But looking backward, the world seems always to be changing like dreams. Danielle is immune to advertising. She recycles her junk mail unread. She doesn’t want to be pitched, she doesn’t want to be sold, she doesn’t want to be wheedled or needled or cajoled. She doesn’t want to be closed on.

All those old school gimmicks still work — on some people — and they will continue to work — for a while. But Danielle is the future of real estate marketing. Realtors and lenders are going to have to learn to sell to consumers like her.

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Looking for a bargain in Phoenix real estate? Add some elbow grease to your money and go for a bank-owned home

This is from my Arizona Republic column (permanent link):

In the past we’ve talked about how home sellers can command a premium price in the current Phoenix real estate market, even if they are competing with nearby foreclosure properties, by putting the home into turn-key condition.

So what’s the counter-strategy? If you’re a buyer looking for the best possible price, what should you do?

Go for the bank-owned homes, of course. Trying to buy a short sale can be heart-rending. The price listed in the MLS will be meaningless. The lender will decide what price to allow. Still worse, lenders drag their feet on short sales. If they have any hope of keeping the loan alive, they won’t let the house go. Meanwhile, your own interest rate could be spiking, rendering you unqualified for the deal if and when it finally comes through.

By contrast, bank-owned homes (you might hear them called REOs, for “real estate owned”) can race through the escrow process. Once a bank has foreclosed on a home, all it wants is to get it off its books and recover whatever cash it can, as quickly as it can. In consequence, your offer might be approved in just a couple of days, with the bank rushing the closing date any way it can.

Because of that, your loan qualification matters a lot. If you look shaky to the bank, it might pick a lower offer from a stronger borrower just to be assured of getting whatever money it can out of the deal.

And then there is the condition of the home. People  losing their homes sometimes let the daily maintenance slide. Expect to see filthy carpets, scuffed-up paint, damaged doors. The air conditioner might have been removed and sold, or the water heater — or even the kitchen sink.

In most cases, the bargain price you get for the home is going to be offset somewhat by the money you will have to put into it. But if you are handy and industrious, the profit on these expenses can be two dollars or more in value for every dollar you spend.

A thoughtful reminder to the home-schooling parents of California: Arizona is the most home-schooling-friendly state in the west, our homes are affordable, our weather is delightful and our state government pretty much minds its own business

Unbelievably, home-schooling has been outlawed in California. We would love it if California home-schoolers were to call us for help in relocating to Arizona. But however you get here — get here. You have a right to school your own — and Arizona knows it.

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Choosing second-best could get you the best possible home

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
Choosing second-best could get you the best possible home

Last week we talked about how, even with so many unsold properties, multiple buyers can somehow land simultaneously on the one property on the market that approaches perfection.

This is perfectly natural human behavior, if you think about it. Who hasn’t thumped a melon? Who hasn’t reached into the back of the cooler for the fresher milk? Who buys the brown ground beef when there’s redder meat available. We were not just born to shop, we will perish if we don’t learn to shop wisely and well.

It’s no different for houses. You have a certain amount of money available, and a certain selection available to you for that money. It’s completely natural that you would shop until you find the home that is far and away better than your other choices.

And it’s perfectly natural that other buyers would come to the same evaluation of the available inventory. They wold have bought the same melon as you, except you got there first.

But there’s still an important difference. A good melon is as good as it’s going to get, and a bad melon cannot get better. But a house can almost always be improved.

Here’s a melon-improvement strategy for financially-savvy home shoppers.

That home you fell in love with is almost certainly a production home — a tract home. Yes, it’s in great shape, and it’s staged to perfection. But guess what? There are three more almost exactly like it for sale on the same street. They’re not as clean, not as nicely-decorated, not as well-marketed — but that works to your advantage.

The difference between your dream home and what looks to you like a bad melon is really just a matter of money. If you put that money into the bad melon, it will be as good or better than your dream home.

So, rather than competing for the best house and paying top dollar, you can use it as leverage to get a lower price and seller concessions on a home that could be even more ideal for you — after you do a little work.

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