Bloodhound Realty

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Channel 15 News: “Arizona real estate being snapped up by Canadian buyers?”

Further notice on Canadian real estate investors buying real property in Metropolitan Phoenix, this time from Channel 15, ABC-TV News in Phoenix:

Got Loonies? Barrack Obama is the best American president Canadian real estate investors have ever seen!

The Canadian Loonie is trading at parity with the once-robust American dollar.

If you’re a Canadian real estate investor interested in buying rental homes in Metropolitan Phoenix, it would be hard to pick a better time to make your move.

Depending on your point of view, the Barrack Obama administration has been either great or lousy for Americans. But there is no doubt that Obamas’s “creative” management of the American economy has been a huge benefit to Canadians and other foreign investors.

Even if you’re buying with dollars, don’t let that stop you. Bargains abound, and the prospects for the greater Phoenix real estate market are sunny — not to pun. I shop every day for premium value in potential rental homes in the Phoenix metropolitan area. If you would like to explore your opportunities, shoot me an email or give me a call at 602-740-7531.

Rental home investment possibility in Goodyear, Arizona: 15246 West Jefferson Street, Goodyear, AZ 85338

It’s offered as a short sale, but, for now, lender-owned homes are a tough get: Too much competition from first-time home-buyers looking for that $8,000 tax credit.

Nice overall, a lot of tile but needs some carpet, paint can just be touched up in many places, some new paint needed, needs landscaping. No range, no fridge.

For more details, click here.

BloodhoundRealty.com’s Greg Swann and Canadian real estate investor Bill Chipman featured today on an NPR Radio story on Phoenix rental-home investing for buyers from Canada.

Click on the embedded audio player below or read the story on-line. Reporter Peter O’Dowd — a genuine born-here Phoenician and a Brophy Prep alum — spent about four hours, total, with Bill Chipman and me, an amazing commitment of effort. And that photo above? That’s what paradise looks like. We have plenty to go around…

More potential rental homes in Avondale, Arizona

I look at homes in the Phoenix area for investors several times a week. Here are four I saw yesterday:

The home on Granada is sweet. I don’t love lakefront lots for rental homes, but this is truly a premium spot on the globe. The house could command a premium rent, and it should do well on resale. For what it’s worth, it would make an excellent residence.

The homes on Fairmount and on Lincoln are both excellent values at their list prices.

I’m shopping for premium value in potential rental homes in the Phoenix metropolitan area. If you would like to purchase one of these homes — or one like it — shoot me an email or give me a call at 602-740-7531.

The economic policies of the U.S. government could not be better — for Canadians buying real estate in Phoenix, that is…

Are you a Canadian thinking about buying residential real estate in metropolitan Phoenix? You and everybody else. Prices are low, the weather is incomparable — and the Canadian dollar — the Loonie — is trading at very favorable rates against the U.S. dollar. Canadian home buyers can take a 60% discount off our peak prices, plus an additional 15% discount on the exchange rate. There’s just something about buying a rental or getaway home for 75% off that’s hard to beat.

I tend to write a lot about rental home investing, but opportunities for all sorts of Canadian buyers abound in Phoenix right now. For example, here is a search of single-family homes in tony Paradise Valley. And here is every golf course home currently available in Scottsdale. If anything, prices on higher-end homes are even lower than they are for cheaper properties. And mortgages for Canadian home buyers are easier to obtain than they have been for years.

The truth is, it’s a perfect storm for all buyers in the greater Phoenix market right now. There are plenty of great homes available at bargain-basement prices. Interest rates are hovering at historic lows. And the house-hunting weather could not be more perfect. But Canadian buyers have all those advantages plus a very favorable currency exchange rate. If you’d like to explore your options, you can start by searching for your ideal home in Phoenix or Scottsdale. When you’re ready to find out more, send me an email or phone me at 602-740-7531.

You may never see a convergence of events like this again. We’re ready to jump when you are.

Rental home possibilities in Avondale, Arizona

I look at homes in the Phoenix area for investors several times a week. Here are four I liked today:

I’m shopping for premium value in potential rental homes in the Phoenix metropolitan area. If you would like to purchase one of these homes — or one like it — shoot me an email or give me a call at 602-740-7531.

We can’t undo what happened yesterday in Haiti, but we can do what we can to make tomorrow better. Here’s how you can help.

Tom Vanderwell, who writes with us at BloodhoundBlog, our national real estate industry weblog, adopted two of his children from Haiti. He has long been involved with the orphanage there, even setting up their weblog: God’s Littlest Angels in Haiti.

Since yesterday’s earthquake, Tom has been working continuously with the orphanage’s staff, both to make sure they have what they need right now and to help them prepare for what seems likely to be a surge in orphaned children.

No doubt there are a lot of people appealing for your help right now, but Tom’s efforts could produce the most immediate and yet also the most lasting impact.

Read his post about the Haitian relief effort at BloodhoundBlog. And then, if you can, push the PayPal button at the bottom of that post to make a contribution.

There’s so little we can do, really, at times like this. But that little bit we can do can make a big difference to people who have lost everything — maybe even their parents.

Are the uninformed chatterboxes in your area insisting that the real estate market has recovered? You may want to defer the celebration. Even so, this could be the golden moment for investors in Phoenix.

I’ve known for six months or more that there was a sweet spot on the horizon for investors and other highly-solvent buyers in the Phoenix real estate market. That event was delayed by the first-time home-buyer’s tax credit. Today’s news about declines in the number of pending purchase contracts is a symptom of the market returning to an unstimulated level of demand. I watched the dropoff reflected in today’s news as it happened last fall. Lenders cut off new applications for first-timers and, just like that, price pressure eased, available inventories started to rise and it came to be a lot easier to get a house under contract.

We’re all waiting for the other shoe — the shadow inventory — to drop, but the supply of the homes I want most for my investors has almost doubled since mid-October, from around 350 units then to just over 600 today.

Here’s even better news for buyers (not for banks): Prices are going down.

This is the Cliff’s Notes for the last four months, as reflected in the BloodhoundRealty.com Market Basket of Homes:

September: +3.15%
October: +2.14%
November: +2.22%
December: -8.03%

That’s a huge drop for December — giving back almost everything we’ve gained since April, 2009. But, interestingly enough, the ratio of sales price to list price was positive. In other words, there is still competition for listed homes, but list prices are dropping.

I don’t know how it is where you live, but this is the perfect storm for investors in Metropolitan Phoenix. The homes are in much better condition than they were this time last year, and the prices are at hovering just above the 2009 low.

Are we at the bottom? Feels like it — but we’re going to be here for a while. Positive cash flow is easy, but cash flow is all there is right now. If you’re not a buy-and-hold investor, Phoenix is not for you. I’m sure that’s true in most rental markets.

But if you’re thinking of buying a rental home anywhere in Greater Phoenix, reflect on this: This could be the coldest winter in 25 years. Whether they can afford to or not, people in the snowy states are going to move. When they do, they’re going to need a place to live.

Give me a call at 602-740-7531 and let’s talk about how you can ride the Phoenix real estate thunderbird as it rises anew from the ashes and soars its way back into the cloudless skies.

Why are lender-owned homes so much easier to buy than short sales?

An extended answer to a question from a buyer client, the short film linked below goes into the in-house procedures that result in the observed effect: Lender-owned homes are much easier to get under contract and to get through the closing process than are short sales.

We also talk a bit about strategy, particularly for mortgage-financed transactions.

Click on the link below to watch the video.

A look back at the last decade in real estate, what I got right, what I got wrong — and where things go from here

My friend Andrew Breese asked me to go through my own history, in light of both the real estate boom and the bust, detailing where I was wrong and where I was right.

Very big job, and it would be a long essay to write, so I’ve elected to go through it in video instead.

Click on the graphic below to watch the video.

What matters most in rental home investing in the Phoenix area? Everything!

I represented tenants for my first two years as a real estate licensee. I walked into — and walked right out of — hundreds of homes that were amazingly inappropriate candidates for tenancy.

Horrible locations, with no access to jobs, schools, shopping, entertainment, transportation.

Still worse, horrible homes, dingy, run-down testaments to the perils of deferred maintenance.

And still worse, many of these homes would be filthy — stained carpets, smudged walls, debris everywhere. In many cases, the carpets had not even been vacuumed, and often the back yards were shoulder-high jungles of weeds.

Would you want to live in a place like that?

Why would you expect that a tenant would?

Here’s a better question: What kind of tenant, do you suppose, would settle for a rental home like that?

Landlords can be penny-wise and pound-foolish. They will buy a dump of a property because it’s cheap, convinced that their salvation will be low rents. But bad properties attract bad tenants — by repelling all of the good tenants.

The wrong rental property is the worst kind of real estate investment: It will rent slowly, with long vacancies between tenants. And the tenants the landlord will be forced by circumstance into accepting may be slow-pay, no-pay eviction candidates who may do damage or steal the appliances on the way out. And, of course, because the house is repellant, it will attract nothing but low-ball offers on resale.

But take heart. There is a better way of doing things.

First, what you want is the right location — a built-out suburb with its own job base, with schools and shopping and entertainment already in place. And don’t buy a dump. Nobody wants to live in a dump. The house you’re looking for should be appealing to tenants, but also to owner-occupants. Why? Because owner-occupants will pay more than investors when it’s time to sell.

But even then we’re not done. We’ve got the right house in the right location, but we also need to refurbish the home to turn-key condition. Why is that? Because tenants — especially premium tenants — have choices. We want for our home to be first on their list of candidates, when they go out shopping. That way, you will have your choice of top-quality applicants: Good jobs, good income, good credit, good payment histories, good real estate references.

A home like this will rent quickly, will stay rented, and — if you continue to maintain it in turn-key condition — will suffer little vacancy between tenants. Moreover, your tenants will treat your home as if it were their own, so your costs between tenants will be lower. And because we chose the property with resale value in mind, it should sell quickly and at a premium price, ideally to owner-occupants.

This is a sound business strategy. Your objective is to make money. This is the way to make money in the suburban-Phoenix rental housing market.

I’ve written a guide on how to make money by investing in rental homes in Metropolitan Phoenix. It covers these issues in more detail, with a video explaining my thoughts on home selection. There are also before and after photos of a real rental home, to illustrate what I think is necessary to make a property appealing to premium tenants.

If you want to discuss Phoenix-area rental home investment in more detail, you can phone me at 602-740-7531 or just shoot me an email.

Being a landlord is not easy, and very often it is decidedly not fun. But it is potentially very lucrative — if you go at it the right way.