Category: Real Estate (page 251 of 266)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There’s a charming story in today’s Republic about the push to designate a small subdivision of tract homes in Scottsdale as an historic district:

With roomy kitchens and big kid-friendly yards, the homes were built during Scottsdale’s boom. Soldiers were returning home from World War II and Motorola came to town. People needed a place to live.

“Everybody around here worked for Motorola,” said Darlene Petersen, 76, a longtime community activist.

Forty-seven years ago, she and her late husband moved from Davenport, Iowa, into their home on Wilshire Drive near 73rd Street. She was a registered nurse. He was a printer displaced by a strike.

They both found jobs in the boomtown. Darlene spent more than 30 years as an operating room nurse, and her husband got a job as a printer.

The Petersens paid $11,000 for the 1,500-square-foot house that came with concrete floors and no cooler. Still, they were enticed by its Midwest-style front porch and the wide covered patios across the back. And there was the generous backyard, where geraniums and vines flourish under the shade of a very senior mulberry tree.

“People say it is so relaxing back here,” she said.

The name of the neighborhood is “Scottsdale Estates 4.” That by itself tells you that these are production homes, neither historically distinctive nor esthetically distinct. Properly speaking, it’s a neighborhood of tear-downs awaiting a higher and better use.

But the Valley of the Sun is so afraid of being looked down on by older cities that it races around adopting all the silly policies that make those older cities sclerotic and uninhabitable. We won’t be satisfied until more people move out than move in, just like the cities celebrated in all the hip urban planning books.

But, even so, it’s cute and charming and funny that, in order to have “historic districts,” we have to make hallowed museums out of homes that would be considered fairly new anywhere else…

Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the Republic‘s read on yesterday’s housing numbers, a much more dire interpretation:

Valley home prices dipped again in August, even falling below last year’s levels in some areas.

It is the first time since the Valley’s housing market turned red-hot in late 2004 that the monthly median price of existing homes in some areas is lower than it was the same month the year before, according to the Arizona Real Estate Center at Arizona State University Polytechnic. And if the August median price of $262,500 holds steady or declines this month, the region’s median price will be below the September 2005 price of $263,000.

Jim Rounds, a senior economist with the Scottsdale-based consulting firm Elliott D. Pollack & Cos., said price declines in many parts of metropolitan Phoenix are just beginning and could continue until early 2007.

Also, he said, “new-home price reductions are right around the corner” for the Valley as the housing market’s oversupply issue is corrected.

This much is interesting:

For the first eight months of 2006, there were 47,515 used-home sales Valley-wide, which isn’t close to the 78,935 recorded in 2005.

Last year isn’t a perfect comparison because of the investor-buyer frenzy that has left the housing market with a hangover this year, but home sales this year have also fallen below 2004’s more normal level of 68,020. They are closer to 2003’s pace, when 47,255 used homes changed hands.

The boom in Phoenix real estate started in March 2004 if not earlier, so 2003 is the last normal year for comparison purposes. In other words, the Phoenix market is essentially normal on the buyer’s side.

We have a surfeit of inventory on the seller’s side, but we don’t have is the kind of fire-sale pricing you would expect if most of those sellers were actually motivated to sell — as opposed to being interested in selling if the price is right.

The interesting — and possibly dispositive — question is whether new-home builders actually will cut prices. They’re discounting heavily against list prices for inventory homes right now, but that’s a matter of clearing a finite amount of standing inventory. If pre-built homes are selling Read more

by Cathleen Collins

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

On 360 Digest Gary Hodges asks Marlo Harris about the wisdom of letting people search from the IDX system on a Realtor’s web site without registering on the site:

Now, knowing that this service probably cost thousands of dollars to provide; shouldn’t there be some way to “enroll” them in this service, with the hopes that the “searcher” will make contact with that agent and/or mortgage broker?

Gary (and anyone else with this point of view), what you can do instead is make your site sticky, and then use that to build loyalty rather than trying to capture it.

Some people have the opinion that people won’t value anything that they get for free, and to a certain extent I agree. But, we’re not selling information. It’s already available for free. We’re building relationships. I think prospects can be frightened off by having to blow their anonymity on your site, just to get something another agent’s site will give them free access to.

As in Marlow’s case, someone who comes to our IDX page to search the full Phoenix/Scottsdale-area MLS system needs to submit an email address only if they want to have listings sent automatically when something new comes up with the features they identified. People can understand that if they want something to be sent to them they need to give us an address to send to. But I expect most people want to browse listings without having that ever-present worry that an agent is going to start bugging them, which of course is a concern anyone has as soon as personal information is requested… make that required.

Instead of quid pro quo — you get to see my information (homes listed on MLS) if I get to see yours (contact information) — we want for you to feel free to freely browse listings from our site. Curl up in your chair, sip a cup of tea, and browse on BloodhoundRealty.com all day… for months if you want. While you’re at it, take a look at other buyer tools BloodhoundRealty.com has to offer. And then browse on over to the BloodhoundBlog to get to Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Dr. Jay Butler of ASU has his August numbers out, and his report is faithfully echoed by The Business Journal of Phoenix. The big news: 2006 is not 2005. Who knew? The real news? August was not great but not awful. You heard it here first, And second. Fifth place will go to the Arizona Republic, probably with a lot more spin…

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by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s an email I got regarding this week’s Arizona Republic column, detailing how the buyer actually pays the “seller paid closing costs”:

Hello Greg,

I was incensed at your first article about the buyer paying for everything but I didn’t feel the need to waste my time writing to you.

However, now you seem to just be digging yourself a deeper hole. You have now enraged BOTH the buyers and sellers. Good for you!

Obviously, if you had such a response to your article by agents and brokers, I would think that you would take time to pause to realize just what you did to our industry. But now you insist on pounding your ridiculous theory yet another week. You’re only making a fool of yourself. And buyers and sellers will realize this too.

It’s sad to see someone like you in the industry. Your article about dual agency was also way off base. Remember, we’re all in this together. So maybe you should just sit back and keep your mouth shut.

Regards,
Cindy Kingery

Cindy Kingery, Associate Broker, e-Pro
Windermere Real Estate/Surprise

Just as a matter of reference, the calls I get from ordinary people, not Realtors or brokers, are overwhelmingly supportive. But also as a matter of reference, the calls I get from Realtors and brokers are almost always line-blocked, and rarely do I get so much as a first name out of those callers. Cindy is to be commended for putting her name behind her words.

That said, I disagree that “we’re all in this together”. I think that attitude perfectly encapsulates what is wrong with real estate brokerage as it is currently practiced. I work for — and only for — my clients. If other Realtors make money as the result of my efforts, that’s a secondary consequence. My entire loyalty is owed to my clients. After that, I owe a duty of honesty to everyone. The buyer pays for everything in a real estate transaction. That’s the truth. To say anything else, or to “keep [my] mouth shut”, would be dishonest.

I have better surprises for you, Cindy. This week I plan to disclose how Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service at large, 6,170 homes sold in August against an inventory of 46,830, an implied absorption rate of 7.6 months. There are 6,185 properties listed as “Sale Pending.” All of these numbers are largely unchanged from July.

The historical numbers make it plain that we did not experience the traditional selling season, but they also make it plain that a simplistic year-over-year analysis — which we can expect from the Arizona Republic a week or more from now — is misleading.

Number of Homes Sold (with Days on Market)

March 2003   6471    67
          2004   8678    60
          2005   9959    36
          2006   7469    58

April    2003   7429    67
          2004   8889    61
          2005   9567    32
          2006   6725    60

May   2003   7428    67
          2004   8932    56
          2005   9853    27
          2006   7582    63

June   2003     7409    67
          2004    9969    55
          2005   10225    26
          2006    7209    67

July   2003     7643    64
          2004    8974    51
          2005    9326    25
          2006    6101    70

August 2003     7648    63
          2004    8968    47
          2005    9996    25
          2006    6170    76

Prices are virtually unchanged as well. The average sales price for a closed MLS transaction in July was $332,426. For the month of August, the average was $331,266, a net loss of about 0.35%.

Note that this may not accurately reflect the Phoenix-area real estate market as a whole. All private sales and most new-home builder sales are excluded from MLS statistics. However, for MLS-represented resale homes, the month of August was virtually a repeat of July — a few more transactions taking a few more days to sell for marginally less money. If the pending sales are any indication, September may be more of the same.

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