Bloodhound Realty

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Archives (page 4 of 15)

June 30, 2010

Just in time for Independence Day, a real estate consumer’s Declaration of Independence.

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

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My friend and colleague Al Lorenz, who sells real estate and develops real property in Lake Chelan Washington wrote and posted this Real Estate Declaration of Independence.

Al and I are in complete agreement about these principles, so I’m delighted to share them with you:

Real Estate Declaration of Independence

We, the people who buy and sell real estate, hold these truths to be obvious:

  • We the people believe that information on real estate for sale should be readily accessible without surrendering our private information. We reject having to register on a web site in order to view listings in an area. We value our time and will contact a real estate professional when we are good and ready for their services.
  • We the people reject all policies of the National Association of Realtors that are not in the best interest of the real estate buying and selling public. Limiting our access to information, restricting our ability to a free and open market through regulation and limiting our market choices are all examples of policies we reject that are designed to line Realtors pockets at the expense of the public.
  • We the people reject “Dual Agency,” where a real estate agent has an inherent conflict of interest with his agency and fiduciary duties by attempting to represent both the buyer and seller in order to earn a larger commission on our transaction. If the agent is truly delivering value, both parties of a transaction have an equal right to that value without a conflict of interest and each party deserves their own agent in the transaction.
  • We the people reject the practice of real estate agents trying to “Buy the Listing” by telling a potential seller an above market price in an attempt to secure a listing. This practice costs sellers time and money while their home sits on the market as the agent waits for the seller to cut the price to where it should have been to start.
  • We the people reject the practice of real estate MLS systems that limit a home seller’s exposure to potential buyers in an attempt to control access to a market. A listing agent’s responsibility is to market a property to the best of their ability and limiting the exposure of our home costs us money.

We the people are independent in a country that still allows us to make market choices. We the people demand better service and will exercise our freedom of choice and only choose Real Estate Professionals who deliver better value.

In Arizona, a real estate licensee has a fiduciary duty to his client. That means that, when we decide to work together, I am obliged to put your interests ahead of all others, including my own. Too often, and much too deservedly, Realtors are perceived as being self-dealing, self-serving and self-absorbed. If you keep this Real Estate Declaration of Independence in mind, you’ll be better prepared to avoid that kind of agent.

June 8, 2010

My kind of rental home investment in Avondale’s Coldwater Springs

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been watching this house for months. I wanted to snag it for one of my investors when it was a short sale, but the bank foreclosed on it before I could get an offer in play.

I took pictures of the home when I was in it then. Since it was relisted as a lender-owned home, I’ve been back in to see how it’s holding up.

The home is the Lavender floorplan by Fulton Homes, three bedrooms and two baths in 1524 square feet. It’s a greatroom floorplan, so the common spaces are abundant. There is no space wasted on hallways, and the home feels open and bright everywhere.

Even better, it’s in Coldwater Springs, a subdivision I have loved since it was built. The Coldwater Springs Golf Course threads through the community, and the Collier School, grades K-8, is right in the middle of everything — a short bike trip from this home.

The home is listed at $87,500. Handyman Mark Deermer estimates that it will take around $8,000 to make the property rent-ready. Total entry cost would be $95,500. With anticipated rents of at least $950 a month, that puts this home at a Gross Rent Multiplier of 100 months, right where I want to be.

And that’s just one house. In the weeks since the tax-credit lapsed, inventories have come back strong. These kinds of houses — premium homes attractive to premium tenants — are being offered at breathtaking prices, with plenty of room for investors to show ample positive cash-flow. Meanwhile, lender Connie Moss can do investor loans at 5.75% or better with 25% down.

I talk to a lot of folks who say they want to invest in rental homes in Metropolitan Phoenix. Many follow through, but some people seem to sit on the sidelines, waiting for someone to pull them along. This I can’t do. I am very good at identifying properties that will rent profitably and stay rented. Mark Deermer can refurbish them so they are irresistible to tenants. But if you want to get in on a house like this, you need to assert yourself.

Shoot me an email or phone me at 602-740-7531 and I’ll help you line up a rental home like this one.

May 25, 2010

Does it make a difference which Realtor lists your short-sale home?

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It’s tough out there, everybody knows that. Your house may not be worth even half what you paid for it, and you’re having trouble keeping up with the payments. It could be your situation is so dire as to boil down to two choices: Let the bank foreclose on you or try to do a short sale.

What’s a short sale? If you could sell your home for what it’s worth today, you would probably have to come “short” to the closing table: The amount of money you could bring back to your lender from the proceeds of the sale would be less than you owe.

Are banks willing to do this? Yes, in principle. The bank reasons that it can get more money for a home that is still being cared for, as compared to yet another vacant lender-owned home.

What about you? Is a short sale to your advantage? Here’s your bottom line in both cases: Zero dollars and zero cents. That’s how much you’ll receive when your house sells.

So why should you prefer a short sale to a foreclosure?

For one very simple thing, because it’s the more responsible thing to do. You can’t pay your mortgage, and that’s a tragic turn of events. But by helping the bank effect a short sale, you’re doing what you still can to honor your obligations.

Even more important, a successful short sale can be less damaging to your credit than a foreclosure. You’re going to take a hit on your credit rating, either way. But the worst consequences of a short sale could be over in two or three years, where a foreclosure may wreck your credit for five years — or even longer.

On balance, a short sale is probably the better idea. Here’s the next question: Does it make any difference to you which Realtor you hire to list your home for sale as a short sale?

Remember that net figure: Zero dollars and zero cents. Since you won’t be getting any money from the sale of your home what difference does it make to you which Realtor sells it?

As it turns out, it makes a lot of difference. For one thing, no short sale is secure until it is closed. There is always the threat that the bank will go ahead and foreclose on you. You need a Realtor who can put matters in motion quickly, so you can complete the short sale before the bank gets tired of waiting for its money.

There’s more. Many Realtors treat short sales like a red-headed step-child — a slap-dash listing effort focused more on adding to their listing inventory, rather than actively selling your home. But the faster your home sells, the more money it is likely to command — which will make your buyer’s offer that much more attractive to the bank.

So what will make your home sell more quickly?

The answer? Marketing.

Where you and your lender see a short sale, your buyer sees a home. And guess what? Your buyer is seeing a lot of really grungy homes. Dirty. Missing appliances. Crowded floor to ceiling with personal possessions. Even though you have no equity in the property, your marketing problem is no different than in a normal equity sale: How do you get buyers to prefer your home over all the others available on the market?

And this is why it matters which Realtor you choose to list your home as a short sale. Your net might be zero dollars and zero cents, but you still have a lot to lose. The faster your home sells, the more money it will command, and the more money your lender stands to get, the more likely they are to approve your short sale.

It’s that simple. Working with a better Realtor — better not just at the mechanics of short sales but also at the mechanics of marketing — will bring you better, faster, happier results.

This is not a joyous event in you life, that’s understood. But working with the right Realtor on your short sale will help you make the best of a bad situation.

Am I blowing my own horn? Oh, you bet! I have advanced designations in short sale negotiation and management, and I’ve developed an extensive praxis for successfully marketing homes. I’ll bring every bit of this expertise to bear in getting your home sold as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

What’s the cost to you? Zip. Nada. Nothing. We typically charge our sellers an up-front retainer from $1,500 to $2,500. But they’ll be seeing cash at the closing table, and, if you go ahead with a short sale, you will not. We’ll take our compensation from the proceeds of the sale at Close of Escrow, and we’ll pay the buyer’s broker as well. You have nothing to lose by choosing a better listing agent — and a lot to gain.

So let’s talk, shall we? Give me a call at 602-369-9275 or email me and we’ll get together to figure out the best short sale strategy for your home.

May 21, 2010

Arizona unemployment rate falls; 19,500 jobs added

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Arizona Republic:

Arizona’s job picture brightened considerably with an increase of 19,500 jobs in April, the largest number of new hires in the month of April since 2005, the Arizona Department of Commerce reported Thursday.

The state’s unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent in April from 9.6 percent in March and remained below the national rate of 9.9 percent.

The overall number of non-farm jobs was still below the level a year earlier, but by only 1.6 percent. The over-the-year job losses have been shrinking steadily since August.

Many of the new hires were at leisure and hospitality businesses — which include hotels, resorts, restaurants and bars — and at retailers, temporary-service agencies and the U.S. Census Bureau, said Rick Van Sickle, a department analyst.

For the second month in a row, the leisure and hospitality sector had the highest gains. It added 5,000 jobs in April.

“There’s an indicator of some confidence,” Van Sickle said. “It looks like people are starting to spend discretionary money, at least last month.”

Unfortunately, hospitality businesses are the most vulnerable to travel boycotts announced by cities and groups objecting to Arizona’s new immigration law that takes effect July 29.

The law makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally. It states that an officer engaged in a lawful stop, detention or arrest shall, when practicable, ask about a person’s legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally.

Van Sickle said the department would not be able to accurately track the effects of the law because the job data it collects is not that detailed and the number of hospitality workers typically falls as hot weather approaches.

“There’s boycotts. There’s buycotts (efforts to get people to buy Arizona products to protest boycotts). There’s counter boycotts. There’s hot weather coming. There’s all those factors that are going to come into play,” he said.

May 7, 2010

Buy and hold investors in Phoenix-area rental homes want to know: Is now the time to buy?

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

One of my rental home investors asks:

How are things looking one week past the expiration of the home buyer credit? Time to plan a trip?

My answer: I should track this number daily, instead of relying on memory. These numbers are approximate, but reflective of reality. This is from the BargainBot search many of my investors are subscribed to:

October 2008 — ~1,500 listings
October 2009 — ~350 listings — this was the first tax credit
January 2010 — ~650 listings — somewhat replenished
May 4, 2010 — ~420 listings — second round of tax credit
Today — 492 listings — replenishing

I’m watching particularly for houses I would want to buy for investors, since these are the ones that were picked over the most by tax credit shoppers.

It’s not my style to say, “No, don’t spend any money!” But it remains that you’ll do better if you wait for the inventory to replenish.

May 21? May 28? The big jump this week is not so much new listings but contracts that failed — usually because the contracted price was above the appraised value. We want for there to be more good houses than qualified buyers.

That’s where I’m at for now.

April 27, 2010

A more active kind of real estate investment: Fixing and flipping distressed homes for fun and profit.

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

Handyman Mark Deermer and I have been planning for this for a while: We’re going to ride the Phoenix real estate market back up by fixing and flipping some of the (many, many) distressed homes we work with. We’ve fixed up quite a few homes for buy-and-hold investors, and this is the logical next step in our praxis.

As with buying rental homes, it’s a matter of property selection before anything else. The right home, in turn-key condition, will sell at a substantial premium over its distress-sale price. By buying the right MLS-listed and court-house-steps properties, we can net out significant returns after all expenses.

Buying right is everything, of course. If we overpay on the way in, we’ll have trouble extricating ourselves on the way out. We’re doing this now because the market in Greater Phoenix has reached a point where the math works fairly consistently. Houses that will flip profitably are still not common, but we’re to the point where they’re one among hundreds, rather than one among thousands.

The second step in the process is handling the refurbishing wisely and well — and quickly. Our goal is to get our properties back on the market within four days of taking possession of them. And we won’t be doing wish-and-a-promise fix-ups. Every house we do will have all new interior paint, all new flooring, all new window treatments and all new kitchen appliances. We want to give our buyers that model-home feeling — because they’ll pay more for homes that are white-glove clean and move-in ready.

And the third step is marketing, a process we get better at with every passing day. The homes we’ll be flipping will be completely refurbished, but they will also be staged for sale, with the kind of tasteful decorator touches that make people feel at home. We’ll build a marketing web site for each home, showing off what we’ve done with before and after pictures, and documenting the remodeling — both to defend the sales price and to assist the appraiser in seeing our justification for the sales price.

We’ll be pricing aggressively to the market, as well, thus to turn the money over more quickly. Our goal is to go from sold to sold in two months or less — with each investor’s money turning over six or more times a year.

Do you have stars in your eyes? The profit per home will not be huge. But because the money is turning over so rapidly, the annualized return-on-investment could be very substantial.

Why am I writing this? Because we need money to make this work. I’m going to be the marketing partner in the partnerships we’re putting together. Mark is going to be the work partner. What we need are finance partners.

The kind of houses we’re going to be working with are going to require around $100,000 in capital each. That will pay the acquisition costs plus the cost of refurbishing the home. Everything else — closing costs and unpaid liens — can be paid out of the resale proceeds at Close of Escrow. But each Limited Liability Corporation we put together is going to want $100,000 in seed capital. This can come from one or more finance partners, and the seed capital will be restored to the LLC after each house is sold, before any profits are disbursed.

Here’s the way to figure this: Even if the investor’s ROI is only 5% per flip, if we can turn that money over six times in a year, that’s a 30% annualized return. That’s good money by anyone’s standards — and the returns only stand to improve when the Phoenix real estate market finally gets back to an upward trajectory.

But what about down markets? God help us, it could happen. But this is why we’re working to sell the properties so quickly — and at aggressive prices — to get our money in and out before we can lose too much to declining values.

I’m not blowing smoke up anyone’s nose. We’ve been working on this problem for a year-and-a-half, all to make the numbers work. I’ll be documenting out projects here, so you can see what we’re up to.

Meanwhile, if you want to get in on this opportunity, speak up. We’re going to put together up to twenty of these partnerships, flipping as many as ten homes a month. This is a lot more aggressive than buy-and-hold investing — and a lot more risky, of course. But we’re offering the potential for truly astounding annualized returns. If you want to get involved in real estate on the supply side, here’s your chance.

April 26, 2010

What’s the real estate price trend for bread-and-butter homes in Metropolitan Phoenix? Prices are up and down — but mostly flat…

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

That chart illustrates sales prices for the past 13 months, as reflected in BloodhoundRealty’s Market Basket of Homes. What we’re looking at are suburban stucco and tile tract homes, the houses that drive the fat middle of the bell curve in the Metropolitan Phoenix real estate market.

That line looks awful spiky doesn’t it? That’s just the drama of charting software. What you’re really seeing is a market that is essentially flat. Prices go up. Price come back down. A home that would have sold for $122,000 in March of 2009 will have sold in March of 2010 for — wait for it — $121,000.

That’s right. For the past year, the Arizona Republic and half the faculty at ASU has been bellowing that the market has turned. It has. Slightly downward. And now that the home buyer tax credit is about to expire, it seem plausible that the near term trend will be still further downward.

Prices will probably decline gradually, mind you, and investors have clearly thrown a floor under our market. I would be surprised to see dramatic drops in values, but the segment of the chart documenting events from August through December of 2009 illustrates the impact of the tax credit. Without it, I expect this chart to grow even flatter in the months ahead.

Means what? Jump. Interest rates are still low, and cash is still king. Inventories will grow — nudging prices downward — and the quality of the available homes is gradually getting better. If you have the means to buy a home in Phoenix now, this may be the perfect storm. If we’re at the bottom, we’re going to be here for a while. But if you can afford to wait out the market, you can buy a whole lot of home for your money.

April 24, 2010

For rental home investors in metropolitan Phoenix, the perfect storm is almost upon us.

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a lot of investor clients, folks who want to buy rental homes in greater Phoenix — to buy and hold them as long-term investments. Early last fall and again late this spring I have advised many of them to sit tight, to wait the market out.

What are we waiting for?

The final lapsing of the first-time home-buyers’ tax credit. We can be quietly delighted for all the nice folks who were able to get into houses because of the tax credit. But it remains that those sweet people were driving up home prices, making it difficult for investors to latch onto better-quality rental homes.

All that changes this week. The tax credit lapses on April 30th, so we should start to see a significant increase in available properties. Still better, it will be easier to negotiate deals with sellers, and prices should be more attractive.

The first round of the tax credit, last summer and fall, had a much more profound impact on the real estate market. For the kind of stucco and tile suburban homes I like to buy for investors, prices last fall looked like this:

September 2009: +3.15%
October 2009: +2.14%
November 2009: +2.22%
December 2009: -8.03%

That’s a $10,371 drop in average sales prices from November to December. Demand from first-timers has been lighter in this second installment of the tax-credit, but inventories of the homes I’m most interested in for investors have declined by 20% from the start of the year. More significantly, it’s the choice homes that are being cherry-picked, the ones that need the least work to make them rent-ready.

All of which means that we are on the cusp of a perfect storm for real estate investors: Good homes at very attractive prices. Money is still every cheap, if you need a mortgage, and rents are holding firm. There is no appreciation in sight, of course, but positive cash flow is easy from the first tenant.

I’ve written a guide about how out-of-state investors can make good money investing in Phoenix-area rental homes. If you want to discuss this in detail, you can phone me – Greg Swann – at 602-740-7531 or shoot me an email.

April 7, 2010

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

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

April 6, 2010

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

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

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.

April 6, 2010

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

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Sun City Real Estate Broker

Author website

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.

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