Noah over at Urban Digs ran a post from CNBC’s breaking news that the FBI is investigating Beazer Homes for its loan practices.
Is this an isolated incident or is Beazer the first of many builders who are going to be getting unwanted attention from the government given the renewed focus on subprime and otherwise risky lending practices?
Stay tuned …
Technorati tags: beazer homes, fbi, mortgage fraud, predatory lending
Popularity: 8% [?]
We take a break from our Arizona Pinecrest work to bring you a couple of MLS oddities from Desert Harbor, a lake subdivision just to the north and west of Rio Vista Park.
Oddity one: A home is listed at $357,900, down from the original list price of $399,900. An offer comes in and, according to the MLS, the home sells for $450,000 - more than $90,000 above the final asking price. Let’s just say that’s not something you see every day.
Oddity two: Current listing in Desert Harbor with a co-broke of 1.5%.
Keeping in mind that there is no standardized commission rate in the real estate business and that commissions are negotiable, it’s not uncommon to see a 3% co-broke. Some agents, such as myself, set our compensation at 3% when we utilize a buyer broker agreement. (While there’s no set industry-wide commission rate, individual agents are allowed to determine for what amount they’re willing to work.)
If said agreement is in place at 3%, any buyer who wishes to purchase a house with a 1.5% co-broke fee would have to make up the difference out of pocket. This is entirely possible. It’s also remarkably unlikely.
Not surprisingly, the remarks indicate this is a limited service listing where all queries are to be directed to the seller not the “listing” agent.
Reminds me of a listing I assisted with in Surprise. The home has been on the market for a couple of months and the owner wanted a change, so I took over the listing for about a month. At the end of that time, the owners elected to use another company. They then raised their asking price and reduced the co-broke fee simultaneously.
I’m shocked (shocked!) to say the home’s still on the market, now priced below what I’d recommended as a price change back in July.
Some may take this as gloating and that’s not at all the intention. But I will say I don’t believe in playing listing games. I don’t purchase listings with ridiculously high prices, and I highly recommend against accepting offers 30% above the asking price given the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions, the group investigating mortgage fraud, says there’s virtually no legitimate reason for a home to sell for 10% above market value.
Sometimes folks are so anxious to hear what they want to hear, they don’t listen for what they really need to know.
Technorati tags: desert harbor, peoria arizona, mls, phoenix arizona real estate, phoenix real estate
Popularity: 9% [?]
I feel like I’ve been running around with spinach in my teeth for the last three months and no one’s said a word.
Unlike Greg and others, I’m not a web programmer by trade. I can hack my way through HTML and CSS sufficiently well to have designed two websites more or less from scratch, but the nuances are lost on me.
Which is why, as I set up this blog, I kept viewing it in Mozilla Firefox, my main browser, and not in IE, which I all but abandoned months ago. So it was quite a surprise to see today the old template header sticking out from beneath my header like an untucked shirt emerging from a sweater. Or to see the right-hand margin pushed to the bottom of the page on some of my single-page property sites.
Perhaps all of my readers use Mozilla. Perhaps everyone uses RSS feeds. Perhaps there really isn’t anyone out there. But if there is and you see something funky, by all means let me know so I can adjust. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Bloody WordPress.
TRechnorati tags: wordpress, mozilla firefox, internet explorer
Popularity: 7% [?]
Just a couple of quick housekeeping-type items which may interest no one other than myself … (You probably can say that about a lot of things on this blog, actually) …
1) I’ve added categories for the handful of neighborhoods I’ve discussed specifically of late. Naturally this includes Arizona Pinecrest, but there also are entries specific to Arrowhead Ranch and the Westgate City Center. I tried to make them subcategories of “Neighborhoods” to cut down on the number of categories, but it didn’t work worth a … er … darn.
2) I spent a portion of today cleaning up the Google Reader. I’m up to 70 feeds and the sheer volume is forcing me to read less often those I’d like to read more often. (And those I prefer to read less often rarely are being read at all.) Google’s got a nice feature where you can create subfolders for all the feeds. I’m sure Greg discovered this long ago, but I’m one of these folks who tends not to fix what’s not broken, even if my solution truly is Rube Goldbergian.
3) By tomorrow, my remaining listings will be on the site with their own pages. Come hell or high water.
4) ASU’s women’s basketball team, the last college basketball team in the state still playing at this late stage, lost in the Regional Finals to Rutgers. The Sun Devils finished 31-5, a school record for victories, and advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time. One hell of a season, ladies, one hell of a season.
Technorati tags: blogging, arizona state university, google reader
Popularity: 6% [?]
Below is a view of Madison Estates, commonly known as Arizona Pinecrest, from the air - courtesy of iMapp, the tax information system available to through the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service.
Arizona Pinecrest is a 244-lot subdivision north of Olive Avenue along 83rd Avenue, about a quarter-mile south of Peoria City Hall and the remainder of the city’s municipal complex. The homes all were built by Kaufman and Broad between 2003 and 2006.
The subdivision is made up primarily of courtyard homes. I prefer this term to “patio home” because it’s a more accurate description - the vast majority of homes were built in groups of six, facing a common courtyard with a common driveway.
I prefer courtyard home to patio home also because it differentiates Arizona Pinecrest from other communities, such as Boardwalk in Laveen, where the lots extend only a foot or two beyond the edge of the home’s back patio.
The lots are smaller than on the vast majority of single-family housing - the home I sold at 8166 W. Purdue was on a 2,700-square foot lot - but still are larger than in many of the newer patio home developments appearing across the Valley.
For those who prefer a separate driveway and street frontage, Arizona Pinecrest offers that option as well. A handful of homes, including my current listing at 8143 W. Carol, offer a private driveway as well as the larger-than-typical lot - 3,122 square feet in this instance.
The next installment of my series on Arizona Pinecrest should be appearing tomorrow, but if you have any questions in the interim, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll be happy to help.
Technorati tags: arizona pinecrest, madison estates, peoria arizona real estate, phoenix arizona real estate, peoria neighborhoods
Popularity: 10% [?]
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