Here was a unique situation … my buyers found a bank owned home that they really liked and made an offer. The house had been on the market for five days but they were fortunate - there were only two other competing offers.

(Wait … you didn’t know that multiple offers are standard for REOs in the Phoenix real estate market these days?)

Back came the bank with the nebulous, ominous counter … give us your final and best offer. At my advice, they held their ground at list price with a small seller contribution to the buyers’ closing costs. And they got the house.

Here’s the key element - the buyers didn’t bid against themselves. They decided before writing the original offer what their best offer would be. If it wasn’t enough then this wasn’t going to be the right house for them.

Holding one’s ground isn’t easy especially after you’ve decided this is the one house for you. But that’s often the best strategy. It’s just a matter of having either a buyer or (more importantly) an agent who has seen multiple offers in the past and knows not to panic - especially when that multiple counter doesn’t have a firm number written in already.

On a somewhat related note, the very wise BawldGuy has taken a long look at the Phoenix real estate market and come to a conclusion eerily similar to mine in its brilliance:

It’s a seller’s market for REO’s only. The rest of the market is still firmly ensconced in the buyer’s market column. FIRMLY. But as soon as the REO’s are gone — guess what? The next cheapest homes are gonna be the ones who’ve been stomped on and falling down the same stairs for nearly three years now. Suddenly, they’ll be the prettiest girls at the dance. They’ll begin to sell in ever increasing numbers.

Since everything’s still ongoing I can’t discuss details but I’ve seen this in action - with the bank owned homes out of the way, the next best priced homes become the centers of attention. It’s not mere speculation.

We may not be at the bottom but the pit doesn’t look nearly as bottomless these days.

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We gave you the sexy Bullwinkle-based commentary earlier; now it’s time for the raw data from the Phoenix real estate market, as provided by the Arizona Regional MLS.

As I mentioned earlier, we are at 9.1 months of inventory for single family detached homes here in Maricopa County. Bank owned homes, also known as REOs and foreclosures, are moving at a substantially brisker pace - 1,218 sales the last 30 days against 4,368 active listings for an absorption rate of 3.58 months.

Ahwatukee has joined Queen Creek as a sellers’ market - a market with less than five months of inventory at current sales pace. Anthem, Maricopa, Surprise and Tempe all are in the balanced market range - between five and six months of inventory.

As always, all of the data is provided by the Arizona Regional MLS and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

Phoenix Real Estate Inventory: June 10

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Bank owned home comes to the market in Mesa yesterday.

Home is off the market this morning with eight offers submitted to the bank, including my client’s offer.

Eight offers in one day? It feels like 2005.

Oh, and Arizona real estate commissioner Sam Wercinski says mortgage fraud - including cash back schemes - are on the rise. Looks like the bottom feeders are emerging from under their rocks to take advantage of folks who haven’t read a headline in two years.

More on Commissioner Wercinski’s talk before the Arizona Real Estate Educators’ Association tomorrow.

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What can a tenant do when their owner is in foreclosure?

Keeping in mind that I’m not an attorney and for full legal advice, you ought to consult an attorney, the answer is “move.” Your landlord hasn’t paid their mortgage and banks don’t work as landlords.

It’s a scenario that has played out hundreds of times across the Phoenix real estate market over the past several months as more and more homes fall into foreclosures - many owned by investors who either can’t or won’t continue to pay money on a losing call.

How do you know if the home you’re renting is going to be sold on the courthouse steps?

• Check the county recorder’s site and the “Recorded Documents Search.” Search under “N/TR Sale” which stands for Notice of Trustee’s Sale. It’s clunky but it works.
• Watch for the official notice being posted. The county’s required to post a formal notice on your front door (or rather close to it). This is one reason many tenants find out about the sale before their landlord does.
• Keep an eye on websites that list foreclosures, though do so with a wary eye as the information’s not always complete or accurate.

One thing to remember is the lease you signed is a contract between you and the owner. If the owner isn’t the owner, your lease most likely will no longer be valid. If you found the home through a property management company, contact the property managers as they often can help you find a new home.

And hopefully those owners will be in better position than your current owner.

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The Phoenix real estate listings you see on this site and many others all are powered by something called IDX - Internet Data Exchange. Depending on the IDX provider an agent or brokerage chooses, the level of information you will see on these IDX searches can vary widely.

For instance, I used to use Success Web Systems for my IDX searches. When you looked for additional details on a property the options were limited. For instance, you wouldn’t learn the actual square footage of a property - just a range. Want to know details about the laundry room - inside, outside, whether appliances were included? Sorry.

Diverse Solutions provides a considerably higher level of information, which is one of the reasons why I made the switch a month or so ago. (Another reason was the map-based search, which is far less clunky than the old-fashioned data entry model.)

But even DS doesn’t have everything … and it’s not their fault.

Not every field on an MLS sheet is included into the IDX field. Most noticeably missing at the moment here in the Phoenix real estate market is the “Miscellaneous” category, which includes filters for both short sales and bank owned homes.

I’ve finagled a bank owned home search for my office’s listings. But those are just a drop in the bucket compared to what’s on the market.

Every day on Trulia Voices, in my own Inbox and elsewhere I hear consumers asking the question - what’s the best way for us to get a list of bank owned homes?

More than 10 percent of the homes in ARMLS are bank owned, REO properties. These are what you want to see. I know this. Diverse Solutions knows this. But we can’t deliver it to you, not until the ARMLS board of directors releases the Miscellaneous field.

One side note … for all the debate over the impact of the Department of Justice’s settlement with the National Association of REALTORS and the many who are trumpeting that listings information now will flow freely … well, it won’t. At least no more so than it has to date.

What you see on nearly all listings sites is a portion of the information about a home. Some are more complete than others - thanks to the switch, I think the information here is about as complete as you can find for the Phoenix market. But you’re never seeing absolutely all of the available information about a home.

Fortunately, very few attempt to purchase real estate without getting their feet on the ground in the area in which they’re buying. Some still do, but they’re fairly few and far between. Which is a good thing in my opinion.

I’m waiting for the bank owned field to be released. Once it does, I’ll make those listings available to you as quickly as humanly possible.

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