ALL PHOENIX REAL ESTATE

This dovetails nicely into a discussion I was having yesterday with a delightful Canadian couple, the fact that they’re from Alberta thoroughly irrelevant except for feeding the Google keyword monster as we’re oft prone to do.

When making an offer with a short sale there are a handful of possible answers a buyer can receive from the lender:

1. Silence
2. No
3. Yes
4. A qualified yes - yes, we’ll approve the short sale but at our price, not yours

Possibly falling into the latter category is a home on 158th Drive in Pebblecreek, an active adult community in Goodyear, spring training home of the Cleveland Indians and the Cincinnati Reds (full yet, Google monster?)

• List price: $220,000
• Sold price: $245,000

It’s possible the buyers offered $25,000 above the list price on their own. Then again, given the well-below-market list price, it’s also possible the bank said they’d accept the short sale but at their price - still a bit below market - not the buyers.

(Editor’s note: All mystery could be cleared up if I called the listing agent, but that would veer dangerously into the category of research and ultimately could ruin my premise, so I’ll stick with the accepted idea of poetic license.)

Poetic license or not, these situation do happen … a buyer of mine last year was quite pleased to learn the lender had accepted the short sale offer, at least until he learned the bank only would accept a price $12,000 above what he actually offered. When he tried to counter he was told, quite curtly, that counter offers weren’t welcome. The bank’s price was the bank’s price.

Incidentally, that answer took four months to receive … and he was offering cash and a quick close, at least as quick as the bank was able to manage.

Again, none of this is to say you as a buyer shouldn’t consider a short sale if the quirks still allow you to do what you need to do. I also wouldn’t say you shouldn’t consider swimming in a shark tank, should you feel you can defend yourself.

It’s just hard to recommend either course of action.

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“We’re not saying you can’t own guns. We’re not even saying you can’t carry a gun. We’re just saying you can’t carry a gun in town.”

- Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp, Tombstone

Look, I’m not saying you have to write your first offer on a home in the Phoenix market at around 10 percent of list price, assuming it’s priced at market value. I’m not saying you even have to write an offer on a home here at all. All I’m saying is if we’re going to work together, we need to be on the same page as far as strategy.

Last night, one of my prospective buyers and I parted ways before ever looking at a home here in the Valley. Why? Because we couldn’t come to an agreement on the state of the market and developing a strategy that matched both his needs and the realities of our real estate market.

Let’s take a look at two retirement communities in the West Valley, Sun City Grand and Pebblecreek. I ran the data for both and the numbers come out more or less the same:

In Sun City Grand, the lowest list-to sales price percentage for the 389 sales was 78.93%. Of those 389, all but 47 were sold for at least 90% of the final list price and more than half – 206 of the 389 – sold for at least 95% of the final list price.

In Pebblecreek, there 97 sales, only one below 80 percent of final list price and 77 of the 97 at 90 percent of list price and above.

So yes, if you really are so inclined, start the offer even lower than the 10 percent figure that seems to work so well in the off chance the seller wants to give their home away. But just don’t base your buying decision on finding a one-percenter - you’re almost certainly going to come away empty-handed.

Which is all well and good if you want to pay a retainer for the gasoline and time needed to help you view homes you’ll never purchase. Because, believe it or not, this is a business.

Extended timelines are fine, as some clients I’ve worked with for multiple years can attest. But unrealistic expectations are a completely different issue. Not believing me when I provide advice is one thing; also ignoring the hard data in favor of anecdotal stories from the cocktail party crowd is lunacy.

There’s one line from last night’s conversation that sticks with me. This buyer mentioned he knows the game because he’s purchased five homes in his time.

That’s honestly two more than I’ve personally purchased. But it’s also equal to the number of homes I currently have in escrow right now - now multiply that by six years in the biz.

It’s my experience that allows me to make my recommendations with confidence. You don’t have to follow them. But without some sort of middle ground and common strategy, there’s not much reason for us to work together.

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… which has no meaning whatsoever unless you had younger children at the time that Snow Dogs came out. Which is neither here not there.

This afternoon I received a short sale approval letter for my listing in Avondale. The loan was with Bank of America, which is notorious for it’s glacial pace for short sale approvals even in this era of global warming. To whit …

Contract was received on September 27 and submitted to Bank of America on September 29. (For the cynics out there, this was September of 2009.)

And, well … that was about it. Except for a couple of dozen phone calls and e-mails along the way along with three separate negotiators at least two of whom actually returned calls and e-mails. Oh, and an approval letter sent to the wrong e-mail address two weeks ago that seemed not to exist at the time of last week’s update call four days after the letter was supposed to have been sent.

There also was a small cut in the commission which I’m absorbing … what I offer in the MLS as a co-broke to buyers’ agents is what I pay; MLS rules mandate it and I’ve never been much for the 50-50 concept. Either negotiate a better deal or eat the difference. I chose the latter because it’s the right thing to do for my seller.

No promissory notes needed, no cash required at closing for my seller … a clean approval and hope of this chapter of their lives being put to bed in the next month.

Maybe this is what everyone means a childbirth … it’s uncomfortable as hell for months and painful as anything near the end but after it’s over you kinda forget all of that and instead are elated about the results.

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We woke up in Phoenix today to the sounds of raindrops falling against our roofs, the first of what is predicted to be five straight days of rain - the first time that’s happened in the month of January since 2003. Once every seven years … you have to admit, that’s not too shabby.

As the kids wandered in little circles, free from school because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and unable to spend much time outside lest the water cause their somewhat washed bodies to melt, my own thoughts turned toward March and the beginning of spring training in the Cactus League.

With the arrival of the Cincinnati Reds in Goodyear, the Cactus League now is 15 teams strong - all but 13 of those teams play in the Valley (the other two are in Tucson) and all but four of those play west of Central Avenue roughly along the I-10/Loop 101 corridor (the Rangers and Royals being the most deviant geographically.)

Dodgers and Padres and Indians … oh my!

With the beginning of the games comes the influx of visitors here specifically to watch the Boys of Summer work off some rust in the spring.

(Here comes the real estate hook.)

Some come in RVs and campers, others come down and pay surcharge after surcharge for rentals cars and hotels - in case you’re wondering, that’s how we paid for these spring training parks in the first place.

(Wait for it.)

And still others come down either to their own second homes here in the Valley or simply rent a home for a week or a month to better allow themselves to overload on baseball, sun and in many cases, suds.

(That wasn’t so bad, was it?)

Owning a second home certainly isn’t for everyone. But if you happen to like your baseball a little more intimate and you’ve got 20 percent of the purchase price squirreled away, then maybe the other factors in play - low prices, low rates and even the $6,500 tax credit if you decide to make Phoenix your primary home by the end of April - might make it the right time to have a conversation.

It’s raining now but there are another 300 sunny days in the forecast.

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Not to rely to heavily on global generalizations, but today’s post is about generalities and specifically, if not generally, what you ought to expect from your home inspector.

Think of your primary care physician. These are the folks who are going to meet with you, listen to the symptoms as you describe them, run some diagnostic tests if needed and come up with a diagnosis. If there’s something drastic happening, they almost certainly will then recommend you go see a specialist for further review whether it’s a surgeon, a cardiologist or an electrocardio specialist, which I didn’t even know existed before the Wii Fit incident of 2009.

Home inspectors operate in much the same manner. They’ll look at the signs - a water stain on the underside of a roof or on a ceiling for instance - and will tell you that there’s evidence of a problem, present or past. But they aren’t roofers and don’t pretend to be. They’ll then refer you to a roofer - the specialist to determine the extent of the problem, or if the problem even still exists.

More times than not, further investigation into a problem isn’t going to be needed … and there are ways you can buy some additional time in addition to the inspection period in the contract if your agent knows his way around the paper.

Contrary to popular belief, inspectors aren’t getting paid to find problems … put another way, they’re not going to uncover problems just to justify their check. They’re going to get paid even if nothing is found, not that that ever happens - there’s almost something, even if it’s as relatively minor as the lack of an anti-siphon valve on a hose bibb.

You can skip the home inspection if you so choose, just as you can avoid your own doctor like the plague if you so choose (unless you have the plague, then you may want to stop in.) But what you don’t know in either case can hurt you down the line.

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