ALL PHOENIX REAL ESTATE

It’s been an interesting couple of days’ worth of questions on Trulia Voices. Look for just a moment at the Arizona buyers’ feed and you’ll see question after question about problems trying to purchase a bank owned home.

I’m not going to try and answer these questions here - more often than not there’s more to the story than what is posted here or than what the buyer may be aware of. But they ought to serve as a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about purchasing a bank owned home on your own, or even through the listing agent as we see here:

“Listing agent shows me a bank owned house. I make an offer on the spot that is over the listing price and I offer cash. Three weeks later I’m still waiting to hear from the bank. A friend calls the listing agent about the same house and is told there haven’t been any bids that have met the asking price so the bank hasn’t accepted an offer.”

Here’s another:

“What is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a bank to accept/reject an offer of cash that is higher than the listing price?”

Or this:

“I am looking for information on a house that was/is owned by IndyMac. I had put an offer on it, they accepted and then everything fell through.”

Or this:

“I recently had my offer accepted on a bank owned property. I filled out the Addendum contract which they canceled by accident. I resubmitted it and am waiting to hear back. Does anyone know how long this could take?”

As useful a resource as Trulia Voices can be for getting multiple opinions, rarely do these opinions exactly meet what the buyer either wants or needs to hear for one very simple reason - no one answering the questions has any first-hand knowledge of what really happened.

Every transaction is different in some way, shape or form. And that’s even more true on bank owned homes, where communication from the listing agent and asset managers (who are working on behalf of the bank) often is negligible. It’s not uncommon to not know there’s an issue on a bank owned home until almost the closing date, whether it’s a question of clear title (been there), HOA dues owed in arrears (done that) or asset managers who aren’t able to sign their docs in a timely manner (got the T-shirt.)

There are two basic issues I see with the questions above:

1) If you’re trying to purchase a bank owned home on your own through the listing agent, you’re better off slamming your own head with a kitchen cabinet door for a while. At least then the pain will wear off when you pass out from the bludgeoning. The person above said they went through the listing agent thinking they’d get a deal because both sides of the commission wouldn’t have to be paid; they do have to be paid, to the listing agent himself because the listing agent has a contract with the bank for “x percent” and that “x percent” will be paid by the bank whether there’s one or two agents in the deal. Period.

2) None of these folks seem to trust what their buyers’ agents are telling them, so they’re looking for validation of their suspicions in a public forum. And they’ll probably find that validation from someone, even if that person is wearing an aluminum foil hat.

Simply put, get a buyers’ agent to help you purchase a bank owned home and manage the process on your behalf. And if you don’t trust the agent with whom you’re working, find an agent you’re willing and/or able to trust. Without that, this process is going to be more stressful and painful than it really ought to be.

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I’ve finally come up with a solution for buyers who are insistent on having me recommend areas in defiance of the Fair Housing Act … send them to Trulia Voices, where the law is trampled upon with impunity.

There were a couple of examples sitting in the Google Reader but we’re going to go with this one:

My family will be moving to AZ. What are good areas?

What’s fun is some agents will jump right in and start making suggestions even though they have nothing objective to go on. But here, the prospective buyer gives a little bit more rope for everyone to use …

I currently work for T-Mobile (corporate). We have 2 children (9 & 5). I noticed that there are lots of corporate stores in Phoenix, Tucson, and Mesa. Financing will not be a problem, Are concerns are location, schools and travel time for me getting to work and school for my husband. I would like to transfer to a high volume area with good demographics. And the school my husband wants to attend is in Scottsdale,AZ.. What areas do you suggest?

So let’s see … the only cities mentioned are Phoenix, Tucson (which we’re going to eliminate since it’s 120 miles away), Mesa and Scottsdale. Let the fun begin.

If your job takes you to the Phoenix area, you should give Scottsdale a serious look. I recently moved here with my wife and 2-yr-old daughter. We love it, and feel very comfortable here.

That’s tremendous information, Mr. Agent. Quick question, though. Why is it that you believe this buyer will be comfortable in Scottsdale just because you are? Do you have any information other than the mention of the school that leads you to that conclusion? What assumptions are we making to decide this buyer should give Scottsdale more serious consideration than anywhere else?

Moral: It doesn’t matter whether you’re comfortable or uncomfortable, happy living there or happy not be living there. You are not the buyer and putting yourself in their shoes involves making a series of assumptions you can’t legally make.

Scrolling down …

Walkscore is a great tool to use to see what’s near where you are going to live like the grocery store, gas station and so on.

I’m in the minority but I’m not a big fan of Walkscore as it pertains to Phoenix. I mean, when it’s 114 degrees outside, where the hell are you walking unless you’re a scorpion?

Not an illegal statement, incidentally … but I couldn’t resist.

I am also including a link to Desert Ridge which is North of the 101 freeway and close to everything you’ll need without paying Scottsdale inflated values for a home.

Really? Everything the buyer will need? How exactly do you know that, Mr. Agent? I’m not seeing anything in the buyer’s request that indicates the full gamut of what she needs. I agree about Desert Ridge to some degree (it’s not Scottsdale but it ain’t cheap) but lacking more complete information from the buyer, this seems to dance on the edge.

Now let’s go right over that edge …

 I am big Fan of Gilbert AZ. Great community & schools.

Great community? How? Based on what? If I live for the NFL, is a city almost an hour away from the stadium really great for me? Just sayin … (And yes, Patrick and I have had this argument in the past and we agree to disagree - not about Gilbert, but about what you can say to a buyer just starting to look.

However Tempe maybe a better central location for you and your Family. Now if you choose Tempe, you must look at the Lakes community.

The Lakes offer an 80 acre lake for boating, 3 schools ( Elementary, Jr High, & High School ) within a mile of the community, full clubhouse. The HOA fees are only $70. per month that includes everything. In my opinion the Lakes HOA board is one of the top ten best run, most to offer in the country…yes country.

Why must this buyer look at the Lakes? We don’t know anything - ANYTHING - that justifies blatantly steering someone toward a specific subdivision in a specific city. Just because you like the Lakes (and I grew up with some Lakes envy myself while living on the Dobson Ranch) doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for everyone. As real estate professionals, we cannot legally make these assumptions.

You mentioned that Mesa is one of the locations that has a lot of corporate locations for you…there are some nice communities in NE Mesa that would offer great schools, and easy freeway access along the 202 for your husband to head into Scottsdale.

Here’s a fun fact … the Mesa Unified School District includes not only northeast Mesa but the entire city. And at the risk of being accused of harboring lingering resentment toward Mountain Pee-you View, there are great schools in many parts of the city. There also is good freeway access from Loop 101 and US 60 on the south and west sides of Mesa.

And so the question becomes … why northeast Mesa and not another section? What has led you to steer this client to a particular portion of an extremely large city? Better have some objective reason for doing so …

Lastly …

We can not tell you what area is best, but we can provide you with enough resources for you to make an informed decision. There are many areas in and around Scottsdale the will meet your needs, it will all depend on how long of a commute you are willing to have and other criteria. Scottsdale, Tempe and some sections of Phoenix seem to be a good match for you.

Guess what? Carlos has it right … I might not have used the word seem. “May” might have been a better choice. But he doesn’t limit the focus of the answer toward a certain part of Scottsdale, he doesn’t suggest specific neighborhoods lacking direction from the client (and therefore won’t have to explain why he didn’t suggest the homes a block over from the suggested area) and he doesn’t make any assumptions about the buyer.

And the sad part is, his answer likely will be viewed as being unhelpful all because it happened to be legal. Ironic, isn’t it?

One last one that I can’t resist …

Remember also that the searches on the Internet don’t always have the most current up to date information particularly for bank owned properties, so always use a Realtor to find those for you 1st where ever possible.

Shameless plug: The search on my Phoenix bank owned homes site updates throughout the day and will have about as good of information as any of us have. Hard to get more complete info when bank owned listing agents have made the decision en masse not to answer their phones.

Happy hunting, folks.

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Batting practice on the Texas Rangers’ fields at the Surprise Recreation Center often were punctuated by shouts of “didyou?!” - as in “did you just hit the ball over the fence.”

This morning, I found myself yelling “didyou” at my computer monitor - as in “did you really just do that?”

Yes, dear readers, we’re now at the point where a real estate agent went to Trulia Voices to find out if a home is on lockbox rather than going to the Arizona Regional MLS for the same information.

God help all of us in this business.

Folks, I can’t begin to urge you enough not to settle for the first agent you find or to call on a sign and decide this is the best person to help you find your home.

The MLS and the residential resale contract are the twin lifebloods of real estate and we are at a point where fewer of the licensed thousands have the slightest concept of how to work with either one. Make sure the agent you choose actually knows not only what is written in the nine-page contract but knows the effect of the words. And make sure your agent knows how to search the MLS for listing information rather than rely on online listing aggregators that don’t carry a substantial portion of the listings.

Postscript: The home in question, by the way, has been off the market for the past month … well, except for on Trulia where the listing’s never been updated. It took about 45 seconds to make this discovery in ARMLS.

Technorati Tags: Phoenix real estate

(The home in question, by the way, has been off the market for the past month … well, except for on Trulia where the listing’s never been updated.)

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About a year ago, Arizona State University’s Realty Studies department noticed a discrepancy in its data. Without realizing it, the folks there were including as sales those foreclosed homes where no one had purchased the property and it instead reverted back to the bank.

How could they make such a mistake? Because in the tax records, the sale looks like a normal sale … almost.

Here’s the tax record as it appears in the Arizona Regional MLS:

Even a local agent who’s not accustomed to seeing these - those agents who might only complete one or two transactions a year for family and friends, for instance - could overlook the telltale signs that this wasn’t a real sale … Bank of New York as the buyer, for instance, or No New Mortgage in the financing line.

If the experts at ASU’s Realty Studies department missed the reality on these type of sales, at least until April, how hard will it be for members of the general public looking for real estate in Phoenix to discern what’s real and what’s not when they see it online?

Here’s the “sale” information as displayed on Trulia:

Looks like a real sale, right? So much so that an agent in Louisiana pointed to this as the most recent sale in trying to help this Phoenix buyer. It’s not really the out-of-state agent’s fault … she, like the person asking the question, was looking at the information being provided on Trulia through their connection with the local public records.

It’s just that the data’s wrong. No, that’s not right either. The data is what the data is. It’s the interpretation of the partial data provided (partial in this case because the key piece of data - Bank of New York as the buyer - is missing.)

And that’s what real estate has become over the past year … consumers completely as much of their own research as they can, to their credit, but not realizing that nearly all of the data they’re seeing is incomplete in some way. And no matter how much incomplete data you accumulate, you’re almost certainly never going to get a complete picture since the vast majority of this data comes from the same sources.

Some members of the public don’t want to bother an agent while they’re performing their initial research. Others don’t want to be bothered by an agent while doing the same. I can understand both perspectives.

But at some point, there is benefit to bringing in the expertise of someone in the field to make sure what you’re seeing on paper is what’s really there.

If even the experts at Arizona State can be fooled when it’s their job to examine the data, doesn’t it seem possible the same can happen to you?

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We’ll do this one Jeopardy style and start with the answers …

Yes, the closet is part of the marster [sic] bedroom & can be easily measured as well as the actual master bedroom floor plan.

No need to buzz in. The question was “Can I get the measurements for each room including the master closet?” and was about a home in Fort Mohave, Arizona. The (hopefully) sarcastic answer was provided by an agent in Oklahoma City, which isn’t all that close to Fort Mohave. And I say hopefully sarcastic because it’s frightening to think someone would regard that as a helpful answer.

From the perspective of an agent, what exactly was the point? If you’re into some form of self amusement, the Internet is filled with sites that can help you waste up to 4 minutes of your day. Beyond that, was the sole reason for the answer the ability to increase your Trulia profile’s “answers” total?

From the consumers’ perspective (and make no mistake, Trulia Voices is intended to be a platform for the consumer), the answer’s pretty much par for the course for a property-specific question asked on Voices.

And it highlights the potentially fatal flaw with Trulia as a potential MLS killer: the site is able to attract potential buyers, but once they’ve been attracted they’re left on the vine. It reminds me of the quote at the end of Charlie Wilson’s War (which is worth the watch):

“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world… and then we f—-d up the endgame.”

Trulia’s attempting to change the real estate world but the endgame’s a disaster. Take a look at the questions being asked by the consumers …

• Can you please give me the name and number of your mortgage company?
• Please call me at [number redacted] with more info.
• I would like to know the total amount to move in and where to put in an application. [Eds note: question submitted on a home no longer on the market.}
• Is this property still for sale? [URL contains the word “sold”]
• Where is this house located? [Listing with no address provided]
• Why is this house listed with zero bedrooms and zero bathrooms? [Because it came from RealtyTrac and this is a notice of Trustee’s Sale]
• Is this property still available, occupied, how is the general area and how much work does it need?
• Was this property built energy efficient [on listing with “address not disclosed”}

Your perception may be different, but to me it seems like the bulk of these questions and others similar to them are being thrown into the collective for an answer from a specific person. I don’t think someone was asking for any lender’s information. My sense is they were looking for Trulia’s lender - and there isn’t one.

And the format itself is such that most questions are treated like so much chum in the water by agents in the local market and elsewhere. I do see some people’s point that there can be value answering a very, very general question in a market other than your own (value mostly seen in SEO) but more often than not the answers are like the example at the top of the post - completely irrelevant and beyond useless.

Suggestions have been made in the past in this space and elsewhere but here are the changes Trulia ought to consider so that the consumer who stumbles onto the site actually gets the information they need:

• Inquiries about particular properties get funnelled to the listing agent and not subjected to the Trulia Voices dogpile.
• Trulia Voices answers need to be limited to agents at least in the same state as the area listed in the question.
• Trulia Voices needs a sheriff to police the answers and eliminate the blatant spam or stupidity. Thumbs up/thumbs down didn’t work and voting “useful” isn’t. Even flagging blatant spam doesn’t seem to work, judging by the fact this question still lives on despite violating Community Guidelines.

People are arriving at Trulia presumably expecting a relatively comprehensive search vehicle and actual help with the buying or selling process. Voices is an imperfect forum for the latter but at least could approach a more user-friendly state with some simple tweaks.

Because if the presentation of real estate data is supposed to be about the consumer, then the vehicle by which the consumer receives his or her information needs to be formatted in such a manner that his edification is the central purpose, not an afterthought.

UPDATE: Not five minutes after posting this, someone asked for photos and HOA fees for a specific property. Here was one of the responses:

Are you being represented by a BUYER’S AGENT (A buyer’s agent protects your best interest and works for you). You can use a BUYER’S AGENT even with NEW HOME BUILDERS.

I have sold 2 units in this same complex - If you are not working with a BUYER’S AGENT, please contact me for specific information I have on this complex. You can find my contact info on my website below.

As I’m confident you’ve noticed, the answer has nothing to do with the question. It’s pure spam from someone trolling Voices.

This is one of the reasons I rarely if ever join the “conversation” there. I don’t want to be associated with agents who shamelessly promote their own agenda while ignoring the questions being asked.

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