ALL PHOENIX REAL ESTATE

Posted on March 12th, 2010 by Jonathan Dalton

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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Posted on March 11th, 2010 by Jonathan Dalton

In need of reading material for a light rail trip to Tempe last week, I picked up my copy of John Grisham’s “Playing for Pizza” for a second read. This got me missing Italy, which the wife and I visited back in 2006, and I found myself later picking up Tim Parks’ “A Season With Verona” for a second reading as well.

It was in this second book that I ran across this nugget:

“Sometimes he’s so determined to be clever he mesmerises [sic] himself, he can’t remember what he was supposed to be doing, the way sometimes a sentence, an idea, can become so overintricate, so self-regarding in its twists and turns, it collapses in on its own conceit and already the reader is looking elsewhere.”

Tends to remind me of some real estate blogs I’ve read; maybe I’ve made the same error, and perhaps the above transgression is somewhat less odious than the “See Dick tell Jane it’s a great time to buy” drivel that dominates so many websites. But still …

I was reading answers on Trulia Voices the other day, answers but not always questions since the answers as often as not don’t relate to the question and instead become offers to become employed by the questioner by some desperate agent, and it struck me how often there’s virtually useless jargon incorporated into the answer.

BPO, LTV, CMA, TMI …

If you catch me falling into that trap, feel free to call me out on it. Maybe not on the more elaborate constructions, though such sentences really aren’t my style. If the words don’t flow, they don’t flow, and as was once accused of Mozart, I try not to use too many notes, just enough to match the indescribable melody of syntax in my own head.

After all, writing when no one has the slightest idea what you’re saying - whether due to your own need to twist sentence construction into some Mobius-strip like creation, or the use of anagrams that mean nothing to anyone not in the business, or the exuberance with which you blindly try to solicit business even when people want to be informed, not solicited - you’re almost better off not turning on the computer.

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Posted on March 10th, 2010 by Jonathan Dalton

Do you crave power but loathe the idea of accountability? Do you enjoy finding reasons for something not to work rather than taking the time to see why they should? Enjoy wielding arcane and illogical guidelines regardless of how they were intended?

Become an underwriter!

As an underwriter, you have the opportunity to quash the dreams of home buyers and sellers nationwide. And we’re not talking about those dodgy folks using no-doc, zero down loans from yesteryear. No, in 2010 you have the opportunity to screw with people with 800-plus credit scores and large down payments not to mention those FHA buyers for whom there’s always a reason not to lend.

It doesn’t matter whether the guidance provided by the government since a guideline was passed says you’re wrong. You’re the underwriter, which means you’re right! You’re just like Moses coming down from Sinai, except you get to delete, amend and rewrite the tablets on which the Ten Commandments are written however you like. God himself can’t question what you’re doing (though if you have a first born son or aversion to locusts, you may want to show a little restraint, just in case.)

These aren’t the halcyon days when underwriters simply rubber stamped loans no matter how ridiculous the documentation and terms because, hey, everyone was doing it. This is much more fun! Armed with a stack of paper and Google, a good underwriter these days can find almost any reason not to approve a loan.

And why would they approve a loan? It’s not as if lenders are supposed to lend. You see how well that worked for them in the past (though there was less restraint shown than at a Vegas bachelorette party.)

Come on and release the inner curmudgeon within. Once you’ve got the reins, no one can slow you down - not the government, not the loan officers and real estate agents, and certainly not the dupes buyers and sellers counting on you to do your job according to its description, assess risk and make an appropriate decision (one that sometimes, despite it all, should end in an approved loan.)

Want to apply? Call 1-800-FUBUYERS today!

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Posted on March 9th, 2010 by Jonathan Dalton

When last we checked in at the end of January, inventory was sitting at just over 23,000 homes and there were around 4,000 sales over the preceding 30 days. Fast forward to today and there’s still just over 23,000 single family detached homes in the Phoenix real estate market and there were just over 5,100 sales the past 30 days.

The more precise numbers - 23,429 active homes for sale in Maricopa County as of this morning, 5,182 sales over the past 30 days - which means we have 4.52 months of inventory at this moment in time, still in the range of a sellers’ market but closer to balanced than we’d seen.

Here’s where the numbers get fun, though …

Of those 5,182 sales, 2,019 were of bank owned homes and 1,970 were of the non-bank owned, non-short sale variety. In other words, traditional sales are taking place just about as often as bank owned sales, which should come as quite a surprise who believe the only homes selling here are bank owned.

Most of the activity remains at the lower price points, though aggressively priced homes in most price ranges will sell. It’s all about the perception of value. Push the market, choose a higher price in hopes of negotiating down, and you’ll get nowhere right now.

As always, the details for the various cities and towns in the Phoenix real estate market are listed as below. And also as always, all data is provided by the Arizona Regional MLS and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

Phoenix Real Estate Inventory: March 9

	Sold	Active	Absorption
City	2/7/10-3/9/10	3/9/10	Rate	Change
Anthem	64	157	2.45	N/A
Avondale	152	381	2.51	N/A
Buckeye	196	638	3.26	N/A
Carefree	13	114	8.77	N/A
Cave Creek	55	367	6.67	N/A
Chandler	271	1,315	4.85	N/A
Desert Hills	7	11	1.57	N/A
El Mirage	78	181	2.32	N/A
Fountain Hills	36	350	9.72	N/A
Gilbert	339	1,403	4.14	N/A
Glendale	336	1,143	3.40	N/A
Goodyear	155	595	3.84	N/A
Laveen	109	415	3.81	N/A
Litchfield Park	36	188	5.22	N/A
Maricopa	210	687	3.27	N/A
Mesa	473	2,220	4.69	N/A
Paradise Valley	27	457	16.93	N/A
Peoria	235	1,130	4.81	N/A
Phoenix	1,356	5,642	4.16	N/A
Queen Creek	228	664	2.91	N/A
Scottsdale	338	2,966	8.78	N/A
Sun City	89	899	10.10	N/A
Sun City West	81	461	5.69	N/A
Surprise	365	1,109	3.04	N/A
Tempe	84	434	5.17	N/A
Tolleson	75	206	25.75	N/A
Waddell	17	93	5.47	N/A
Total	5,182	23,429	4.52	N/A

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Posted on March 7th, 2010 by Jonathan Dalton

It’s a not uncommon question that usually comes in one of two forms: “has there been any activity on this home” or “what other offers have the sellers received?”

And the answer, more often than not, is I don’t have the slightest idea. As a listing agent, it’s not always beneficial to reveal what other offers might have been accepted on a property; knowing a lowball offer previously has been rejected might help save a buyer some time in writing an offer, but that’s not necessarily my sellers’ concern. And, to be honest, price isn’t the only factor most sellers consider.

If there are multiple offers it might be beneficial, but perhaps not as it could conceivable scare off some buyers who might bid higher faced with a multiple counter offer. Again, as the listing agent, my concern is my sellers and not really what the buyers are facing.

Ultimately, though, it’s not my decision as a listing agent whether to disclose the presence of other offers. It’s solely up the sellers. I usually have some input but it’s their call.

This doesn’t discourage some buyers from asking though apparently others don’t want the information to be disclosed. From Trulia Voices:

We don’t receive any disclosure that our offer may be revealed in negotiating in any of the disclosure statements.Our first offer is used to drive up the price of the second one and etc. It’s a secret little bidding war that starts with the second offer presented and highly unethical. Of course you have a fiduciary duty to get the best offer for the seller but favoring secret insider information to some to drive up the price is cheating the ones that made the initial bid. …

What I really want to ask is if the same frustration would be there had this buyer been told what the highest offer was, topped it, and then bought the house they want. It begs an answer, no?

A purchase offer isn’t inside information by any stretch. In fact, there’s a very brief paragraph on page 8 of the AAR Residential Real Estate contract that says the public will be advised of this contract. I’m not a lawyer. Looking at it, and realizing this clause serves a different purpose, it doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch that it also would cover the ability to disclose an offer.

Not to mention, as a listing agent, my fiduciary responsibility of confidentiality only applies to my seller and not to the buyers I don’t represent.

One other theme of note from today’s screed:

The banks are choking a faster real estate recovery with their greedy practices and by late summer 2010 there will be a scarcity of any kind of buyers. Selling bank foreclosures has changed the practice of selling real estate and soured many consumers that feel mistreated

Funny, but I heard many of the same sentiments in 2005 and 2006. The real estate industry - not buyers, not investors, not sellers, just the agents - had driven up the market and it was unfair that ordinary people couldn’t buy.

Except they did. And they are. And they will continue to do so. Sour grapes tend to grow in individual batches only.

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