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Phoenix One of the Worst Places to Retire NOT TRUE!

admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:25:03 +0000

Report Calls Phoenix One of the Worst Places to Retire…NOT TRUE!

PHOENIX – The Phoenix metro is named one of the worst cities in the country to retire — and you can blame it on the housing market. (see video interview below)

The valley used to be the place to retire — at least part of the year, because of our wonderful weather.

But now, some financial experts say the Phoenix housing market seems too gloomy.

Everywhere you look across the valley, there’s another house up for sale, and realtor Bette Zerba says a lot of those sellers will lose money.

“For those people that were thinking that their home was their retirement, I feel for them, because prices have come down dramatically at least 30 percent at least in Sun City areas,” says Zerba.

It’s also the main reason why Phoenix has been named one of the worst places to retire in the country, according to the fiscal times.

The other four places include: Las Vegas, Nevada, and Clark County in general; Davenport, Florida; and the Laguna Woods Village in Orange County, California.

A leading valley real estate professor says he doesn’t see the valley turning around for many years down the line.

Zerba agrees, and says retirees looking to sell are vulnerable.

“Right now they’re in the same predicament as a lot of people in the Phoenix area. If they did purchase after 2004, 2005 they are upside down, there’s no question about it.”

However, there’s a silver living in all this.

“The bright side of the coin, for those who truly want to do some cherry picking and get incredible buys, now is the best time in the world.”

There are 916 active listings in Sun City, Bette Zerba, Re/Max Realtor says

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Chateau On Central Open To Buyers At Reduced Rate

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 17:55:59 +0000

Chateau On Central Open To Buyers At Significantly Reduced Rate. Save millions!

The brownstone development, Chateau on Central, at Palm Lane and Central Avenue this month opened to buyers again after months of construction led by the developer, MSI West Investments.

MSI West Investments bought the property this year for $7 million after efforts to sort out the bankruptcy of Mortgages Ltd.

Luxury homes

The 21 homes in this development are three stories and include a basement or wine cellar. They also include high-end amenities such as granite countertops, elevators and terraces.

Price point

Most homes include about 5,200 square feet of space, but one home has up to 8,200 square feet.

These luxury homes were originally priced at more than $2.8 million, but since MSI West Investments bought and has worked on finishing the homes, the price has been slashed in half to about $1.4 million.

Home business

The homes, which are near the Phoenix Art Museum and Heard Museum, are made for mixed-use. This designation allows owners to operate offices or businesses in the homes.

Call Us Today For A Viewing Appointment of Chateau On Central 602-791-1766

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New AZ Real Estate Laws Help Homeowners

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:20:55 +0000

Several pieces of important Arizona legislation that would have slowed foreclosures and potentially aided in the recovery of the housing market died in the recent session.

But some key bills did survive, and the new laws will help.

• Senate Bill 1130 regulates the growing number of foreclosure consultants working with homeowners. This legislation makes it illegal for foreclosure consultants to collect upfront fees from homeowners.

Consultants must also disclose all fees through a signed contract, which a homeowner can cancel up to three days after signing. The bill gives homeowners the right to recover damages from foreclosure consultants and state and county prosecutors the ability to file criminal charges against any consultant or firm that breaks the new law.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, as well as other state housing advocates and regulators, have pushed for more licensing and regulation of foreclosure consultants due to scams that are costing homeowners their savings and home.

• House Bill 2242 helps protect senior homeowners from reverse-mortgage scams. The law requires a mortgage broker to provide the borrower with a list of housing counselors and an explanation of all fees and total repayment costs of the loan prior to closing.

• House Bill 2479 requires more identification from buyers of foreclosure properties. The law requires foreclosure documentation to contain a name and contact information of the person responsible for the property. This information will help cities contact someone to take care of vandalism and maintenance on foreclosures.

Home prices

Phoenix is one of 91 cities out of 152 to post an increase in home prices during the past year.

Results from the National Association of Realtors’ latest survey, released Tuesday, show existing-home prices climbed 9.1 percent in the Phoenix area for the year ended March 31.

The region’s median price climbed to $140,900.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/2010/05/12/20100512biz-catherine0512.html#ixzz0njTcBJo5

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Phoenix Home Prices Up

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:11:40 +0000

Phoenix Home Prices Improve

Phoenix is one 91 cities out of 152 across the country to post an increase in home prices during the past year.

Results from the National Association of Realtors latest survey, released Today, show existing home prices climbed 9.1 percent in the Phoenix-area for the 12 months ended March 31st. The region’s median price climbed from $129,200 to $140,900
during the period.

“Buyer confidence is back, and home buyers have long-term views,” said National Realtor President Vicki Cox Golder, who is a Tucson real estate agent. “The typical buyer plans to stay in their home for 10 years, so we’ve put the flipping mentality behind us.”

She said more people are buying with plans to hold onto homes for 10 years or longer.

The shift in mindset among buyers, particularly in metro Phoenix, is key to the area’s housing market recovering.

Some other cities that experienced home price booms and crashes during the past six years didn’t fare as well as metro Phoenix. Home prices are down 15 percent in Orlando and 11.8 percent in Las Vegas.

Even more stable housing market are posting declines in home values. Chicago’s home prices dipped 5 percent during the 12 months tracked by the Realtor report. Albuquerque home prices are down 4.6 percent. and Seattle saw a 4 percent decline.

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/CatherineReagor/82038

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What Happens in a AZ Foreclosure

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:41:59 +0000

Losing your home: What Happens in a AZ Foreclosure

When a homeowner falls behind on at least three mortgage payments, a lender will usually initiate foreclosure proceedings.

In the first step, the lender hires a trustee to handle the foreclosure and ensure that the process follows Arizona laws.

In metropolitan Phoenix, a notice of trustee sale is filed with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. At that point an auction date is set, but the date can be moved or canceled by the lender de- pending on negotiations with the borrower.

The trustee is charged with providing the homeowner information on the pending trustee sale (foreclosure sale) of their home. If the homeowner files bankruptcy, the foreclosure sale is usually delayed.

If the foreclosure auction occurs as scheduled, an opening bid for the home is posted at least a day before the auction. Traditionally, opening bids requested by the lender were for the amount owed on the mortgage. But after the huge drop in Phoenix-area home prices, lenders are dropping their opening bids to far below what is owed on the home so they don’t have to take the house back, evict the homeowner and hire a real-estate agent to resell the home.

All Valley foreclosure auctions used to be held at the county courthouse. But as the number of foreclosures has climbed, auctions have expanded to the offices of lenders’ trustees.

Now, as many as five foreclosure auctions are held a day in metropolitan Phoenix. The main auction on the courthouse steps starts at noon. Auctions in the law offices begin at 9 a.m. Arizona statute requires bidders to bring a $10,000 cashier’s check to participate.

Trustees hire auctioneers to handle the bidding. Lenders don’t allow homeowners to bid on their own houses.

Due to the backlog of foreclosure homes and pending loan modifications, dozens of trustee sales are postponed every day. Homeowners are typically contacted by trustees about the postponement of the trustee sale on their property. But sometimes postponements are only listed on the Web site of the group the lender hires to sell its foreclosure homes or only announced by auctioneers right before the scheduled auction.

The winning buyer must pay the full amount of the bid by the end of the next business day. Unsuccessful bidders receive their $10,000 deposits back.

The home’s new owner can then begin evicting the former owners if they are still in the home. Someone who lost the home in a trustee sale has five days after being notified by the new owner before the forcible eviction process begins.

On the sixth day after the foreclosure auction, the new owner can file in local or county court for a forcible eviction. If the former homeowners want to fight the eviction, they can appear in court. But if they lose, the new owner can request the Maricopa County sheriff to send a constable to evict them.

Last year, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office handled 1,416 forcible evictions.

Source: The Arizona Republic

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Arizona Ranks 4 For Mortgage Fraud

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:31:24 +0000

Arizona No. 4 For Mortgage Fraud

Arizona now ranks fourth for mortgage fraud nationally. It’s the first time the state has cracked the top five for the problem, according to data released this week from the Mortgage Asset Research Institute.

Florida, New York and California (in that order) rank ahead of Arizona in 2009 mortgage-fraud cases. The most prevalent type of home-loan fraud is application misrepresentation, which includes borrowers lying about income. Overall, U.S. mortgage fraud climbed 7 percent last year.

Jennifer Butts, manager of data processing at the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, said mortgage fraud typically goes undetected until a loan goes into foreclosure. Arizona has been among the top-10 states for mortgage fraud since the end of the state’s housing boom in 2006.

Phoenix survey

RL Brown and Greg Burger did more than compile important building statistics in their latest “Phoenix Housing Market Letter.” They polled 200 real-estate leaders on the area’s economy and housing market. The first question asked participants to rank the state’s biggest problems: No. 1 was jobs and No. 2 was foreclosures.

Then, the group was asked what it expected of Phoenix’s real-estate market in the next year. More than one-half of respondents expect it to stay the same. About 31 percent expect it to improve.

The “Phoenix Housing Market Letter” reports there were 908 home-building permits issued in the region during March, the highest level in eight months.

S&P index

The latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home-price index shows Phoenix-area home prices fell 1.5 percent between January and February. The Valley fared better than Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., which all posted monthly price declines of more than 2 percent.

For the 12 months that ended in February, S&P tracked a 1.6 percent drop in Phoenix home prices. Las Vegas dropped 15 percent for the period. Tampa and Seattle posted a 6 percent drop. Detroit was next with a more than 5 percent decline.

Homebuyer help

Phoenix is holding sessions to help people tap federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds to buy foreclosures. Homebuyers can get $15,000 in down-payment help. Today’s program is 6 p.m. at the Washington Activity Center, 2240 W. Citrus Way. Another program is planned at 6 p.m. Thursday at South Mountain Community Center, 212 E. Alta Vista Road.

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First-time Homebuyer Rebate Expires April 30, 2010

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:25:16 +0000

First-time homebuyer rebate expires April 30

When the clock strikes twelve on Friday night, a key incentive driving Valley new-home sales will go the way of Cinderella’s horse-drawn carriage.

A federal income-tax rebate of up to $8,000 for first-time homebuyers, and a later-approved rebate of up to $6,500 for some repeat buyers, no longer will be in effect.

Naturally, some area homebuilders intend to give would-be buyers every opportunity for that last-minute impulse purchase.

Still, the deadline-focused builders aren’t as frenzied to capture that final tax-rebate-eligible sale as one might expect, because the tax rebate hasn’t spurred the kind of sales volume they had hoped for.

At least not since the rebate’s original, late-November expiration date, said Pierrette Tierney, Scottsdale-based homebuilder Taylor Morrison’s vice president of sales and marketing.

“The extension of the November tax credit for first-time homebuyers wasn’t as effective as it had been before the original deadline,” Tierney said. “We sort of stole future buyers (before the deadline extension) and moved their decision-making process forward.”

And the up-to-$6,500 tax rebate for move-up buyers that federal leaders added when they extended the deadline has been a virtual non-starter, she added.

“It definitely has not been as effective as the new-homebuyer tax credit,” Tierney said.

Generally, extending the 2009 first-time-buyer income-tax rebate, which was an upgrade of 2008’s $7,500 homebuyer tax deferment, doesn’t appear to have benefited the Phoenix-area real-estate market much in 2010, said independent housing analyst Jim Belfiore, who specializes in the new-home market.

“Just over the past two weeks, demand has popped up as a result of the tax credit,” said Belfiore, president of Belfiore Real Estate Consulting in Phoenix. “We really hadn’t seen a lot of movement as a result of the credit prior to that.”

Like Tierney, Belfiore was talking about home sales after the rebate’s original Nov. 28 deadline.

In the months leading up to that date, home sales remained unseasonably strong, which most sellers and analysts attributed to the tax rebate.

Unlike a tax deduction, a rebate is a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the claimant’s income tax that is declared at tax time and then refunded by the IRS via a lump-sum government check or account debit.

Although many refer to the homebuyer rebate as a “tax credit,” it actually differs from a tax credit in that it is paid in full even to claimants who earned no income or owed no taxes for the year.

There’s no question that the rebate attracted first-time buyers in droves last fall, local housing experts said.

According to Phoenix housing-data firm the Information Market, there were 983 Maricopa County new-home sales in November. At that time, no monthly new-home sales total had matched that number since December 2008, before many area residents were aware a full-blown housing market crash was in progress.

In March, the most recent month available, there were 630 new-home sales in Maricopa County, according to Information Market data, and February’s total was 422 sales.

Deadlines for incentive-seekers tend to benefit homebuilders more than they do sellers of existing homes, experts said, because a new home can be purchased more quickly. Buyers who sign a contract before midnight Friday still have until June 30 to close escrow.

Taylor Morrison, despite the limited volume of last-minute customers, planned to keep sales offices open until 7 p.m. – an hour later than usual – all this week, including Friday.

Los Angeles-based homebuilder KB Home spokesman Craig LeMessurier said his company would keep its offices open until 9 p.m. Friday, possibly even later if a serious buyer were to walk in at, say, 8:59.

“I think we’d stay open for somebody who really wanted to buy a home,” he said.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/business/realestate/articles/2010/04/28/20100428home-tax-rebate-ends.html#ixzz0mVjcKtks

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Gilbert, Queen Creek Housing Permits Spike

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:17:55 +0000

Gilbert, Queen Creek Housing Permits Spike

Gilbert and Queen Creek saw big upward spikes in the number of single-family housing permits issued in the first two months of 2010, in large part due to tax credits that end Friday.

Gilbert’s 260 permits during the first two months of the year were up dramatically over 81 during the same period last year. Queen Creek saw a less dramatic year-over-year jump: from 9 to 37.

“I think that it’s been obvious for some time that the Southeast Valley in general has been leading the housing recovery in the region,” said Arizona housing analyst RL or Brown.

“I think it’s also accurate to attribute at least a substantial part of that to the impacts from the tax credits. . . . So I don’t think it’s any surprise that we’re seeing that kind of activity,” he said.

Whether the Valley’s new-home market is in recovery is a matter of conjecture absent the boost from the Federal Housing Tax Credit, Brown said. The $8,000 credit for first-time homebuyers was extended beyond its original deadline last year.

“The resale market, of course, has been the beneficiary of not just the stimulus but the really significantly low prices available in short-sale and foreclosed houses, so the resale market statistically has shown strong recovery – exceptionally strong recovery,” Brown said.

He added that although “the new-home market has not shown a ’strong’ recovery to date,” it is stabilizing from its “precipitous fall.”

Greg Tilque, who heads Gilbert’s development services, said the town’s growth is due to more than the credits. He said the town often accounts for 17 to 20 percent of single-family permits issued in the Valley, depending on the month.

He said the town’s diverse variety of housing options, good schools and other factors make people want to live there.

“I think that’s a good testament to the quality of life we’ve built over the years here,” he said.

Queen Creek spokeswoman Marnie Schubert said her community also saw a flurry of permits being issued leading up to the first deadline, which was in December.

“It really is just due to the rebates,” she said.

Tilque said he expects to see activity taper off as the credits expire.

He said the town had 160 permits in March. During the peak of the market, he said the town probably averaged 250 to 300 a month.

“There were some months we were over 400,” he said.

He said much of the activity is occurring in the south and southeast areas of Gilbert, in places like Layton Lakes and Morrison Ranch, because they have the most open land.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2010/04/29/20100429gilbert-housing.html#ixzz0mVhPTheR

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Free Phoenix Foreclosure MLS Search

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:01:35 +0000

Phoenix Foreclosure MLS Search

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Phoenix Area Luxury Home Sales

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:20:13 +0000

The Phoenix Valley’s priciest home sales In February 2010

The chief executive officer of a global sports management corporation, an orthodontist, a radiologist and a Canadian homebuilder are among the buyers and sellers in this week’s priciest home sales. $3,950,000.

Paradise Valley Properties LLC, a Florida limited-liability company whose managing members are Thomas J. Gast and Elizabeth F. Gast, purchased a seven-bedroom, 10-bath, 13,206-square-foot home along the western edge of the Camelback Golf Course in Paradise Valley. The home was sold by Alan L. Nero and Lisa M. Johnson as trustees of the RJLJ Declaration of Trust. Alan Nero was named chairman and CEO of CSMG Sports, a global sports management corporation in Chicago in 2000.

$3,239,000.

Gray U.S. Investments LP of Calgary, Alberta, paid cash for a 6,429-square-foot home with pool originally built in 2007 at the Silverleaf Club in Scottsdale. The home was sold by John J. Harris and his wife, Stephanie.

$2,751,000.

William M. Cannon, as trustee of the William M. Cannon Trust, paid cash for a five-bedroom, 6 ½-bath, 7,693-square-foot property north of Mummy Mountain in Paradise Valley. William Cannon is a personal-injury attorney with Cannon & Dunphy in Brookfield, Wis. The home was sold by A. Paul Serrano as sole member of Sapphire Home LLC.

$2,500,000.

Nataliya V. Plyushcheva and her husband, Imtiaz Ahmed, bought a six-bedroom, 6 ½-bath, 7,980-square-foot home at Mockingbird Square north of the Paradise Valley Country Club. Plyushcheva is a radiologist practicing in the West Valley. The home was sold by Paul Evans and Nicole McCurry-Evans and Scott and Julie Van Drunen.

$2,300,000.

Cal Wenzel, his wife, Edith, and Sharlene G. Rickett, all from Calgary, Alberta, paid cash for a five-bedroom, six-bath, 8,200-square-foot home originally built in 2007 west of the Eagle Mountain Golf Club in Scottsdale. Cal Wenzel is president of Shane Homes Ltd. and Creations by Shane Homes in Calgary, Alberta. Sharlene Rickett is vice president of corporate relations for the residential homebuilder. The home was sold by SAKK Investments LLC, a Nevada limited-liability company in Scottsdale.

Researched by John McLean and the Information Market.

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