March 30th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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While watching the closed sales that were posted this week I noticed two homes that sold for very low prices considering the general areas and neighborhoods they are located within. The first home was a foreclosure/bank owned home on Tucson’s northwest side the home is 1954sf located in the Countryside neighborhood. (Just Northeast Of Cortaro and Hartman) The impressive part of this is this 3/2 with vaulted ceilings, wood floors, and in general a nice floor plan was this home just closed escrow for $150,000! That’s an incredible buy! Now this home needed some work there is no two ways about it, but for a $150,000 on the NW side this leaves a lot of equity for repairs etc. Let’s put it this way a couple months ago I had a listing of the exact same home (floor plan anyway) and the sellers had received a couple of offers for in excess of $200k! So to be able to buy the same home (kind of it was the same floorplan, I’m sure this foreclosure home was in no way of the same quality) for $150k even if it needs some work seems like an incredible deal to me. That represents a 25% discount vs. what the home “should” be worth in good shape. Honestly deals like this in my mind don’t come much better then this one did.

March 25th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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More evidence that the real estate markets across the nation maybe bottoming came out today as New Home Sales stats reported a 4.7% increase to a 337,000 annual pace. This increase in sales is the highest increase in 10 months (April of 2008) and it also goes along with the increases seen in the existing home sales numbers, and new home starts.

March 24th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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Existing home sales came in at a higher then expected number across the nation. Existing home sales increased 5.1% in February a lot of this can probably be due to incredibly high affordability in almost all areas and the stimulus plan that brought additional buyers into the market. For the first time in a long while real estate reports are starting to show trends that are not in line with the past 3 year downturn. A couple weeks ago New Home Starts surprised everyone by being up 22% over previous year numbers. Now with Existing Home sales notching the largest sales increase since July 2003, it could mean a baseline bottom is starting (or has begun) to form. Now with only one increase on the books there still needs to be (in my mind) at least 3-6 straight months of sales increases to justify the real estate markets have turned around. For the time being these stats are showing strength in what was thought to be a still weakening housing market. Also keep in mind all real estate is very local sometimes even down to the street you live on. The Tucson Arizona real estate market seems to be making a turn around but whether it has truly hit bottom or not is hard to say. I do see a lot of buyers are in the market right now probably more today then anytime in the past 6 months. Time will tell if this is the bottom of the market or just a slight blimp. Here is the entire report from cnbc.com about existing home sales for those who would like additional info. (along with a video)

March 19th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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Mortgage rates are falling again as the Federal Reserve buys up mortgage backed securities allowing banks to get them off their books and pushing more money into the mortgage arena. More money available for mortgages equals lower rates since there is more supply of money for the same demand. Here’s the full story from the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rates on 30-year mortgages plunged this week to the lowest level since January, and may fall further after the Federal Reserve launched a new effort to prop up the flailing housing market.

March 18th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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I think Phoenix Arizona is offering a perfect (well maybe not “perfect” but a very good plan) incentive to get (or help) buyers decide to make a home purchase specifically pertaining to lowering the amount of foreclosure inventories within the city limits. Basically what the $15,000 “grant” or incentive states is this: Buy a foreclosure home in the Phoenix city limits and the city will “grant” you up to $15,000 for your down payment. Here’s actually the more specific details provided from

http://arizonarealestatehome.com

March 18th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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As you can see, all numbers are down. This is the same trend that has been unfolding for the past three years as the market adjusts to the overall economy and buyer demand present in the overall marketplace. The interesting thing to take notice of is that home sales units are virtually unchanged, and prices are not falling as fast as had been the trend. Back a couple months ago, we saw year over year price decreases close to 20%…

This article, including charts, links to previous reports, and a link to this month’s full MLS report, is continued on Michael’s website. Please click here to continue.

March 17th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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Very unexpectedly new home construction levels showed a sizable uptick in February. The housing starts number jumped 22.2% to a seasonally adjusted rate of 583,000. This is after several months of serious declines. Below is the actual report on the statistics to show all the details on the numbers and historic averages. The big question is where did this “pop” in the numbers come from? Consensus says that the stimulus helped get buyers off the fence (which I have seen personally). I think it’s a short lived pop and more then likely new home starts will remain at record low levels for another 6 solid months as inventories remain high. Now I also think (and have seen) buyers stepping up to buy because home affordability is at incredible highs. It’s really amazing (at least in Tucson) to see how much home you can get for your money and then considering mid to low 5% interest rates and buyers will continue to step up more this year then probably last year for sure.

March 10th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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Mortgage bond prices rose last week applying downward pressure on mortgage interest rates. Rates found support from falling stock prices. The Dow Jones index fell into the 6,000 range early in the week and was unable to recover. The employment report released last Friday indicated continued weakness in the labor market with the US economy losing 651,000 jobs in February. The Treasury auctions will take center stage this coming week as debt supply concerns continue. Most of the other releases are expected to be weaker and, any surprises to the contrary, will likely result in mortgage interest rate volatility.

March 6th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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With the current Great Recession in full swing where do you put your money? That’s a tough call because it seems like every “investment” is losing money I have an investor client that made a lot of sense to me the other day when he told me to find him a great investment property that he could buy with cash. I found him a 1261sf bank owned home that was only 4 years old in Sahuarita. The bank had installed new carpeting and re-painted the whole inside so with some other minor repairs this home was ready to rent. The property was really nice and priced very reasonably at 118k with his cash offer and some negotiation we got the bank to give it away to him for $99,500! That doesn’t happen in 99/100 negotiations but with the right offer and the right agent banks will break down to make a deal which is what happened here.

March 5th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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For the regular readers I apologize I hadn’t been making any posts for a while I’m going to get recommitted to getting solid, resourceful info about the Tucson real estate market. Since I had put quite a few deals into escrow and had some other things going on time for the blog was slim (at best). People don’t realize this blog (at least for me) takes up 15-20 hours a week on a regular basis to write, research, and come up with good topics it’s not an easy thing to just “invent” stuff people will actually want to read.