April 28th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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Everyone wants to get a great deal on a homebuilders spec home in Tucson AZ but how do you do it? Well hopefully these tips will help you truly get the best deal on a brand new builder spec home in the Tucson/ Phoenix area. When trying to get the best deal it’s always best for a few things to line up for you as a buyer and these would include the following:

1) The longer the home has been on the market completely finished typically means the better for the buyer when trying to negotiate the price.

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.

February 27th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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In my own experience of handling short sales on the listing side and speaking with an appraiser I have come to the conclusion that I’m not sure buying a short sale really saves a buyer much at all after it’s all said and done. There are a couple reasons behind this and not all short sales are the same some buyers do get really great deals and this is all hypothetical meaning every single short sale is much different. But here are the findings that both myself and an appraiser spoke about the subject with deemed as more then likely the “deal” most buyers get on a short sale home:

February 19th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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I didn’t have a lot of time to call every home builder in Tucson but I hit up the larger ones to see what kind of incentives they were offering for buyers to step up and buy from them. Mostly the Tucson builders are giving super cheap financing and paying (the incentive part) to buy the rate down really low. Some of the other builders aren’t doing a whole lot but there sticking close to their low home prices hoping that will be enough to lure buyers into buying their homes. In any event here is the breakdown also keep in mind builders change their incentives on sometimes a daily basis so what you see doesn’t mean it’s always still available (subject to change).

February 7th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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We’re concluding this lengthy series of posts summarizing the foreclosure real estate market in Tucson AZ. A lot of people “want” to buy foreclosure real estate but have no clue as to what those homes are going for in price and also what type of discounts are normal or possible in the distress markets currently. Hopefully this series of posts have shed light on the very little published and hardly even researched area of real estate distress sales for the Tucson region. We continue the rest of the sub-markets of Tucson with the Central section of town.

February 6th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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This is the second portion of three posts dedicated to breaking down Tucson’s foreclosure home marketplace. In these posts where looking to separate the entire Tucson foreclosure real estate market by side of town and then give you the stats and trends for each independent sub-market of the Tucson region. First up for the second set of statistics is the Extended Northwest (XNW) side of town this area is far reaching cutting off at about the I-10/ Marana exit and going up into Red Rock AZ. The XNW is by the number of homes in that region a very small sub-market of the Tucson region however these statistics will help buyers looking in that area for foreclosure property to get a better concept of what’s happening in the XNW.

February 5th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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In different areas of Tucson the real estate market acts independent of other areas, meaning this: all real estate is very local down to the neighborhood you live in and even the street you live on things could sell for a lot less or more then just a mile away. So in thinking of this I thought it would be interesting to see the differences in the sub-markets of Tucson and see how much less then the listed price foreclosure homes are being sold for in the Tucson area. Again these are just averages, each side of Tucson is very different even the “NW” section of Tucson covers an area running from Oracle and River to Oracle Arizona. (A completely different town north of Oro Valley.) So within “NW” Tucson there’s the independent cities of Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, Oracle, and Catalina so even within these stats the averages will sway once you get to specifics. However without question these statistics will help you as a buyer (or seller) to understand the foreclosure market in each sub-section of the Tucson AZ region. So for this post we’ll dissect each part of Tucson by the side of town it covers. This is going to be a three part series with this one (Part 1 of 3) we’ll cover the South sides of town (S, XS.SE,SW) and in the second portion we will cover the North sides (N,NE,NW,XNW) of town to see how their foreclosure statistics stack up. In part 3 we’ll take a look at the remaining sides of town including Central, East, and the West sides of Tucson.

January 24th, 2009 by Michael Oliver

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Let’s face it everyone wants a “deal” specifically when they are making a home purchase. Most people in today’s real estate market understand that foreclosure homes are where they have the best chance of getting the best deal on a home. But how do you maximize the chances that you will get the bank to give you an incredibly good deal on your foreclosure home purchase? Well read the rest of this post and hopefully you will get the basics of how to score the best deal possible on a foreclosure home.

November 18th, 2008 by Michael Oliver

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I have touched on this subject in prior posts but I kind of want to go further with explaining how the real estate business works specifically in the foreclosure world that in the current market is where a lot of the “deals” are happening. In the foreclosure real estate sales business individual agents are hired to sell foreclosure properties for banks. I think everyone knows this part; HOWEVER few people EVEN A LOT OF REALTORS (Believe it or not maybe 1 out of 50 even know the behind the scenes processes of these sales.)don’t understand how the actual business of foreclosures works and once explained you as a buyer (or potential buyer) will completely understand why you don’t want to buy directly from the listing agent. So I will start from the beginning of the processes and then it turn give pointers to help potential buyers of foreclosed property tips to try to give them the best chance of scoring the best deal for themselves NOT the BANK!

November 7th, 2008 by Michael Oliver

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I wanted to do a post about “Misinformation” specifically pertaining to real estate. Recently I was negotiating a short sale where I was the listing agent and the bank countered an offer and wanted the buyer to increase the sale price by $1000. Ok so what happens? The buyer comes back and says “I’ll offer 165k”, keep in mind his original offer was for 183k?? SO in the buyers mind they were thinking what? I already offered 183k (which they know I (the buyer)am completely approved and able to buy the property for.) they (the bank countered at 184k) buyer re-counters at 165k WTF? So after 2 days of me the listing agent explaining to both the buyer and their agent; “To buy the home you will need to up your current 183k offer to 184k and that will get you the house.” Eventually the buyer agreed to do this, however he almost cost himself a great property why? Well some friends of his told him all the banks are hurting and he wasn’t getting a good enough deal? I am about certain none of this buyer’s friends even ever saw the property or knew anything about anything. This is called “Misinformation” and it is all over the place especially in this market. There are many people who are very knowledgeable about real estate and they are not agents, but there is also an overwhelming amount of people that “think” they know all about real estate because they have seen some real estate “TV” shows and maybe spend a half an hour on Zillow and assume they know everything. Now give them a voice real estate does “seem” easy I mean people buy and sell items every single day of their lives whether its buying a car or groceries commerce is conducted by one’s self every day. In addition everyone knows (I know a few) a real estate agent that does “ok” and you wonder how because they know very little about the industry/ practices. Those people ARE very good at one thing: NETWORKING that’s how that works they meet enough people that are comfortable (at least initially) to use them for representation only after you as the “client” are deep into a transaction do you realize: