Science of Buying

Foreclosed properties, or those now owned by the lender are still around, though not as many and most don't tend to stick around on the market once they are released for sale, which could be a few months to over a year after the house was vacated and foreclosed.

Here are a few questions to investigate about a home. 

1. How old is the home. Older homes tend to have certain issues that come about as a result of age and many of these are exacerbated during the former owners distressed period. Also certain times in the real estate market, like boom times, the quality of construction and materials is usually lower. Learn about the specific issues that can come up and address them as you do your inspection.

2. Has the home been vacant for long? REO…

1. What percentage of the condo units are owner occupied. The more renters the less stable the complex.

2. What are the CC&R’s Get a copy of the rules and regulations which can have an impact on your future value and lifestyele.

3. Copy of the association's financial and reserves. Are they stable, or in the red.

4. What are the current and past assessments and are they keeping up with inflation: is there enough to cover repairs now an those larger ones in the future.

5. What do they maintain. What is included in the fee and what do you have to pay.

6. What have been the special assessments over the last 5 years. You want to know what money has been collected and spent on.

7. What is the turnover. A high turnover may be a sign of…

Q. Is the short sale purchase price negotiable?

A. The short answer is yes.

The purpose of a short sale is to sell the property, often to prevent foreclosure which is something both the owner and his/her lender would like to prevent. In order to sell the property has to meet the demands of the market just as any other property be it a normal sale or bank owned property. It will be the market place that determines what price is right. 

That does not mean that the bank will not stick their hands and ideas into the process. It depends on what program is being used to sell the property short. There are a few predefined programs like HAFA in which a sales price is set by someone other than the seller and or the seller agent, but for the most part if…

FHA loans comprised a sizable part of the financing used to purchase homes in Greater Phoenix. During the last few years the government subsidized loan has allowed many people to get into home that otherwise would not have a chance. This not only provides an opportunity for these persons, but helps move properties along from distressed in the case of bank owned and short sale home into the hands of new owners, helping, at the same time, the Phoenix real estate market recover from its woes. Many of the homes are in different states of repair.

It is common to find short sale and bank owned homes that need attention that are not move in ready. Many of these are not good candidates for buyers with an FHA loan. The FHA has its own guidelines by which the…

The popular phoenix homes search by map has been recently improved with additional features and major tweaking of the code to speed things up, combine photos and map.  This is all to make it a better experience for you: we want you to hire us as your consultants in the Phoenix real estate transaction process, but we want to you have the information and tools so that you make a better decision. Making constant improvements helps us achieve that goal.  

So let's step into a quick overview of some of the features in this version.

1. Search by polygon: this search is an advanced search allowing you as the user complete control over the boundaries of the search. You can use this free form tool, in blue above, to freely draw the boundaries of the search…

Searching for homes in Phoenix can be difficult because many of the areas don't have defined names by which to search and subdivisions are often quirky in name which does not come up in searches. This is especially true for places where the common name is different from the actual subdivision names. 

The 'location search' on the Phoenix homes listings search page allows you to put in the name of a community or subdivision, zip code or city an mls number and get matching results, but if you put in a name that is shared by other communities then…

Plenty of people are buying homes with 3% down HomePath, 3.5% down FHA or 5% down conventional loan. Often this is simply by choice. Rates are silly low righ now so it make sense to leverage as much as you can, but only if it's by choice.

Just as many people are barely scraping together that 3.5% down-payment to buy a home. If that's you then you probably should not be buying or at least wait until you have saved up some more money. 

You need to know that.

When you buy with a low down payment you are instantly upside down.

It cost money to buy and it cost money to sell. Besides your down-payment buying costs are about 3% and selling cost run around 7%.  In a normal market it takes about 2 years to recoup those cost before you break even.…

Some neighborhoods are easy to search for and other's are not. The difference is often how the neighborhood is named and the source of the name. For instance, searching for homes in the Windsor Square historic neighborhood is easy since that's the official name while searching for homes in the Willo historic district is not easy since Willo is an arbitrary name for a conglomerate of many individual subdivisions. 

That's the same for the Royal Palm neighborhood in North Central Phoenix. An easy way to search for it is to find a website, like this one, that features that neighborhood with all the Royal Palm homes for sale.  Another way is to use one of the rate advanced Phoenix homes search based on custom map alogrithm allowing you to freely pick an…

Since financing is such an important factor in the home buying process we've asked several lenders to give us occasional updates on any interested changes.  Below is a succinct update by one of the lenders used by our clients.

1. Private Mortgage Insurance guidelines have loosened up lately.  Conventional loans for a Primary Residence now allow a 3% down payment with a 680 fico score. 

A buyer with a 620 credit score can get a Conventional loan with 5% down.  The maximum loan amount is $417k for Conventional loans. 

2. Smart Financial Mortgage is able to offer HomePath financing on Fannie Mae REO properties that have this designation.  The best part about HomePath is that Investors with a 660 fico (and 2nd/Vacation Home buyers) are able to…

If you're in the market for a house than the playground probably seems busy to you despite all the hoopla about the national market being slow. You're having to compete with other buyers for homes and each time something hits the market you have to move you tush and get there fast to see the home before someone else snatches it up.

The dark red thick line represents sales in Phoenix in 2011.  All the other lines are sales in the last few years, 2006-2007 excepting because these were odd markets, not following the common trends. 

[Graph: The Cromford Report modified by inPhoenix Realty Group ]

The vertical black line is the beginning of July and the highlighted yellow area represents the peak time for sale each year which begins in spring…