The Wall Street Journal recently ran a couple of articles on the unforseen impacts that short sales can have on homeowners who use short sales to avoid foreclosure.  Many Prescott and Prescott Valley homeowners facing foreclosure are under the impression that there are no consequences when the bank "agrees' to a short sale. Sadly, this is not always the case. Here's an excerpt: Some homeowners are finding that when they sell their homes for less than the outstanding mortgages -- a so-called short sale -- their mortgage companies are going after them for some or all of the difference. Mortgage companies are also sometimes taking legal action to recover unpaid amounts after a foreclosure is completed. In a growing number of cases, holders of mortgages or home-equity loans are requiring bo... 05/08/2009

 Twelve new foreclosed or short sale homes came on the market last week, about one in every 10 homes being listed in the Prescott Arizona Area MLS system, and one third of the closings were distressed sales in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt and the outlying areas of Yavapai County.  Foreclosure activity was up again on the pending and sales side, but went down as a percentage of new listings. The difference between what newly listed traditional homes and Prescott foreclosed/REO and short sale properties per square foot remains large at a 42% discount.   A bit of an anomaly this week is the fact that distressed homes took 5% longer than traditional sales.  This is great news!  We'll see what happens next week.  Want to see what the latest sales figures are?   See... 05/04/2009

On April 28th, 2009, RealtyTrac® (realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, and Enormo (http://www.enormo.com/), a leading global real estate portal, announced a strategic alliance that will give Enormo's international user base of potential homebuyers and investors unique access to RealtyTrac's database of U.S. foreclosures including Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley and Dewey-Humboldt. RealtyTrac's foreclosure listings are integrated into Enormo's search functionality, allowing buyers to search more than 1 million foreclosure properties from 2,200 U.S. counties. As RealtyTrac's first-ever international partnership, the alliance will allow the company to accept international subscriptions to its service thanks to Enormo's translation of RealtyTra... 04/30/2009

Eleven new foreclosed or short sale homes came on the market, about one in every seven homes being listed in the Prescott Arizona Area MLS system, and one fifth of the closings were distressed sales in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt and the outlying areas of Yavapai County.  This is two weeks in a row that foreclosure activity is down.  But we're not out of the woods yet.  This week there were 117 Notices of Default (NOD) filed with the County Assessor...in about 104 days, we'll see most of them come on the market as REOs.  The difference between what newly listed traditional homes and Prescott foreclosed/REO and short sale properties per square foot remains large at a 30% discount.   Last year Prescott had the distinction of becoming an MSA and our first report... 04/30/2009

Fifteen new foreclosed or short sale homes came on the market, about one in every six homes being listed in the Prescott Arizona Area MLS system, and one quarter of the closings were distressed sales in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt and the outlying areas of Yavapai County.  This shows a marked decrease from last week's numbers. The difference between what newly listed traditional homes and Prescott foreclosed/REO and short sale properties per square foot remains large at a 40% discount.   News has been mixed last week with positive housing numbers coming out of California and the Phoenix area, but news of more foreclosures on the horizon as load modifications fail and banks are removing moratoriums on foreclosures.  Watch this space for more info! See: NAR Hou... 04/20/2009

I've been investing in real estate in the Prescott AZ area for a while now, (don't ask it will reveal my age), and I am amazed at the amount of data now available on the web for individual investors.  More data than any real estate agent has had or ever will.    When I started, you were lucky to find a few magazines that might focus on income properties but it was hard before the web to find data about market conditions in small geos. Today, via Twitter, I found a site called REItips.com and a thread in particular where the author, JP Moses, starts a Crowdsourcing exercise on the top REI websites. Here's some of the results: http://postlets.com http://maps.google.com http://craigslist.com/  http://www.tweetbeep.com SeasonedFunds.com http://www.city-data.com/ http://www.premierereo.com/ ... 04/13/2009

More good news for the Prescott, AZ market which relys so much on the Phoenix market for spillover business: a sign that foreclosure sales have peaked in the greater Phoenix area!  That's the news from the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus today regarding the decline in the rates of foreclosure sales in the Greater Phoenix area. Investors are starting to come into the market again buying rental homes and income  with the expectation that prices will rise in the next few years.  That, and the fact that interest rates are low and 1st time buyers are finding prices that allow them to buy for what they are paying for rent.  Here's an excerpt: The declining prices have piqued interest for potential investors and owner-occupants, e... 04/10/2009

The Precott Az area condo market finally got going again in March after having had ZERO closings in February, which was an anomoly. Two of the five closings were bank-owned, or REOs, and they were the driving factors behind the average $ per square foot at $118. Prescott Area Condos, Townhomes, Patio Homes Closed - March 2009 Address City List Price Sale Price SP/LP SQFT $/SQFT CDOM 1970 Lazy Meadow L Prescott $409,000 $395,000 96.6% 3,398 $116 273 1716 Alpine Meado Prescott $272,500 $207,500 76.1% 1,811 $115 240 1216 Timber Point Prescott $245,000 $232,000 94.7% 1,882 $123 210 3350 Iris Lane Prescott $207,000 $197,000 95.2% 1,188 $166 213 12693 Tierra Aspera Dewey -Humboldt $145,000 $137,000 94.5% 1,893 $72 176 Number of Homes: 5               Average $255,700 $233,700 91.4% 2,034 $118... 04/08/2009

On April 1st, NAR released it latest figures on affordability and the index is at a record low.  This is great news for buyers of traditional resales and foreclosed homes in the Prescott and Prescott Valley market areas. Click on logo to go to the report NAR's Housing Affordability Index (HAI) rose 0.9 percentage points to a record high 173.5 in February from January. The HAI is a measure of housing affordability that correlates the relationship between home prices, mortgage interest rates and family income.  The index has been tracked by NAR since 1970. Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, said a median-income family, earning $59.700, can afford a residence that costs $285,600 in February with 20% down, assuming that 25% of gross income is devoted to mortgage principal and interest.  T... 04/06/2009

 The first quarter of 2009 is thankfully over and we are seeing buyers starting to take advantage of the pricing in the real estate markets in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, and Dewey-Humboldt.   Foreclosures and short sales have driven prices come down to levels seen before the "boom."     Historically, prices have increased at a modest 3% - 5% range, and I would imagine that if normalcy comes back to the real estate market, we could anticipate similar growth in the future.  We just have to cycle through some of this foreclosure inventory first. Speaking of foreclosures, according to latest data from Zillow, the Prescott area averaged only about 4.1% in foreclosure transactions in the previous 5 years.   For 2008, we averaged 23.9%!  Zillow Prescott Distressed Sales Data Time... 04/03/2009

Is anyone else skeptical of Chase Bank's newest efforts to do loan modifications for up to 400,000 of their customers?  Call me a stick in the mud, but I have a hard time believing that banks are doing this for their client's benefit.  To me it seems like they are doing this for their bottom line and their shareholders. In this morning's Arizona Republic, Russ Wiles wrote about the opening of a Phoenix homeowner center to allow Chase Bank to "get up close and personal with troubled homeowners."  Chase is going to "help" 400,000 of its customers stay in their homes.  This includes homeowners facing foreclosure in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, and Dewey-Humboldt.  See the whole article.  The problem I have with Chase's plan is that many homeowners are going to be stuck with hom... 04/01/2009

I made the plunge and have integrated Twitter into my Web 2.o strategy.  If you haven't heard of Twitter, you are not alone, but it is beginning to define itself in the marketplace as a new source of news and views. Here are some resources that will help you get an idea of what Twitter is and why you might want to use it in your business to network more proficiently: 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good The Three Stages of Twitter Acceptance Why Use Twitter? Why Your Company Needs to Be on Twitter The Top 5 Ways Smart People Use Twitter I'll continue to add more methods of communication and networking to my Web 2.o strategy.  If you have more ideas, please let me know. Follow me at:  http://twitter.com/prescottreos 03/31/2009

HOPE NOW, the organization formed in 2007 with the help of the Treasury and HUD, is an alliance between HUD approved counseling agents, mortgage companies, investors and other mortgage professioinals that provides FREE foreclosure prevention assistance. Many homeowners in the Prescott and Prescott Valley markets facing foreclosure and doing short sales have have been able to get free assistance from the organization.  Before you shell out money to a "loan modification specialist," contact Hope Now and get the same info at no charge. Here's what they just reported: Home foreclosures are still rising across the country, even though lenders have helped an increasing number of mortgage borrowers to become current on payments and stay in their homes. In February, nearly 250,000 homeowners re... 03/31/2009

IT REQUIRES A GREAT DEAL OF BOLDNESS AND A GREAT DEAL OF CAUTION TO MAKE A GREAT FORTUNE."   Ralph Waldo Emerson. This might have been the title on the new report out by Realtor.com earlier this month based on survey data.  The results of the survey are based on interviews conducted from March 6 to 8, 2009. A total of 1,005 interviews were completed. The report showed two sides of America's love affair with thier homes.  One side is very worried about the state of the economy and foreclosures with 53% of Americans knowing someone faced by foreclosure.  On the other side, about a quarter of adults plan to purchase a home in the next five years with more than half of them being first time homebuyers. On the foreclosure side, unemployment is the main factor causing people to fear foreclosu... 03/30/2009

The distressed real estate market in the Prescott area was once again busy on the listing AND closing sides this week. Eighteen new foreclosed or short sale homes came on the market, about one in every five homes being listed in the Prescott Arizona Area MLS system, and just under one half of the closings, or 8/18, were distressed sales in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt and the outlying areas of Yavapai County. The difference between what newly listed traditional homes and Prescott foreclosed/REO and short sale properties per square foot remains large at a 40% discount.   On the sales side, multiple offer wars are being waged out there in the REO market!  Of the 8 REO homes that sold this last week, 2 sold for more than asking price, and one sold at asking price... 03/28/2009

Activity in the distressed home market in the Prescott AZ area remains strong with 26 homes closing in the last 15 days. This compares to 43 homes sold by traditional resales. The average price per square foot for REO and short sales was $87 and the average time to sell was 128 days compared to $124 per square foot and 169 days on market for tradional resales. You can see that the REO and short market is moving much quicker and at a much lower average price. Of the 25 distressed homes sold in the last 15 days, only 2 were short sales (highlighted in yellow). Several of the homes sold for more than asking price (see green highlight) and got multiple offers to get there. This tells me that multiple buyers are getting in the game. Before you enter the fray, please read: Top 10 tips to win ... 03/27/2009

Homes Under $100,000 Really. At this moment in our Prescott Multiple Listing System there are 3 homes (in Prescott) under $100,000! To view these listings, please feel free to go to: http://www.paarmls.org/prs/maildoc/a002rI7665.html I am convinced this is the best time to buy property in our area! Not because we have homes under $100,000 but because prices are more realistic than they have been in the past year. Let's Be Positive! 03/26/2009

Here in Northern Arizona an average real estate transaction still means a Seller wants to sell a home by finding a ready, willing and able Buyer to purchase said home at an agreed upon price.  No waiting 3 months or more for a bank to give approval, or purchasing a home without any disclosures because the bank has taken back the property or going "online" to bid on the property. Less than 10%* of our Multiple Listing Service Area (Residential properties) consists of short sales listings, foreclosure or HUD Homes. I would invite you to come and see the inventory of homes in the Prescott Area.    *As of Febraury 6, 2009. 02/09/2009

We subscribe to an e-mail newsletter (eppraisal.com) which recently had an article we thought you'd like to see.  They track the market values in 189 towns across the U. S., including Prescott.  In their latest report covering the previous 6 months, they showed that most towns were still declining in value, however Prescott appears to have leveled off. You can read the article and see the list by clicking the links below.  When you look at the rankings, Prescott is #14, right on the cusp of moving back into increasing value. Click to see the graph for more info.                                                                 Read full article.                                          See a complete list of national rankings. This info validates how we've been feeling the past couple of ... 01/10/2009

Welcome to my new blog at ActiveRain.  My partner and I have over 55 years combined real estate experience.  We have lived and worked in Prescott, AZ over 14 years.  Please feel free to write or e-mail if we can help you with any real estate questions or needs. 11/03/2008