The 2008 Blog Retrospective
December 31, 2008
Happy New Year’s Eve!
As much as we look toward the future around this time of year, I thought we’d take a minute and consider where we went in 2008. So without further ado…
The Top 10 Highest Visited Content in 2008:
- Active Contingent and Active CAPA Defined
- Opa! Greek Food in Tucson
- Triple Pane Windows
- …And That’d Be a Termite Tube On the Ceiling
- About the Housechick
- My Listings
- Top Ten Things to Know about Tucson Real Estate - A/C and Evaporative Coolers
- Chile Verde: A Taco Joint in Downtown Tucson
- You Ready To Fire Up your Swamp Cooler?
- Showing Sad Houses - Short Sales and Foreclosures in Tucson
The Most Commented Post - note to self, shameless begging works:
Highest Traffic Days and the Things That Caused Them (tie):
- Happy Halloween (early)! - proving everyone loves a dancing pumpkin
- El Tour de Tucson 2008
The Page People Looked At Longest:
- The Flats at Julian-Drew - Finally Downtown Condos under $200k, at 23 minutes, 25 seconds.
Ways People Found My Blog that Made Me Laugh:
- eating cactus pears
- origins of housechick
- embarrassing nudity stories (also, "embarrassing pants splitting moments")
- housechick chick-fil-a (hey Dalton - stop searching for my Chick-Fil-A post. I’m on to you…)
- lizard poo (also, "termite poo")
- will i have snakes in my house in tucson az
- what are tortilla shards
- which popcorn pops the fastest
- top ten things chicks wanna talk about
- should a realtor be tipped
- i wish i had something to do (also, "i am making a fool of myself")
- and my personal favorite, "annoying realtor who trolls her search logs to find topics to talk about"
Happy new year to you all!
Oro Valley Marketplace
December 29, 2008
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I was interviewing my Sellers the other day for a new listing in Oro Valley that I’m taking - learning from them what their favorite things about their house are, nice nearby amenities and whatnot. Two things they mentioned were that the new Oro Valley Marketplace and the Northwest Medical Center were both very close by, so I stopped over there the other day to take a look for myself. The Oro Valley Marketplace is fairly new - portions are still under construction - so there are quite a few empty buildings, but the complex looks very nice so far. There’s a Walmart and a Petco and a DSW and a sporting goods shop, lots of other smaller shops. The Century Theatres are new too - a nice bonus for Oro Valley. There hasn’t been a close movie theater in the area, so having that built is a nice perk for residents, I should think. And, of course, it’s all set against the backdrop of the Catalinas, with gorgeous Pusche Ridge Views, on the Southwest corner of Oracle and Tangerine. Right across the street, on the North side of Tangerine, is the newer Northwest Medical center too, with associated doctor’s offices nearby. Always something new going up in Oro Valley… |
Did the Arizona Daily Star Just Declare Bottom?
December 29, 2008
Wow. I think the local newspaper just declared bottom, in a round-about way. Bold move? Not the typical spin, anyway. Read it here. http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/273542 (It’ll hide behind a free registration in a week.)
ROI of Green Remodeling Projects
December 28, 2008
Hattip to Tucson architect Jake Boen of the In Place Architecture Blog.
Found a post in my reader this morning from local architect Jake about the return on investment of various green remodeling projects and upgrades, quoting GreenAndSave.com where they’ve got a master table of anticipated ROI.
It’s an interesting table. They’re quoting the highest ROI to be a programmable thermostat - if you adjust the temperature 5 degrees at night and 10 degrees during the day - with a $115 investment and an annual savings of $180, making the payback time 0.6 years, savings over 10 years to be $1800, and an ROI of 156.5%.
Obviously, they’re using some averages so I’m not sure everything on that table translates to the Tucson area, but they’re interesting estimates. The top 10 green ‘tune-up’ items are largely relatively low cost items. Worth a look.
Proposed Rule Change for Short Sales in the Tucson MLS
December 20, 2008
Landed in my inbox today, a proposed rule change, if I understand the message correctly:
MLS Rule Change for Short Sales
Section 3.18- Short Sales:
As used in these rules, short sales are defined as a transaction where title transfers; where the sale price is insufficient to pay the total of all liens and costs of sale; and where the seller does not bring sufficient liquid assets to the closing to cure all deficiencies.
Participants are required to disclose potential short sales to other participants by stating the following in the Agent Only Remarks: ‘Potential Short Sale’.
Within two (2) business days of seller’s acceptance of written contract, the listing broker shall change the short sale listing’s status in MLS to ‘Active Contingent’, ‘Active CAPA’,’Pending’ or ‘Sold’, as is appropriate per MLS Status Definitions.
Disclosure of short sale shall not be made in the Property Description, Marketing Remarks, or any other publicly viewable component of the MLS without the seller’s written permission to the listing broker.
What does that mean? It means that short sales will be harder for the public to identify, assuming most sellers won’t want their property stigmatized by being advertised as a short sale in the public remarks. I’ve got mixed feelings about this one. From the seller perspective, it may generate more activity for their home sale - but then there’s a large group of buyers who don’t want to touch short sales, so they get excited about a home, call me about it, and then I get to tell them it is a short sale.
The problem with short sales is that only a small percentage actually close, and they can take months to do so. Not every buyer can afford to wait like that.
What say you?
Fun with Polybutylene and Lender Owned Homes
December 19, 2008
Now, I’m no plumber, but this looks like polybutylene pipe to me. The right color, the brass clamp fittings, the house was built in the early 1990’s…
This is a shot of the master shower in one of my listings, a lender owned gigantic home on the West side, let’s call it a moderate fixup, at a ganga price. The master shower? Been taken out, all the way down to the studs, so you can see the plumbing.
Of course, there’s no way to know what actually happened in this shower, that would make it be in the current condition. Were they remodeling? Was there a leak? Someone just felt like tossing the sledgehammer around over a weekend?
When you buy (or in my case, sell) a lender owned home, there’s a good amount of due diligence to be done. There’s no owner to make disclosures, the bank wants to sell as-is, the buyer doesn’t want to purchase a lemon, and quite frankly, I’m not looking to fool anyone about the condition of this house. Disclose, disclose, disclose. I believe this house has polybutylene. Buyer - you should verify that with your inspector.
Tucson Weekly Reports on Foreclosures
December 17, 2008
There’s an article in the Tucson Weekly this week about foreclosures in Tucson, and one homeowner who negotiated with his bank to stop foreclosure and stay in his home. You can read the story here.
It’s an interesting reflection on the foreclosure market in Tucson, from the cause of the rising number of foreclosures in the area to estimated times to recovery. I believe the author is right when they say that far to many people don’t fight the foreclosure.
The article also confirms that the highest density of foreclosures are on the South and Southwest sides, and that the vast majority are homes that were bought 3 years ago or less.
My only point of contention with the article is that they claim foreclosure transactions aren’t factored into the MLS stats, and then they imply that if these transactions were included, sales and median prices would be much lower than reported. I’m guessing this was probably a misunderstanding. "Foreclosure transactions" where the bank takes back the home are not factored into MLS stats. That’s not an arms-length transaction. However, when those foreclosed homes are listed and resold on the open market, those sales are factored into the MLS stats.
Resources to help you fight your foreclosure in Tucson:
Just found: One more article on foreclosure rates in Pima County via the Arizona Daily Star.
Winter in Tucson
December 16, 2008
More cups on cactus. Forget the date, this is how you know winter has arrived.
Bank Owned Homes in Tucson
December 15, 2008
And speaking of bank-owned homes…
You can’t easily search the MLS for them, but we’ve come up with a way to search it for you, and make a list of everything that appears to be bank-owned. It’s not 100% accurate, but I’d bet we’re in the 95% range. It’s the best we can do with the data we’ve got though, and should be helpful if you’re trying to pick up a bank-owned bargain.
You can see the lists, broken down into area of town here, at the new Tucson Bank Owned Homes site.
Getting Help
December 14, 2008
One of my clients just sent me an address of a property that looked interesting. I did a little research, and discovered it is a bank-owned home, looks like a light fix-up, in a decent Central neighborhood.
I looked at the history of the home, and the owner didn’t try to sell it before the foreclosure. It looks like they just let it go.
The thing is, they had two mortgages on it - fairly small ones, actually. The first lien could easily have been satisfied at a sale, the second one would have been partially covered. Did the owner just give up?
It’s not the first time I’ve seen that. In fact, a friend of mine recently lost her home to foreclosure. I had no idea she was even in trouble, she didn’t try to sell it, didn’t try to renegotiate, didn’t talk to anyone about it, nothing. Just, poof, one day she moved out and the house was the bank’s.
Look - poo happens. But you don’t have to take it lying down. You do, however, have to talk to people and figure out your options - talk to your lender, talk to your agent, go talk to the free county housing resource folks. There’s help out there, but you can’t go get it unless you tell someone you’ve got a problem.
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