Arizona Real Estate Notebook

A key data point when researching Arizona investment properties is knowing where rents are in the area. I got some great tips from commenters on an earlier post. Phxfan recommends rentBits. ken44 prefers Zilpy. How do you estimate rents for your Arizona investment properties? ADDED: Rentometer.com.

“How will my pending short sale [foreclosure or bankruptcy] effect my ability to borrow money to buy a home in the future?” Not an uncommon question. Here’s the answer from Fannie Mae’s point of view. It’s not as bad as you might think. Earlier this year, Fannie Mae updated its credit guidelines for borrowers who [...]

Yikes! Phoenix lost more jobs in the last year (on a percentage basis) than any other area in the United States. Phoenix lost 8.0 percent of its job base during the past year. The runners-up for that unhappy distinction were Detroit (down 7.8 percent) and Boise, Idaho (down 7.6 percent). Oh man… worse than Detroit! [...]

Phoenix Homes Appreciate in August Greater Phoenix home prices appreciated 1.6% between July and August, 1.8% between June and July, and 1.1% between May and June, according to my analysis of Case-Shiller data. Historically, 1.6% appreciation in one month is huge for Phoenix. We’ve now seen 4.5% appreciation in 3 months. A 4.5% appreciation wouldn’t [...]

I’m a huge fan of Dr. Kathleen Gurney and financial psychology! I read her book, “Your Money Personality” a couple of years ago and loved it. She dives into 9 money personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, and how people with different money personalities interact with each other in a relationship. (There can be fireworks… the [...]

The banks aren’t a bunch of ignorant hillbillies that needed government protection from those big bad Arizona real estate investors. The banks knew full well what the rules of the game were when they made those loans to Arizona real estate investors, and Arizona vacation and second-home buyers. For the banks to try and change [...]

My take was that the politicians would renew the first time home buyer $8,000 tax credit program for political reasons even though I think it’s cannibalizing future home sales. Maybe I was wrong… or maybe this is all part of the political kabuki and I’m still right! We’ll see.

If you’re a landlord, it’s the bad kind. Apartment Rents “Plunge” in the West

First residential construction tanked and then commercial construction tanked in Maricopa County AZ. Maricopa County lost almost of one-third of its construction jobs and 11.5 percent of its business services positions between March 2008 and March 2009, according to first-quarter jobs data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The average price of distressed REO property was $124,500 in September, up from $106,700 in August. “There’s a confluence of positive factors: historically low interest rates, high demand from first-time homebuyers before the expiration of the tax credit at the end of November, increased affordability, lower inventories of foreclosed properties…”

California Court Upholds 1% Tax on Millionaires California Millionaires; Come home to Arizona and be treated with respect.

Elliott Pollack’s company published online 90 slides from a presentation they made earlier in October on the situation and outlook for the Arizona economy. I created a “Best Of” cover version of the slides. Cover Video (via tweet from Dru Bloomfield)