Arizona Real Estate Notebook

Price Islands When establishing the market value for your home, sellers should focus on the prices of comparable sold homes in their area. Sometimes I’ll find a neighborhood where most home sellers have apparently focused on the list prices of comparable homes in their neighborhood instead of on the sold prices. The entire neighborhood ends [...]

That number could be a great proxy for quantifying the effect of all the foreclosures and short sales (among other things) on the demand for homes. If someone can’t qualify for a mortgage loan, they certainly aren’t part of the current demand for home purchases. That percentage of Americans with a credit score below 620 [...]

Quotes from Dataquick report, Phoenix Metro Area August Home Sales; Those using cash accounted for 41.3 percent of all August home sales, up from 37.6 percent in July and 35.1 percent a year earlier. Last month’s cash buyers paid a median of $95,000, down from $100,000 in July but up from $90,000 in August 2009. [...]

One guy’s (blunt) opinion. Kevin Hardin’s website. Keep in mind that Kevin is not an outside, unbiased observer of the mortgage market… but he does make some interesting points to consider.

Here is a very long piece on the U.S. economic outlook from Gary Shilling that rings true to me. All this down economic news is making me strangely more bullish on Arizona. I expect Arizona will be one of the first economies in the United States to turn around, whenever that may be. If the [...]

According to a Fannie Mae study, 83% believe now is a bad time to sell a home. Well, compared to Arizona home prices in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 it’s a bad time to sell a home. But if you don’t have a time machine and your choice is selling your Arizona home now in [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) was one of the prime movers behind the creation of the $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit (the homebuilders’ association being the other prime mover). The summer bust in home sales created by the program (and by NAR) is shaking people’s confidence in the entire U.S. housing market! Via [...]

This sounds right. Via Wall Street Journal. The speed at which house prices fall over the next few months could depend less on mortgage rates and Americans’ appetite for home buying than on how banks decide to manage the huge number of foreclosed homes they own or may take from delinquent borrowers in the near [...]

I love this graph in the New York Times Economix. The graph reminds me that; The conventional economic wisdom shouldn’t be taken as gospel. Interest rates are only one factor determining home prices. Despite what I just wrote, I still think when interest rates eventually increase it will put downward pressure on home prices. The [...]

Via REO Insider.

It’s healthy for the economy in the long run but it’s also a drag on the economy in the short run when people are spending their money to pay down their debt instead of buying more stuff with their money. Via HousingWire. The average national credit card borrower debt slid downward for the fifth consecutive [...]

A client friend just emailed me about this, Poodwaddle.com. Notice the U.S. debt per taxpayer is $120,702.

This new regulation that is supposed to take effect in April could spell the end of the mortgage broker industry. More here and here. Getting rid of the Yield Spread Premium is a good way for borrowers to see the total compensation the borrower is paying the mortgage broker and that’s good. The bad part [...]

And my new favorite economist, David Rosenberg, seems to have stolen the pessimist mantle from Nouriel Roubini last week by being the first big-time economist to use the “D” word. Rosenberg’s 13 Signs We’re In A Depression. Check out the great charts.