Arizona Real Estate Notebook

How much down payment you make on your Arizona home is largely a financing issue. Your Arizona lender will require you to make a certain minimum down payment for the loan program you choose but there could be advantages to putting more money down. Talk to your lender. More Keep in mind that the larger [...]

If you put an offer on an Arizona home that is located in an Homeowners Association (HOA), we will include with your offer an “H.O.A Condominium/Planned Community Addendum.” Before this addendum came into use a few years ago, some Arizona home buyers were surprised to find out after purchasing their home that they had to [...]

Absolutely not! It is illegal, in fact, for a loan officer (or home inspector or title company or real estate appraiser) to provide a referral fee or other compensation to a real estate agent. If a lender does a good job for my clients, that’s all the payment I want. Having a good lender makes [...]

Absolutely, use an Arizona loan officer! In my experience, out-of-state loan officers can really screw up a sale fast and they occasionally put the buyer in jeopardy of losing their earnest money! In Arizona we do things differently than is other states. For example, we use the “Loan Status Report” (LSR) which isn’t used in [...]

Yes. But the seller will almost certainly reject your offer unless your current home is already under contract to another buyer. After you accept an offer on the home you are currently selling, you can go house hunting and submit an offer on your next home. Don’t forget to make that offer contingent upon the [...]

The Inspection Period gives the Arizona home buyer a great opportunity to investigate an Arizona home thoroughly before deciding whether they want to move forward with the home purchase. The Inspection Period is probably the most important and most complex part of the home buying process in Arizona. Mismanaging your opportunities can be disastrous for [...]

In general in Arizona, the larger the earnest money, the more serious the seller will consider your offer. That is, the more your earnest money, the more attractive your offer. What is an Acceptable Amount of Earnest Money in Arizona? Different areas of the country have different earnest money traditions. For Arizona residential resale real [...]

When most Arizona home buyers put an offer on a home, they make the offer contingent upon being able to borrow enough money to pay for the home. This is the “Loan Contingency” or “Financing Contingency.” Loan Contingency If a seller accepted your offer but it turns out later you can’t get the mortgage loan [...]

The walkthrough is another protection for Arizona home buyers provided in the “Residential Resale Real Estate Purchase Contract” created by the Arizona Association of Realtors. The walkthrough is done to verify that the home is in substantially the same condition as the day the contract was accepted. It is usually done by the buyer a [...]

The seller may; Accept your offer Ignore your offer and not respond at all Reject your offer outright Make a counter offer to your offer Counter Offers The original offer you made was likely 9+ pages but the counter offer is usually only one page. The seller’s counter offer will only change the things in [...]

Maybe. That 52-inch flat screen TV might come with the home. The question really is, “What is considered to be part of the home – like a door – and what is considered to be part of the personal property of the seller – like a chair – which is not part of the home [...]

Theoretically, you could write an offer on a restaurant napkin but nearly all Arizona home purchases use a pre-made contract form. Many different contract forms are used to transfer ownership of residential real estate in Arizona. For example, most every Arizona home builder has its own specially written contract and the builders require home buyers [...]

Just because a home is being sold “as is” does not mean there is no Inspection Period. Usually, you can still cancel a contract during the Inspection Period even if the home is being sold “as-is.” Listing a home “as is” is just the seller telling potential buyers that he does not intend to make [...]

When you make an offer to buy an Arizona home, you can make your offer stronger by offering a higher price, of course. However, here is a way you can strengthen your offer that doesn’t cost you any money. Get pre-approved for a mortgage loan If you can show a seller that you will have [...]

Yes! Most Arizona home buyers can easily cancel the purchase contract during the Inspection Period and get a full refund of their earnest money. The Inspection Period is usually 10 calendar days. The Inspection Period begins the day the purchase contract is signed by both the buyer and the seller. Inspections are Critical It is [...]

When you buy a home in Arizona, your real estate agent is usually FREE to you. Your agent is paid by the seller’s real estate agent. In the local MLS, the seller’s agent will say that he will pay X% to any other MLS member who brings a buyer. That way the seller’s agent gets [...]

A brief history of community property with right of survivorship in Arizona. In the 1990s, the Arizona Legislature passed a law that authorized ownership of real property by a husband and wife as “community property with right of survivorship.” The traditional forms of ownership by a husband and wife of real property in Arizona had [...]