North Phoenix Agent Blog

photo credit to MiamiAmia,  via StockExchange

A continuing weekly look at For Sale, Pending and Sold statistics by ZIP code (for the ZIPs in which I primarily work which includes 85020, 85022, 85024, 85028, 85032, and 85050). Check back on Sundays for a drill-down look into the numbers in your ZIP code. Have a North Phoenix area ZIP that doesn’t show up here? Email or call me and I’ll add it for you.

This week shows continued slow & steady improvement over last week. The PENDING numbers in every ZIP code covered are up, which is a great sign. The numbers of SOLD homes are up in all but 1 ZIP code, also a great sign.

However, we’re still nowhere near normal for most ZIPs. Most forecasters & Realtors agree that a 6 months supply of inventory is about “normal”. It’s interesting to note that 85024 is very close to that ideal. Sellers in 85024 - don’t despair! You’re near the bottom. Buyers wanting to get into 85024 - hurry up, it might not be a buyer’s market there for much longer.

I’m noticing an uptick in the number of roadside cardboard signs that have something to do with real estate lately. You know the kind - here in Phoenix they’re usually hand-inked, on cardboard or oak tag, stuck in the ground with a stake.

Surely it’s a function of the bad economy, the looming recession, the credit crisis and the housing ‘bubble’.  Whatever, I figured it would make a good blog post or two. Here’s today’s Real Estate Road Sign:

I didn’t call to find out exactly what scam they’re peddling, but rest assured it isn’t as good as it sounds. No one is going to pay off your mortgage out of the goodness of their heart and not expect something for it. Either they’ll refinance you under their own (probably dubious) terms, or they’ll pay off the mortgage and let you stay in it, as a tenant.

There are some instances where it might be beneficial to let someone buy your home from you and then arrange to stay in it as a tenant. But contact a trusted Realtor or mortgage lender to do it. Placing your single largest financial asset into the hands of someone who advertises on roadsides with hand lettered cardboard signs is not in your best interests.

If this is a refinancing “plan” it probably involves people who look and sound a lot like the Sopranos and there are a lot of other, better options for refinancing if you’re facing foreclosure.

If it’s a plan to buy your home and rent it back to you, be very careful. There are a lot of scams out there now that start out this way, and then whack you with huge penalties if your rent is even an hour late. Worse, some of those rent back to owner schemes allow the company you’re dealing with the evict you from your home without notice if you pay late.

If you’re having financial troubles large enough to even think about calling the number on this sign, you’re probably better off contacting someone about a refinance or a short sale.

Related Posts

1. Real Estate Road Signs - Buy A House with $500 Down
2. Hire a Professional Lender, Not Your Buddy Who Does Mortgages Part Time
3. How Your FICO Score Determines Your Mortgage Interest Rate by the XBroker (not light reading but highly worth your time)
4. The AZ Mortgage Guru updates the status of the federal housing assistance bill
5. Try the federal Hope Now campaign designed to help you stay in your home

 photo credit to I Can Has Cheezburger

This is the 2nd in a series of articles about buying metro Phoenix area short sale or lender owned homes.

Many, many potential buyers in the Phoenix market lately want to look at “short sales”, “foreclosures” or “bank owned homes”. Often they’re not quite sure what these terms mean exactly, but they know the 10 o’clock news (or their brother’s cousin’s baker’s tailor) says short sales are a spanking good deal. 

See here for the differences between REOs, bank owned, short sales, foreclosures and preforeclosures.  Regardless of type, the secret to buying one of these homes is organization combined with an open mind and a lot of patience. 

PATIENCE
One of my buyer clients has been waiting a little over 7 weeks for the bank to answer our offer on their short sale property. One of my sellers waited 2 full months for the bank to answer a Buyer’s offer.

This sounds absurd, right? According to the media, banks are drowning in short sales and foreclosures, making write downs and taking losses like the Titanic took on water. Why in the name of all that’s green and holy would the banks take months to answer offers?!

Sadly, this is not unusual. I’ve heard horror stories of waiting 4 to 6 months for a bank to answer an offer, even if it’s a full price offer.  The media’s right - many banks are awash in properties. But they’re simply not equipped to list and sell homes. They’re equipped to make and service loans. I hear banks are scrambling to hire & train people who can handle their backlog.

I recently had a conversation with a local agent who interviewed for a position as a loss mitigator with a lender. Sadly, the loss mitigators are paid about $30,000 a year salary, and are expected to work between 12 and 14 hours days, 5 days a week, work every other weekend, and are given 4 days of training. Almost none of them have any experience in real estate or mortgages whatsoever. Many are fresh out of college and many last no longer than their first week after training.

One of the first loss mitigators I ever spoke with (in late 2007) told me flat-out, “Honey, my desk is piled high with over 400 files just like yours. The computer shows I got your offer yesterday, but I won’t be able to look at it for at least 6 weeks. Call me then.”  She wasn’t being rude, just truthful. We’ve become phone buddies and share polite chit-chat when I call her once a week to ask (ever so politely) if she’s got to our file yet. I think she’s very nice and I think she liked me, but she still didn’t look at our file for 8 weeks.

But the loss mitigator did verify for me on Day 1 that our file was complete and had all the documents she needed including:

• Tthe Listing Agreement,
• The MLS printout,
• The Authorization for me (the Realtor) to speak with the seller’s lender,
• The Seller’s hardship letter, 2 years of tax returns, 3 months of bank statements and 2 months of paystubs,
• The foreclosure notice from local authorities,
• A letter from me to the seller about marketing activities and recent comps in the area,
• The Purchase Offer,
• The HOA Addendum,
• The Short Sale Addendum, and
• The estimated HUD-1 Settlement Statement from the title officer.

If we hadn’t put all those documents together into 1 submission packet to the lender, we’d have gone to the back of the line. The 8-week waiting period was for sellers and Realtors who got it rightthe first time. Miss a form? You’re going to wait longer.

Buyer Lessons

1. Short sales, lender owned and foreclosure properties are not for you if you must move in by a certain date.
2. Shop short sales and lender owned homes only if you are OK with lengthy periods of uncertainty.
3. It pays to hire a Realtor who’s politely persistent.
4. Make sure your document package is complete from the beginning.

 Related Posts:

• How to Buy Short Sales/Lender Owned Homes, Part 1
• How to Buy Short Sales/Lender Owned Homes, Part 3
• How to Buy Short Sales/Lender Owned Homes, Part 4
• I Got a Notice of Trustee’s Sale. Now What?

photo credit to yongzaho.en.alibaba.com

Sellers who use a Realtor to sell their metro Phoenix area home quickly become familiar with enough acronyms to make the Federal government proud (and confused). ER, SPDS, BINSR, CLUE. It’s enough to make any sane person wonder if their slightly daffy relation ran over a potato farm with the car and needs a ride to the hospital.

(That sentence is mildly smile-inducing inside my head; let me know if it evinces a grin in your neck of the woods.)

So, what’s a SPDS? And is it anything like the edible tuber that’s yummy when served with butter, sour cream and chives next to a big juicy Porterhouse? Read on, intrepid blog browser.

What Are SPDS?
Arizona law requires sellers disclose to buyers all known, material problems about properties they sell. The Seller’s Property Disclosure Statement (SPDS) document created by the Arizona Association of Realtors is a convenient form for doing this. Not working with a Realtor? You’re not exempt from disclosing what you know about the property. You’re just unlikely to have ready access to the nifty form.

Why Do I Need to Do This?
If you sell a property that has a material defect of which you were aware but didn’t tell the future Buyer, you could be liable to a lawsuit. Disclosing everything you know about the property you’re selling can protect you in the future.

What Should I Disclose?
The short answer is everything. The longer answer is that you should disclose everything that could influence a buyer’s decision to buy (or not buy) your property. This includes improvements you’ve made and problems you’ve had, as well as what you did to solve those problems. It also includes anything prior owners did to the property of which you are aware, or even things prior owners did that you suspect or only partially remember.

The bulk of the SPDS questions are phrased, “Are you aware of ….?”  If you aren’t aware, or don’t know the answer, you should answer “no”. Your Realtor is not allowed to fill out the SPDS for you, and is generally not supposed to tell you what to put on the SPDS.

On the last page of the SPDS form, you can add explanations. It’s OK to say things like -

• I think the prior owner replaced some of the PVC plumbing with copper but I only got verbal info on that.
• We had a tub leak in 2003. We repaired the leak and our insurance company replaced the drywall and carpeting.
• We converted the garage into a living room in 1999. We didn’t get permits or HOA permission but we had licensed contractors do the work.

Can I Disclose Too Much?
Don’t worry about ‘killing a deal’ by disclosing what you know about the property. If there’s something that’s so wrong with the property that it’s bad enough to be a potential deal-killer, you should be more worried about getting sued later for not disclosing it now. It’s better to be honest on the SPDS and discuss the property’s condition upfront with your Realtor. Then let your agent make recommendations about marketing the property so that it sells to a buyer who knows all about it and buys it anyway.

How Long Do I Have to do This? 
By contract, Sellers (through their Realtor if they have one) must provide the future Buyer with the completed Disclosure Statement within 5 days of contract acceptance. Buyers, be aware that you should receive this document promptly. Ask questions if you don’t understand the answers! Sellers, remember that honestly and completing filling out the SPDS form will take a little bit of time and some record pulling. So, the sooner you complete the document after listing the home for sale, the better. The last thing you want is to be scrambling to fill out a SPDS form at the 11th hour. It’s kind of like waiting to start your 1040 tax form until April 14.

You Can’t Eat It, But It Can Help You Sell
A complete and honest SPDS will help your property sell. Even if the property has problems, know that every property will sell . . . IF it’s priced right and marketed correctly. There is a buyer for every home. You just need to inform your Realtor and the buying public so the right buyer can find yours.

Related Posts at The North Phoenix Agent

1. Inspection Period
2. Home Inpsections Explained
3. Stuff About Your Neighborhood Your Realtor Can’t Tell People

Related Posts at the Butterhomes Blog - Selling A Home Full of Lizards

Related Posts at The Phoenix Real Estate Guy - Info You Get During the Inspection Period, How to Buy Your First Home and Do I Really Need a Home Inspection?

From one of my favorite home inspectors, Jason Farrier of Elite Home Inspections, LLC. You can reach Jason at (602) 793-0123. Or try Jason’s custom home building skills out when you’re building your dream home.

Consumerism is the name of the game in the US, and people who have been participants for any length of time usually end up with more things than they can comfortably fit into their living spaces. So the items which are no longer in regular use but are too valuable to toss or give to good will often head for garage storage.

This system, however, has one major drawback; if enough things make their way to the garage, the garage stops being a garage and turns into a garage storage unit. It may become so overloaded that it cannot even be closed, or have pathways between boxes and furniture by which people can access what they are looking for.

Eventually, however, most homeowners with overstuffed garages surrender to the reality that they need to do a garage storage cleanup. And those who do will help themselves a great deal by realizing that if they haven’t used some of the things in the garage since they were tucked away months or even years ago, they are not likely to use them in the future. It definitely makes the throwing-out process much less painful.

Getting Started  -  If your day of reckoning with your garage storage problem has finally come, arm yourself with the biggest, strongest trash bags you can find, and prepare to be merciless. If you have a van or truck into which you can place each bag as it is filled, even better.

If you have someone who can drive the truck or van to the nearest good will center as soon as it is filled, even better still. The more distance you can put between yourself and the things which constituted your garage storage problem, the easier it will be.

Re-Organizing  -  When you have eliminated all the things you can no longer use from the garage storage equation, it’s time to re-organize the rest. If you find things that really belong elsewhere in your house, put them in cartons marked with the names of their final destination, and get them out of the way.

Break down the remaining garage storage items according to their uses; place like near like. Paints, thinners, brushes and roller pans can go together; grass seed, lawn feeder, and other gardening necessities can go together. Just keep going until you have a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

When you’ve reached that point, you’ll be in a much better position to determine if its time to upgrade your garage with new garage storage cabinets and wall shelves. More importantly, you’ll have the room to do it!

If you know someone in need of a home inspection please contact Jason Farrier at 602-234-9233 or visit Elite Home Inspections LLC on the web.

What’s with the eery glow outside the living room windows? Wonder if the sellers have to nail down things in the kitchen to keep them from rolling away?

Sellers, you should always get a chance to review your MLS entry once your agent has entered it. Check the text and details for errors or typos. Check the pictures to see that they’re flattering. Because why in the world would anybody buy a house if they only saw pictures like these? I won’t name the names, but these are photos of houses currently for sale in the metro Phoenix MLS. The living room shot is a house that’s been for sale for 4 months! For the first 2 months, there weren’t any pictures. I’m not sure this is an improvement.

Sellers, check the MLS entry. With 55,000+ homes for sale today, buyers will just keep moving if your photos look this bad.

The Wall Street Journal says the US housing crisis is over. They actually say we hit the bottom in April.

Of course, all real estate is local. Your neighborhood may be doing worse or better than the national average. Outlying areas like Queen Creek, Surprise and Buckeye are still experiencing severe downward pricing pressure as the foreclosure wave continues. Established neighborhoods close to central Phoenix and central Scottsdale aren’t faring so badly.

You can check out local real estate statistics by ZIP code at Jay Thompson’s Phoenix Real Estate Home. 

Bedroom staging can be tricky. Here are a few tips that have worked for me with my listings.

Master Bedroom
The message you want to convey here is sanctuary. The master bedroom is probably the second most important room to potential buyers, behind the kitchen. Your goal is for the master to appear as a retreat, a getaway from the stresses and cares of the world. Think luxury, comfort and ease.

Buy a new, plush comforter or bedspread in a neutral color and pattern. Good colors are beige, green, and blue. Beige goes with everything; blue & green are soothing. Patterns should be medium sized and gender neutral (no cabbage roses! no petunias!). Wash and iron the bed ruffle if you’re using one.

Buy 2 new pillows if yours aren’t fluffy and luxurious looking. Use the pillow shams if the set you have (or just bought) comes with those. Buy and place a selection of decorative pillows in varying shapes and sizes.

If the master bedroom is simply huge, you can stage a sitting area with two chairs and a small table between them.

Other Bedrooms
The message for these bedrooms is space. You want the potential buyers walking through to be amazed at how much room there is in your extra bedrooms - plenty of room for their  stuff. All you really need to effectively stage a bedroom are

1. a bed,
2. two night tables,
3. two lamps,
4. and nothing else. 

Unless the room is enormous, this is enough. If the room is very small, you can use only one nightstand. If you’re living in the home while you’re trying to sell, the closer you can get to this ideal, the better. I realize that sellers with children are going to struggle over this. Enlist the kids’ help and try to make it an adventure. If you stage it right, and price it right, and your chosen listing agent markets it right, you’ll only be living like this for a month or two. Besides, you’re going to have to pack the stuff once you sell, so you might as well start now. Buy a new bed-in-a-bag set in a neutral color & pattern.

If you’re painting the whole house anyway, use a pale bluish off-white in one bedroom and a pale pinkish off-white in another. Set it off with sparkling white trim and baseboards. Dunn Edwards’ Coy and Romantic are great pale pinks; use Clear Skies or Distant Horizon for bluish off whites.

Staging Bedrooms in Vacant Homes
If you’re trying to sell an empty house, it will pay to rent a bed set at least for the master bedroom. For the other bedrooms, let your budget guide you. Contact my favorite staging company, Staging  Solutions LLC

Of course, if you’ve chosen the right Realtor, I’ll be doing all this for you. Thinking about selling? Give me a call.

Related Posts

1. De-Cluttering
2. The Ice Cream Analogy

Travis & Angela from Integrity Cleaning Systems are my favorite carpet cleaners in town. Integrity does a bunch of other services too. Call them at 602-486-3966 if you’re in need of:

• Carpet Cleaning
• Upholstery Cleaning
• Tile & Grout Cleaning & Sealing
• Natural Stone Honing, Cleaning, Polishing & Sealing (stone counters, anyone?)
• Area Rug Cleaning
• Allergy Relief and Mattress Cleaning

I used Travis to clean my own carpet within the last year. He’s great! He did minor furniture moving for me, and includes steam-cleaning the baseboards in the cleaning package I ordered. He uses industrial strength blowers to help shorten the drying time too. My carpet was grey when he started, and beautifully white and clean when he finished. Best of all, it was dry that evening. He even worked around my cats! Integrity Carpet Cleaning is a locally owned & operated, and I’ve never seen a guy work harder to ensure customer satisfaction.

Did You Know? You should clean your carpets every 6 months. Call Travis to find out what kind of gunk builds up if you wait longer than that. It ain’t pretty!

Related Posts:

1. Discounts on Paint
2. Recycle When You Remodel
3. B & B Appliances

The home inpsection process explained, in plain English. Of course, this applies only in metro Phoenix where I work.

During the Due Diligence Period (usually the first 10 days after contract is signed by both parties and delivered to both parties), Buyer may do any and all inspections she wants. A general home inspection by a licensed professional is a great start. This gives the Buyer a once-over of all the home’s working systems: plumbing, electrical, A/C, roof, and so forth.

If the general inspection turns up anything odd, or if the Buyer has concerns about specific items, she can do additional inspections. Sometimes calling in a roofer, A/C contractor, electrician or plumber is a good idea. Please note that general home inspections usually do not include home entertainmnet sound systems, security systems, and the home automation systems that are all the rage in luxury homes these days, whereby you can monitor your home security system over the Internet while you vacation in Cannes.

During the inspection (or Due Diligence) process, the Buyer retains the absolute right to back out of the purchase for any reason and be refunded their Earnest Money.

Buyers, after your inspections are complete, you’ll have 3 options:

1. Accept the home As Is
2. Back out and take your Earnest Money with you
3. Give the Seller a list of repairs you require and give him a chance to fix them all

Sellers, you will now have 3 options:

1. Fix everything – Buyer is now legally bound to complete the purchase
2. Fix nothing – Buyer now decides whether to accept the property As Is or walk away with Earnest Money in hand
3. Fix some things – Buyer now has the choice to accept the property with the repairs Seller’s willing to make, or walk away with Earnest Money in hand

Please note that there is no step in here for re-negotiating the purchase price! The purchase price and the repairs are separate issues, negotiated separately, and are totally unrelated. Sometimes, some Sellers may choose to offer a credit to the Buyer in lieu of making some or all of the requested repairs. The Seller is not bound to offer a credit and Buyer may not ask for a credit in lieu of repairs, regardless of the inspection findings.  If a credit is offered, the amount is negotiable.

Please also note that there are time-sensitive deadlines involved in this process. First, Buyers’ requests for repairs must be submitted by 11:59 PM local time on the last day of the Due Diligence Period. You do this on a form called a BINSR (Buyer’s Inspection Notice and Seller’s Response). Buyer - missed your deadline? You just bought the house As Is.

Second, the Seller has 5 days to respond to the BINSR using the rest of the same form. Upon receipt of the Seller’s response, the Buyer will have 3 days in which to submit her reply about whether she’ll take the house with the repairs the Seller’s willing to make, if any.

What if the Seller doesn’t reply to the Buyer’s BINSR? The Buyer must assume the Seller intends to sell the home As Is. The Buyer has 3 days from the date the Seller’s response to her BINSR was originally due in which to decide whether to complete the purchase (which we now know will not have any repairs done on it) and submit that decision in writing to the Seller using the rest of the rest of the BINSR form.

Confused yet? This is a great example of why it’s SO critical to hire a professional, full-time Realtor. This isn’t rocket science, but it is the sort of situation where mistakes can be so monumentally costly that it’s best to hire someone who’s job it is to do this all day, every day, and carries insurance to protect you and themselves against mistakes. To err is human nature, to buy real estate without a professional Realtor is just silly.

Please see these related posts

1. Backing Out of a Purchase Might Be Costly
2. Due Diligence Period Defined
3. The Phoenix Real Estate Guy on Escrows and Home Inspections

Once in a while, the software vendor who provides our local area MLS uses a popup window to provide Relators and others using the MLS software with what they think is critical information. The info is rarely interesting but usually useful. Today it was both.

It’s probably no surprise that green pools are becoming a hazard around the Valley. The number of foreclosures, lender-owned, and otherwise uncared for vacant homes with icky pools is growing. Green pools are breeding grounds for mosquitos, which are carriers of the West Nile Virus.

Maricopa County Vector Conrol (I’d have thought it was Pest Control or even Animal Control, but it seems not) has a hotline for information. Plus they have mosquito eating fish to stock your neighborhood green pool with. From the press release:

“Drain the pools or use mosquito eating fish at foreclosed homes and help Maricopa County “Fight the Bite”. Standing water attracts mosquitoes, and non-operational decorative ponds and “green pools” can dangerously become potential mosquito breeding grounds. This year, Maricopa County recorded it’s first confirmed case of West Nile Virus in a human in March. That was the first identified case in the nation for 2008. Contact the Maricopa County Vector Control office to pick up Gambusia fish, a door hanger and fence sign stating the pool has been treated with mosquito eating fish. Then report the treated pool to the County. For assistance or more information on West Nile Virus, please contact Vector Control at 602-506-0701 or visit Maricopa County’s West Nile Virus website.”

However, see also this website, which claims that Gambusia fish are a nuisance in their own right. Me? I’m worried about fishies “breathing” chlorinated water. Hope Vector Control has thought of that. By the way, I’m also concerned about the County’s press release writer. I edited the paragraph for run-on sentences, mis-used commas, and noun-verb disagreement before posting it. But then again, I’m weird like that.

Related Post

Chris Butterworth of Thompson’s Realty on dealing with vacant foreclosure homes near yours

The numbers continue improving a little bit each month. Sales are increasing and we’re back to nearly 5,000 sales a month. That’s a nice, healthy, “normal” pace for home sales. Inventory of homes for sale is holding steady at 56,000. The number of homes pending under contract jumped again to 8.74% (from 8.20% about 3 weeks ago and a dismal 6.06% at the beginning of this year). We’ve got an 11.44 month supply of homes for sale, which is lower than its been since I began tracking these stats last October. The number “should” be 6 to be considered normal, but we’re digging out of a pretty deep hole, so it’ll take some more time.

(Months supply means if no one else listed their home for sale, and we continued selling homes at the current pace, it would take 11 and one-half months to sell all the homes currently on the market)

Combined with anecdotal evidence from just about every Realtor and title officer I know, who all say that they’re busier than they were during the height of the boom, and I think this is encouraging news. Jonathan Dalton sports some awesome numbers over at his website, Daltons AZ Homes that show lots of our market activity is coming from people buying lender-owned and short sale homes. I’m just happy to see a continued decrease in the ‘months supply’ number.

From Inman News, I got a eblast news update that gave me a little more insight into why lenders maybe aren’t so eager to modify loan terms for homeowners facing the possibility of foreclosure.

“On mortgages carrying mortgage insurance that go to foreclosure, investors are protected up to the maximum coverage of the policy, which is usually enough to cover all or most of the loss. This discourages modifications. Why do a modification for $15,000 if the $40,000 foreclosure cost is going to be paid by the mortgage insurer?”  So says Jack Guttentag, professor emeritus of finance at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. (I found Jack’s comments at Inman.com and I think the site requires a free registration to view the article)

Unlike my last post proposing a “fix” for the foreclosure mess, I’ve got no advice or ideas on this one. I assume it’s the investors who bought the loans from the original lender who are getting payouts from the insurance funds. The bulk of today’s foreclosures are loans carrying private mortgage insurance, since many of them were exotic 80/20 and 80/15/5 loans which left homeowners with little or no equity in the property. Since the news is filled with stories of big banks announcing big losses due to their involvement in the mortgage meltdown, I guess it’s just the banks and the homeowners who are paying the price. Investors (apparently) have their losses covered by insurance.

I saw a cute guest bath towel idea today while touring a home for sale with clients. Snapped a pic with my phone. It’s a little blurry and the colors are a bit off but I think the idea will come through.

In any case, it was a cute idea for a guest bath. The under-towel was a dark chocolate brown hand towel, hung straight on the bar, with no fold. The 2 over-towels were a nice toffee color hand towel in a standard tri-fold. The insets were small frameless pictures measuring about 3 by 5 inches. I bet they came from a home discount store like Tuesday Morning and I’m sure cost less than $5 a piece. They’re anchored onto the accent hand towels with an elastic band in a chocolate brown. Finally, the flowers are plastic sprigs and I bet you could pick ‘em up at Michaels for about 50 cents a piece.

Of course the pictured towels are off-center & hung crooked. That pretty much speaks to the condition of the entire home. My clients called it the “dirty red house” because it was . . .  well . . . dirty and disorganized, and filled with red accent candles, chair covers, froo-froo’s and fringe. I should have photographed the master closet. It was filled to bursting with clothes and you couldn’t see the floor through the layer of dirty, discarded and (to my nose) damp clothing strewn about the floor. Here’s a word to the wise when your home is for sale: resist the urge to discard the day’s worn clothing by tossing it on the floor of your closet. Buy a hamper with a lid and use it.

I haven’t written much lately. It’s because I’m working 13 hour days with buyers and sellers crawling out of the woodwork it seems. So, a short post about the anecdotal evidence I’ve got that says the metro Phoenix real estate market is improving.

• I’ve got 4 new listings in 2 weeks, all priced aggressively to move within 30 days
• I’ve also got 3 new buyers, money in hand, FICO score safely in the mid- to high-700’s, ready to buy this month
• My A/C guy is busier than he can keep up with, with new work based on home inspection findings
• His friend who does truss work for area builders, says he’s busy again after a 1-1/2 year lull
• A friend of mine who works for Pulte says their sales office is slammed; she’s working Saturdays again
• We have 55,598 active listings in the Arizona Regional MLS which is higher than I’ve seen since I started tracking in Oct 2007 (this is all property type, Active only, not AWC)
• 6,626 properties are ”pending” today, which is 11.84% of the Active inventory (up from 10.00% on March 12, and a meager 6.06% on January 6)
• 4,589 properties have sold in the past 30 days, which means we’ve got 12.19 months of inventory on the market (down from 15.48 on March 12 and a dismal 19.30 last November)

So what does it all mean? It seems we’re getting our usual spring inventory increase. With an already bloated market full of too many under-improved and over-priced houses, this should be bad. But the good news it we seem to be selling it. Nobody would claim a 12 months’ supply of housing for sale is a good market, but it’s a definite improvement over where we’ve been.

Have we turned the corner? My gut says yes, but I want another month or two of watching the “months supply” number drop before I’ll change my market call from Hold to Buy.