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Captain you couldn't be anymore wrong...you are making a lot of assumtions and we all know where that leads.
The facts are you are relying on information from banks and we know that they in many cases don't even have a clue themselves...their credability as well as others in the housing industry has been down right unlawful the past 5-6 years....so if you are in the housing industry you have a long way to go before you can start spouting all of your knowledge, charts and graphs and telling us just to accept it.
It has been very common for realtors to start attacking anyone who looks negatively at their industry, well excuse me but just maybe if more people had been doing that we wouldn't be bailing your butts out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
The facts from your chart say there are 327 houses avergage per week going back to the banks, I think this might actually be worse than Lee county Florida.
What one can't see with your graph is the number of properties the county doesn't allow to go to auction mostly due to proper paper work, in Lee county they show that and right now it would probably double the number of houses being foreclosed. Most of these will eventually also go to auction.
The bottom line is that you don't really know, I will admit I don't really know. For every thing you show me that there isn't I could show you another that there is a real shadow inventory. I think it will all become more clear in 6 months. Fortunately for me I have throw away money to take the risk, so If I find the right property I will buy regardless.
Tell me what I'm wrong about. I know I'm far from perfect, but if you're going to tell me I'm wrong, then be specific and provide facts to prove to me I'm wrong
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you are making a lot of assumtions and we all know where that leads.
Tell me what assumptions I'm making.
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The facts are you are relying on information from banks and we know that they in many cases don't even have a clue themselves...their credability as well as others in the housing industry has been down right unlawful the past 5-6 years....so if you are in the housing industry you have a long way to go before you can start spouting all of your knowledge, charts and graphs and telling us just to accept it.
If you've read my posts you'll recall that I said my information on the bank inventory does NOT come from the banks. It comes from the county recorders office. I've also said that I post the information and it's up to you to use it as you wish. You don't have to accept anything I say, but you have yet to provide any facts that can prove my information wrong.
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It has been very common for realtors to start attacking anyone who looks negatively at their industry, well excuse me but just maybe if more people had been doing that we wouldn't be bailing your butts out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
No one has ever bailed me out, and no Realtor on here has attacked you. It's actually been the other way around. Just in your sentence above you're attacking the credibility of every one in the housing industry.
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The facts from your chart say there are 327 houses avergage per week going back to the banks, I think this might actually be worse than Lee county Florida.
I don't have any information on Florida, but with only 327 homes per week going back to the bank here, is part of why we are having such a shortage of homes for sale in the under $150k range.
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What one can't see with your graph is the number of properties the county doesn't allow to go to auction mostly due to proper paper work, in Lee county they show that and right now it would probably double the number of houses being foreclosed. Most of these will eventually also go to auction.
Florida is a Judicial Foreclosure state. Arizona does not have the problem that they have. While we did have a few problems, I'm understanding that most all have been cleared up. It was only a big problem in the Judicial Foreclosure states.
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The bottom line is that you don't really know, I will admit I don't really know. For every thing you show me that there isn't I could show you another that there is a real shadow inventory...
Click on the thumbnail below to see a chart showing the Phoenix Metro shadow inventory, courtesy of the Cromford Report.
We're all here to share information and learn, so please do show us your information.
You are wrong on your assumptions of me about the shadow inventory. I do like having the discussion, but it seems like you are against that for whatever reason.
I have no idea as whether the shadow inventory is real or not, there is a lot of information on both sides.
The housing industry has been given billions and billions in bail out money, if you generate one penny from real estate then you are benefiting from it. How do you think the market would be if we were to shut down fannie and freddie as they should be IMO, they are being given billions in continued tax payer bailouts.
One interesting tidbit, in talking with my Phoenix Arizona Mortgage specialist today and discussing some of what you're posting....one of the first things she mentioned was to be wary of the soon to arrive shadow inventory. She believes its going to start showing up in the next couple of months.
She agrees that there are mulitiple offers on many houses but its primarily people that are low bidding. She said for my price range and where I'm wanting to buy that it won't be a problem, at most I may have to pay listed price or a couple of thousand higher but should definately leave town with an accepted offer if I find something I like.
So my original question was whether anyone else has witnessed these auctions? I can see these charts seem to be contradicting what Sdahunt is saying. I just wanted to know if anyone who has been to the auctions can say whether it looks like more homes are going bank to the bank or whether it looks more like the Cromford numbers? I realize the reality is more likely the Cromford but wanted to ask if someone has seen this first hand. Basically I am playing devil's advocate. Thanks
While I haven't witnessed an auction, I was involved in one two years ago at the office of Tiffany & Bosco. (we sent our real estate agent on our behalf since we were out of state).
This is one of the trustee offices mentioned by Captain Bill. I don't know how many trustee offices there are like this - my guess is there are a few others, plus the 'courthouse steps' auctions. This particular office does hundreds of real estate auctions per week.
The tblaw website allows you to search their properties to see what is coming up. Conveniently, it also allows you to look at completed transactions.
Eg, the week of 2/6/2012 - 2/12/2012 there were 644.
The same week in 2010 shows 1137 and in 2011 was 1008, so the foreclosure activity appears to be down quite a bit, at least with this trustee.
I was curious what things looked like these days for my zip (85268) compared to when we bought.
Disposition:
Canc = canceled and did not come back up for auction
Revt = property reverted to the lender (the bank bought it)
3pty = property was bought by a 3rd party
unk = no disposition shown in the data
This is admittedly a very small sample size- one zip code at one auction house over a 2 year period. That said, it does indicate a few things:
A slight decline in total properties per month going to auction.
Of the ones which are being resolved, still more going back to the bank rather than to a 3rd party. But the first year it was 65-20 and the second year it was 29-28. So it has gone from more than a 3-1 'revert to 3rd party' ratio to nearly even.
Another thing to keep in mind is this is a bit of an upscale area, and may not be indicative of what is going on in other zips. There's also no indication if the property is SFR or condo or whatever.
I would be interested to see this kind of analysis across all zips, and from all auction sources.. but it does take a bit of effort (a lot of cut/pasting from the website to excel) to put together, not to mention that CD has chosen not to implement a [code] bbcode tag which makes formatting a post like this a real pita... so I'm not inclined to do it.
In Florida auctions the banks are putting in minimums way above the latest appraisal so they know going in that nobody is buying it. There are a few that are 3rd party bought, I figure it must be the home owner who wants to keep it, not sure if that is correct or not.
I was told that banks do this so they can collect on the mortgage insurance which would be more than the sale at auction, again don't know if it is correct or not.
You are wrong on your assumptions of me about the shadow inventory. I do like having the discussion, but it seems like you are against that for whatever reason.
I have no idea as whether the shadow inventory is real or not, there is a lot of information on both sides.
The housing industry has been given billions and billions in bail out money, if you generate one penny from real estate then you are benefiting from it. How do you think the market would be if we were to shut down fannie and freddie as they should be IMO, they are being given billions in continued tax payer bailouts.
One interesting tidbit, in talking with my Phoenix Arizona Mortgage specialist today and discussing some of what you're posting....one of the first things she mentioned was to be wary of the soon to arrive shadow inventory. She believes its going to start showing up in the next couple of months.
She agrees that there are mulitiple offers on many houses but its primarily people that are low bidding. She said for my price range and where I'm wanting to buy that it won't be a problem, at most I may have to pay listed price or a couple of thousand higher but should definately leave town with an accepted offer if I find something I like.
If you wait a couple months until the shadow inventory hits, you should have an even easier time of buying a home without worrying about multiple offers.
I hope you have better luck than my buyers.
I just completed writing the 15th offer for one of my clients, and all were between 4-10% over list on homes in the 125-150k range.
For another client I wrote 4 offers today, which makes about 7, and he had made several other offers prior to that. These are all above listed price.
It's so bad over here that I have turned down several new clients that are in the $150k and below range because they would be competing with my current clients, and I can't find them all homes.
In Florida auctions the banks are putting in minimums way above the latest appraisal so they know going in that nobody is buying it. There are a few that are 3rd party bought, I figure it must be the home owner who wants to keep it, not sure if that is correct or not.
I was told that banks do this so they can collect on the mortgage insurance which would be more than the sale at auction, again don't know if it is correct or not.
In the past, as one of my charts shows, that was the pattern here, although I don't know why they did it. More homes reverted to the banks because their opening bid was set at the mortgage balance.
That has changed here, and now more homes are being sold to third parties.
Rise in Phoenix Housing Shows Path for Other Cities
PHOENIX—As home prices continue to drop in most cities, a nascent real-estate rebound here holds lessons for the rest of the country.
This sprawling desert metropolis was one of the hardest hit housing markets during the bust. Phoenix home prices declined 55% from 2006 through the end of 2011, and Arizona's foreclosure rate jumped to No. 3 in the nation in 2009. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners are underwater, meaning they owe more than their homes are worth.
Now real-estate economists across the country are studying an early but surprisingly broad Phoenix turnaround. The sharp drop in home prices has brought new buyers into the market. Unlike other markets where housing recoveries have been snuffed out by big overhangs of homes for sale and foreclosed properties, inventories are lean here.
"Phoenix has hit a bottom," says Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist who was one of the first to warn six years ago that prices in overbuilt metros were poised to fall.
The nation's hard-hit housing markets face a tough act: engineering a housing recovery without traditional trade-up buyers, many of whom are either unwilling or unable to sell because of huge price declines.
Phoenix has found a viable formula. Low prices are igniting demand from first-time buyers and investors who are converting the homes to rentals. The local economy is on the upswing with several big employers like Amazon.com Inc. and Intel Corp. hiring again, which is further increasing demand for housing. And the region is benefiting from a surge of buyers from Canada who are using their favorable exchange rate to scoop up bargains in the desert.
Local mom-and-pop investors are also playing key roles in soaking up supply. "I'm running my Realtor ragged looking at properties," said Robert Gerundo, who last month stood inside a two-bedroom condominium, scribbling his signature on an offer to buy the unit for $50,200, slightly above the listing price set by the bank, which recently foreclosed on the unit.
Mr. Gerundo has bought 13 properties in Phoenix in the past two years and rents them out for as little as $950 a month. The 49-year-old, who drives around in a Jaguar with a Rutgers sticker on it, says he is making so much money as a landlord that he quit his job last year in New Jersey as a banker.
Nationally, housing demand still remains weak and bank-owned sales are expected to rise this year, putting more pressure on prices. Many economists say they expect home prices nationally could fall by another 3% or so this year before hitting a bottom next year. Most expect that prices will rise little for several years.
U.S. home prices fell another 2% in the fourth quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index tracking 20 cities. But prices rose by 2% in Phoenix, the biggest increase of any metro area in the country. Over the past year, prices in Phoenix are down by 1.2%, the smallest drop since its prices started falling in 2006.
Other markets are showing signs of life, too, as the spring buying season gets under way. Recent job gains for Detroit's auto sector have helped rev up sales in recent months. Home prices in Washington, D.C., have fared better than in much of the country thanks to better employment prospects from government-related hiring.
Big price drops, like those in Phoenix, are another key. In Detroit, prices are down by 46% over the past six years and have fallen to levels last seen in 1994. Sales have picked up in Miami, where prices are down by 51% over the past five years.
But low prices alone haven't been enough to so stabilize other epicenters of the housing bust where job growth still lags. In Las Vegas, where prices have tumbled 62% since 2006, including 8.9% over the past year, the local economy is heavily dependent on tourism and gambling, both industries that haven't recovered. "A lot of markets in the country have hit a bottom, but I just don't see them coming back the way Phoenix has," says John Burns, a homebuilding consultant in Irvine, Calif. View Interactive
The improving housing market in Phoenix isn't much comfort to anybody who bought a home there a few years ago. More than 52% of mortgage borrowers owe more than their homes are worth, according to CoreLogic, a real-estate data company. And not everyone in Phoenix is convinced that the improvements will last, especially if the economy falters or oil prices soar.
Phoenix saw a small run-up in prices three years ago when federal tax credits spurred a buying frenzy, but prices dropped again once the credits expired. Others worry that banks have delayed foreclosures and will begin to saturate the market with more properties in the coming year. "It feels like a temporary bottom," says Brett Barry, a real-estate agent who lists properties for Fannie Mae.
Such concerns haven't discouraged buyers like Lloyd Sheiner from taking advantage of low prices to build an inventory of 143 homes, which he rents out to families that haven't been able to hold on to their homes.
"The panic is over," says Mr. Sheiner, an apartment and commercial real-estate investor who lives in Montreal and began buying 18 months ago after he concluded prices were too low.
His average renter, he says, is a family of four with parents who have jobs. "They've been sitting around their kitchen table with a $350,000 mortgage on a house worth $140,000," he says. "And they're saying to themselves, 'Geez, what are we going to do? Do we spend the next 20 years of our life paying this down or do we start over?' "
His company, Living Well Homes, has built its own property-management infrastructure that allows tenants to submit work orders online and automatically deducts rent from their checking account. "We don't go running around the valley banging on the door collecting rent," he says.
Out-of-state buyers accounted for one-quarter of all purchases last month. One in every 25 sales went to a buyer that listed a Canadian address when registering the sale, according to the Cromford Report, a local real-estate publication. Many are flush with cash from a real-estate boom of their own in Canada and an exchange rate that has given Canadians unusual buying power.
Dean Selvey, a real-estate agent and investor who has built his business around marketing to Canadian snowbirds, last month set up a big booth at a two-day trade show in nearby Mesa called "Canadian Snowbird Extravaganza Celebration" that drew 5,000 attendees. "It's chase the Canadians—that's our market," he says.
A few days later, Jon Mirmelli, a local real-estate agent who has bought nearly a dozen foreclosures as rentals, knocked on the door of a homeowner whose home was slated for a bank foreclosure auction. After introducing himself and informing the occupant about the imminent foreclosure sale, he popped the question: "If you're not able to keep your house, would you be interested in renting it?"
From the porch, Mr. Mirmelli's business partner sized up the condition of the three-bedroom house, which the current owner bought for $150,000 in a short sale two years ago. At courthouse auctions, homes are sold as is, meaning the buyers may have to evict the former owner.
Nearly 29% of homes sold last month went to buyers who indicated they planned to rent out the properties, according to the Cromford Report. That figure has been on the rise over the past two years. In mid-2010, the share stood near 15%.
Competition from investors is frustrating for aspiring first-time buyers like Adam Brenner. "This does not feel like a buyer's market at all," says Mr. Brenner, a pharmacist who estimates that he has looked at 60 houses since last fall. "You hear and read about how there are so many homes for sale, but once you start looking, it's a pretty big shock."
Many real-estate agents have reported more bidding wars in recent weeks, and some buyers are agreeing to escalation clauses, a bubble-era provision where they agree to pay a certain price above the highest offer.
Arizona makes it easier for banks to take back properties through foreclosure without going to court. The state saw the largest decline in the share of loans that were seriously delinquent or in foreclosure during 2011, according to Lender Processing Services. So-called judicial states such as Florida, where banks must process foreclosures by going through court, have seen growing backlogs, which some fear could eventually drag down Florida markets again in the future.
Now prices are firming up because fewer homes are selling out of foreclosure. Foreclosed properties accounted for 36% of all home resales in January, down from 55% one year ago and a peak of 66% in March 2009, according to DataQuick, a real-estate data firm. Those declines have fallen, in part, because banks are also becoming more efficient at approving short sales, where it allows a sale for less than the mortgage debt owed.
Mike Orr, founder of the Cromford Report, says concerns that banks will begin to dump more foreclosures on the market are overblown, at least in Phoenix. "People think there's a glut of homes the banks are hiding somewhere, and that may be the case in other markets, but not here," he says.
Still, a market recovery on paper means little to hundreds of thousands of underwater homeowners. Consider the case of Gil Monti. In just two days, he received five offers for this home—four above his asking price.
But that offers little comfort: He has been forced to sell the home, which he built 34 years ago and where he raised all three of his children, in a short sale for $275,000.
Mr. Monti was one of many people who refinanced his home repeatedly during the boom, pulling out cash along the way to fund home improvements and his kids' college educations. He paid $100,000 in construction and land costs in 1978, and the home was valued at nearly $600,000 in 2006. He sold the property last month in a short sale because his "interest only" $473,000 mortgage reset last year, requiring full interest and principal payments.
He realized the depth of his troubles last year when a neighbor sold a home for just $199,000, a third of what Mr. Monti's home was worth at the peak.
Mr. Monti isn't alone. "The recovery that gives people like Gil the freedom to sell their property is not going to happen, possibly ever, for a lot of people here," says Greg Markov, his real-estate agent.
Mr. Markov also represents Mr. Gerundo, the investor who bought 13 properties as rentals. "That recovery is already here" for Mr. Gerundo, Mr. Markov says. "His investment is not going down in value."
Wow...Positive articles in the national news could start an upswing in buying from many who were waiting for the market to bottom! Glad I jumped in when I did 18 months ago.
... For every thing you show me that there isn't I could show you another that there is a real shadow inventory. I think it will all become more clear in 6 months. Fortunately for me I have throw away money to take the risk, so If I find the right property I will buy regardless.
If you're fortunate enough to buy a home that you like in your price range in a short time frame, I think you will do very well, and not have to worry about the money being thrown away. It should make money for you in the future.
The Cromford Report is where the most accurate and up to date information for the Phoenix Metro real estate market can be found. It is subscription based so I post a lot of information from my subscription (while honoring the copyright restrictions) to provide current information to other C-D participants who don't have a need to pay for a subscription, but wish to keep up with the local market.
"Mike Orr, founder of the Cromford Report, says concerns that banks will begin to dump more foreclosures on the market are overblown, at least in Phoenix. "People think there's a glut of homes the banks are hiding somewhere, and that may be the case in other markets, but not here," he says.
Mike Orr has recently been appointed director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at the W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU, and everyone can now read a lot of material that he will publish, online.
Below is a video at a conference in 2009 where he is discussing some of his charts and how to use them to forecast the market. In part of his discussion he mentions how price lags supply and demand. His chart showed the supply declining with sales increasing in 2009. It took from around April 2009 to August 2011, about 30 months for the prices to follow the supply/demand trend and begin increasing. http://09media.azimaging.net/FIDELITY/
This information (and there is a lot of it) may help you and many others to better understand the Phoenix market.
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