Posts from — March 2010

Wonderful Gilbert Short Sale home — new to market!!

Wachovia short sales — the creme de la creme of the Arizona short sale world!

We have listed, processed, sold, and received approval on one of our client’s listings all in less than 11 days, thanks to Wachovia’s Fast Track program (and some great home selling skills by us of course!!)

If all the lenders even took a few pages out of Wachovia’s short sale book then this Arizona real estate market would be turning around a lot faster than it is!

If you have a Wachovia loan please give us a call at 480-241-4406 and we’ll get that short sale moving FAST FAST FAST!!!

Numbers from January show that Phoenix home values dropped 2.3% compared to December, 2009 and dropped 22.9% when compared to numbers in January, 2009.

That’s almost a 23% DECLINE in home values in one year from 2009 to 2010.

With an average national appreciation rate of 5% in a NORMAL market, how long will it take for this property to go back up in value?

Well, if a house that was worth $200,000 in January of 2009 it is now worth $154,000. At 5% a year appreciation (assuming the market turned around today!) it would take at least 7 years to come back to the value of $200,000.

This is assuming of course that the market was to turn around immediately and we were to not see any future declines in values. This is not only unlikely, it simply won’t happen. I don’t know if they will decline another 23% this year but if they do that’s an ugly number to recover from!

We don’t see the Arizona real estate market turning around or even stabilizing for quite some time, regardless of what the media, people at the grocery store, or your next-door neighbor says. The numbers simply aren’t there yet and until listings come down, normal buyers return (and by normal we mean buyers that aren’t trying to nab a tax credit or other incentive and buyers that aren’t using minimal down payment programs such as FHA), and the foreclosures grind to a slow crawl we will continue to see at least a slight decline in the values of most areas of the greater Phoenix/Scottsdale real estate market.

This doesn’t mean that buyers shouldn’t buy…actually they SHOULD be buying homes. We are at some low lows right now and there are some great deals out there. If you are looking for a place to live and you find the perfect home then by all means buy it and move in…there shouldn’t be a price on making a house a home.

If you are looking for an investment property then just make sure you do all your homework and pick the right property as not every “foreclosure” or “short sale” is a great deal just because its a lender-driven property. Make sure the numbers work for you and your goals and I think that long term investors that are snapping up properties at today’s pricing are going to make a killing in the long run.

Wonderful short sale home in Surprise, Az with tons of upgrades! Tenants meticulously care for the property and would love to stay!

I received a very nice testimonial email today from one of our happy short sale clients and thought I would share it:

“Sean, thank you so much for helping us short sale our Arizona home. We talked to 10 different agents and you were the only one who could answer every question and you really went out of your way to explain the entire process. We knew right there that we were hiring Arizona’s best short sale agent and you proved it from day one! You sold our home in less than a month, got an approval from our TWO lenders in less than 60 days, and we closed right on time! You walked us through the process and we are so grateful to be able to put this behind us and move forward with our lives. Thank you again.”

We love to get testimonials from our clients and this one was from one of our client’s who really did his homework studying about short sales, foreclosures, and what options were best for him and his family. We’re glad he decided to allow us the opportunity to help another family avoid foreclosure and we’d like to provide a few reasons why we would like to continue to try and be Arizona’s best short sale agent:

1. We don’t charge any fees for our services — we are paid our commission from the lenders but we work and represent YOU!

2. Our team includes a full-time listing agent to list your property, multiple full time processors to process the short sale, a full-time buyers agent to show property, and we do our own professional negotiations of your short sale. We do not outsource our negotiation and we work hard for you to get your short sale approved!

3. We offer full professional resources including: Real estate attorneys, CPAs specializing in preparing taxes for people who have short sold property, credit repair companies for after the short sale is complete, and more! The best thing is all of these resources offer our clients FREE consultations!!

4. We list, sell, & process short sales full time, 7 days a week!! Short sales constitute 90-95% of our listings!

5. We work with ALL banks! We have worked with all of the major lenders and many of the smaller ones as well!! Chances are if you have a loan, we’ve short sold a property with that lender! Lenders change their policies & procedures constantly and with our large bulk of short sale listings we are constantly dealing with each of these banks on a daily & weekly basis so we are always current!

Those are a few reasons why our clients describe us as the “BEST SHORT SALE AGENT IN ARIZONA” but don’t just take their word for it, give us a call at 480-241-4404 or email us at Sean@AzHomeHelp.com and we’ll help you short sell your Arizona home today!