DISQUS

The largest problem, especially here in AZ, is that the whole factor of INVENTORY is completely ignored.

What good is sustaining house prices artificially or preventing foreclosure, when demand is kept low due to thousands of vacant homes.

Joe Blow may be able to stay in his house for now, if he's one of the lucky ones that falls in between the government's narrow guidelines for programs, but what happens when something else happens (layoffs, medical bills, etc) and he has to sell?

Until we focus on the massive inventory out there, we can't do anything about individual homes. One is the result of another.

It's like putting up a tent in the middle of the jungle and crying about bugs getting in.

The problem isn't bugs getting in your tent, it's that you're in the freaking jungle. Change that and you'll find the bugs seem to vanish pretty quickly.

<abbr></abbr><abbr>Edge´s last blog post..Property Taxes Going Up, MythBusters, Central Banks, and How Our Inflation Compares To Japan</abbr>

Neat idea!

I've always found that those sites individually never seemed to have the amount of reviews or feedback I was looking for. Aggregation is truly a wonderful thing. Have to give it a go shortly.

<abbr></abbr><abbr>Edge´s last blog post..Property Taxes Going Up, MythBusters, Central Banks, and How Our Inflation Compares To Japan</abbr>

Hah, that's classic!

On the plus side though, at least you can breathe a sigh of relief when these sellers only have THEMSELVES to argue what "market price" is, rather than forcing an agent to waste time that could be better spent yelling at a wall or something :)

That's assuming of course that they'd ever realize it was price that was the problem and still remain unable to find a reason to blame a nearby agent.

Can't help the stupid.

<abbr></abbr><abbr>Edge´s last blog post..Property Taxes Going Up, MythBusters, Central Banks, and How Our Inflation Compares To Japan</abbr>

And for those that tend to think of pets as just run-of-the-mill animals, this is a link that may help shed some light :(

http://www.theginblog.com/2007/12/loyalty-in-th...

<abbr></abbr><abbr>Edge´s last blog post..Property Taxes Going Up, MythBusters, Central Banks, and How Our Inflation Compares To Japan</abbr>

Linsey,

I also like to sit down with a section of the paper when I'm eating lunch as it's a nice way to zone out for a while.

Problem is though, that I don't use 90% of the paper that day and 100% on the days I don't need it at all.

Like a bank, it would be nice if your subscription fees gave you uncluttered (by ads) web access and the OPTION for "paper statements" that would get delivered for a time period.

There may be weeks when I'm at home for a while, on vacation, etc. And I may want the paper coming so I can read it there. But normally, I have no time for it and as their business model doesn't support my reading habits currently, I just get it elsewhere *shrug*

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Property Taxes Going Up, MythBusters, Central Banks, and How Our Inflation Compares To Japan</abbr>

Greg, I've heard that a bit and while it's usually dismissed quickly, I have to say that given the chance (and this grows ever more real every day) that the bailout fails and we've authorized the gov't to further reduce the value of the dollar...

That actually isn't that far out of a plan. Or try an alternative plan. Maybe lessen the "gift" and still buy bad debt. We're going to feel a LOT better if the economy crashes if we have enough cash to pay rent for 6 months.

I think an argument could be made for that. After all, McCain said last night that he's going to let people renegotiate their mortgages on current market values (though probably not you folks who actually make your payments).

Seems no matter which of the two parties you vote for, it's a vote for Socialism.

Might as well go all the way out and let the people have some cake too :)

Candidates want to talk about "energy independence"... how about "economy independence"?

I'd love to get a nice check in the mail (if we are mailing out checks at all, that is) that I could use as a fallback to support myself for half a year or two or three (etc.. etc..) if the economy collapsed.

Hell, at this rate, I'd probably rush out and use it all to buy gold with =P

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Property Taxes Going Up, MythBusters, Central Banks, and How Our Inflation Compares To Japan</abbr>

This is damned terrifying. While I understand the role we play in the world economy and that this isn't just giving rich CEOs golden parachutes, you read the latest add-ins like wooden arrow clauses and such and wonder...

Which is a bigger mistake. NOT making the bailout and having things fail. Or MAKING the bailout, having things fail, and being 700 billion worse off to boot.

Paint an ironic picture of the USA being the only "Made in the USA" thing in the Walmart discount bin.

Something local and even more frightening... Arizona just had a RECORD month for foreclosure notices (there should be a link to that post below)...

442 foreclosure notices sent out EVERY DAY (on average) to folks in Maricopa County.

The AZ Director of the Dept. of Housing had ominous words regarding the money being spent to artificially "fix" the market, or at least the prices of things on the market:

"Last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Arizona would get $121 million to help areas blighted by foreclosures, but officials are doubtful even that large sum will mitigate the growing problem. 'Is it enough? No, it’s not nearly enough compared to the magnitude of the problem,' Arizona Department of Housing Director Fred Karnas said."

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Foreclosure Notices, Recessions, and Bailouts, Oh My! - Arizona Breaks New Record For Number Of Foreclosure Notices Sent</abbr>

Gonna keep an eye on the night life link. In Gilbert, when things start to go dark around 8-9pm, they REALLY start to go dark.

Though the 202+Gilbert flashing video offramp adboards do their part to keep things lit up :)

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Foreclosure Notices, Recessions, and Bailouts, Oh My! - Arizona Breaks New Record For Number Of Foreclosure Notices Sent</abbr>

Congrats on an upgrade gone well!

Wordpress has been nagging me that a newer version is available but I'm too scared to take the plunge quite yet..

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Foreclosure Notices, Recessions, and Bailouts, Oh My! - Arizona Breaks New Record For Number Of Foreclosure Notices Sent</abbr>

Agree and disagree Jon. I think the term is put out there more to indirectly point to the fact that financing and timelines are tight and that should be kept in mind. I can see where the annoyance comes in, but with so many short sales not being approved now, it seems timing is of the essence.

As far as flipping, as a huge fan of Property Ladder (my guilty pleasure), I often think about this, but as you mentioned, the work needed is usually the killer unless you were a general contractor in your past life.

Even then, I don't see flipping as really possible given the market inventory as Jay mentioned. Finding a property that would easily cash flow and renting it out, now that's another story.

It appears stocks are starting to rally back, which is a good sign. I don't know how many people know, but close to $600 BILLION DOLLARS was still spent yesterday even though this bill never passed.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087...

Like I had said earlier, that request for 700 billion won't be the first and only amount spent. If we give a thumbs up to more spending, we'll see TRILLIONS UPON TRILLIONS of dollars spent before this is over.

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Ron Paul Speaks Out Against The 2008 Bush Administration’s Federal Bailout Plan - Why It Will Not Work And How It Will Hurt You Even If You Have No Money Invested In The Market</abbr>

Boise, that's definitely the first step every agent needs to take.

Everyone wants to host your site, but not for altruistic reasons :) With something this easy, there's no reason not to do whatever it takes to do it on your terms for total control.

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Ron Paul Speaks Out Against The 2008 Bush Administration’s Federal Bailout Plan - Why It Will Not Work And How It Will Hurt You Even If You Have No Money Invested In The Market</abbr>

I think the biggest problem right now is that many folks who are in support of this, are either completely ignoring, or unaware that this amount will not be enough.

There are about 5 other bailouts going on right now as well which put the total at around 1.25 TRILLION dollars.

Do we do this to "protect our economy" like we "protected our freedom" by giving approval for funds for Iraq?

Or do we instead wait until they analyze the extent of this (which could take a LONG time) and give us ONE final number.

Do we give 700 billion now, then when we're knee-deep and find out we need another 500 billion, give that too? Where does it stop?

Once we get IN, we can't get OUT. On top of that, there's still the chance that we DO the 700 billion dollar bailout and it STILL doesn't fix it.

Now the economy is dead AND we're 700 billion+++ in debt.

These guys WANTED to vote yes, but couldn't possibly do it and face the endless droves of voters who called their offices against it.

I understand the fundamental idea of the plan and see how it could work in theory. But I know it will only be the first of many and until I know exactly how much bad debt needs to be bought, I couldn't support this.

It's time to look at things like the War on Terror and the War on Drugs and ask ourselves if we're truly defeating our enemies...

Or if we're doing all the hard work for them and defeating ourselves.

It's pretty easy to approach a wild horse once it's sitting on 4 broken legs. I think it's high time to pull back our outstretched arms and try and stuff our swollen guts back into our body and then think about why this happened in the first place.

<abbr>Edges last blog post..Ron Paul Speaks Out Against The 2008 Bush Administration’s Federal Bailout Plan - Why It Will Not Work And How It Will Hurt You Even If You Have No Money Invested In The Market</abbr>

I remember when Agritopia first opened, we met with the builders and other agents and were given tours along with the "dream" of the community.

To this day, I still think it's neat that they wanted to force people to walk to their front door in order to be able to say "Hi!" to the neighbor. The layout of the zoning and distance to nearby stores was equally impressive.

A throwback to the old days :)

<abbr>Edges last blog post..The Five Most Dangerous Mistakes You Can Make Renting A House That Can Cost You Thousands And Lead To Eviction</abbr>

I usually look at DOM to see, as you mentioned, whether we're dealing with sellers who are working with ZERO equity and simply can't go lower without going short sale, or sellers unwilling to lose invisible equity they believe they still have and sticking with a non-competitive price.

And sometimes it's just worthless.

You also brought up a good point that some agents don't do their homework to make sure that the property is listed in a way that makes it easy to market.

Take this property:

4633 S Redrock Court
Gilbert, AZ 85297

If you toss it into Google Maps, or use the MLS Search feature on this site, you'll see it's not listed correctly.

On the MLS search tool, it ends up being 2 miles or so south of where it is. That's wrong.

On Google Maps, they guesstimate as to the location more appropriately, but are still off by a street or two.


D.O.M is a good tool for those of us who can't see realtor comments. But even then you need to examine similar comps and trends in the neighborhood to see what the DOM can tell ya :)

<abbr>Edges last blog post..The Five Most Dangerous Mistakes You Can Make Renting A House That Can Cost You Thousands And Lead To Eviction</abbr>

With the recent banking crisis and massive influx of foreclosures and loan mods being pushed to the desks of the bank's employees who handle approval of many of the items in a short sale process, it's taken MUCH longer than it typically has.

My neighbor went through a short sale a few years ago when the market was less hectic on the banking side, investor came in and offered cash, bank took a few weeks to accept, and then the process went through very slowly.

I've talked to a few who have gone through the process (or tried to before they were eventually foreclosed on) now and short sales have been hail mary's for those hoping to avoid foreclosure. There was simply too much work and paperwork for banks to efficiently handle.

Even back when, in the aforementioned story, I couldn't imagine a typical buyer taking part on the buying side of a short sale. Too much documentation, too much red tape, and likely too much inexperience on both the buyer and agent's sides. Not many agents know the pitfalls that can kill a short sale.

For Kim and others who may be having problems, you can check whether CommentLuv can find your site or not by entering it here:

http://www.fiddyp.co.uk/commentluv-wordpress-pl...

It turns out that I had to disable my Feedburner plugin before it could find mine. It may have been causing a timeout or simply obfuscating the feed location enough to make it impossible to find.

Also, lowering the amount of posts your feed shows can help too. 5-7 is a good number from what I've found. Hope it helps!

<abbr>Edges last blog post..The Five Most Dangerous Mistakes You Can Make Renting A House That Can Cost You Thousands And Lead To Eviction</abbr>

Jay, let us know how things go at the SEVRAR tech conference. I'm curious how you feel reception to blogging has improved. It seems that most agents are either scratching their heads or putting up their first blog with no idea as to how good content magically appears. Hopefully they're up for some helpful suggestions.

Looks like you got it, Kim :)

Kim, had the same problem. I'm using Wordpress which is pretty much the standard for that sort of plugin, so I'm assuming it could be an issue on the server taking too long to reach during the "find the latest post" process or something similar. I wouldn't worry about it unless it still happens after a couple days.

Nice adds Jay!

Now onto the most annoying part of being a "giving" blogger - watching out for those trying to game the system. Whether it be my A.D.D., or my generally good nature, I always try to make any reply something that contributes to the post rather than something that just "attaches" to it.

However, it's always unfortunate when you scroll through some posts (not here specifically, but on other blogs that either do follow or simply don't use Akismet or any filtering) and see a bunch of one liner replies or replies that are posted by someone with a very auspicious username and a seemingly unrelated or badly worded comment.

Hopefully you don't mind a little extra work that comes with such an open-use comment policy.

For those of us that love to reply with our own deep thoughts, it's always nice to not feel pressured to think "Ok, do I leave a long reply on this person's blog, or do I save some of these thoughts, keep it short, and just write a blog post instead". I may spend more of my energy commenting on friends' blogs than writing my own, but it's only because I try not to half-ass on either side.

With an open policy like this, we at least get a little bonus point or two for the times when we can't comment and write on our own end. You don't allow ourselves to feel punished for contributing, in other words.

Hmm, if I recall correctly, a pretty tall structure was put up that appears to be 5+ stories on Pecos and Val Vista. I know it's connected to a larger parking garage, but I'm pretty sure it's commercial?

They may have an exemption though. I don't know if I have too much of a problem with this, but then I think about how nice it is to be on the road and usually get a great view of the Superstitions or San Tan Mountain and if they're everywhere.. that will be sad.

Hopefully it's kept pretty tight. From what I've seen around my neighborhood, the residents are pretty adamant about keeping commercial sprawl from growing up too tall. There's usually lots of signs around for meetings to help prevent certain corners from being developed and I have to say it's appreciated. Gilbert has a great sense of "home" and seems quite connected as opposed to other cities like Mesa.

I know I appreciate that.

Jay, don't worry about the 150% number.

The house is probably overpriced by 50% which, I'm sure somehow, leaves you nice and balanced at 100% :)

RE/MAX preached the use of open houses all the time (at least the 2000 franchise did), but only so newer agents could build leads and get used to questions fielded by potential buyers and sellers.

As the ubiquity of the internet grows, hyper-locality becomes so key that random closings due to open houses will only grow smaller as time passes. As a buyer, I'll check the MLS search tool here, build my list of MLS numbers I'd like my agent to look into further, and let him also supplement it with ones I may have missed or ones that are on the fringes of my criteria.

Before either of us leave our air conditioned rooms, nearly all the research will have been done already. Open houses may be good for the "hmm, before we leave the neighborhood, let's check out this one" visit, but in Arizona, few folks are going to want to stop into tons of open houses unless they're those types of folks who love to shop for homes and see interiors without any true desire to purchase.

But perception is reality and there are old-school folks who stick to the traditional method. Good luck with them :)

Jay,

You're right on here. There have been many stories on talk radio and AZCentral about the major declines in tax revenue generated by the state. Largely due to property values declining and estimated future property tax estimations not being hit as well as other real-estate-specific revenue the state depends on.

However, this is like saying that a 400lb man is starving because he can only eat 4000 calories a day instead of the 2000 the rest of us eat.

I think there's been more than enough inflation and dollar crunching in the average Arizonan's wallet to show that we can't afford to GIVE anymore than we currently are.

But, the state CAN afford to cut spending. With illegal immigration and other large issues directly impacting us, there are many measures we could help enforce (this may be a bad word in AZ though *sigh*) that would help us save the money we need for more necessary services.

I'll avoid that tangent, but this definitely needs to avoid being put through. When the candidates were talking about the Fair Tax, Ron Paul said something extremely profound when he said he was against it. That was that, while the concept is nice, if you don't remove the Federal Income Tax first, you're just adding taxes that will never be removed.

It's easy to add taxes, but good luck trying to get the government to take them away. I think Jessica was getting at that as well :)

Glad that ended somewhat amicably :)

Jay, this is one reason many folks like me turn to blogs when an article comes out. Nowadays, I nearly dismiss any article I read by anything "mainstream" unless it allows a comment section or is being linked by some aggregating site (digg,reddit, a more popular blog with lots of comments, etc).

The main reason for that is the one problem with graphs and statistics, as you get at, is CONTEXT.

Good example are the numbers for the AZ market. We've seen folks like Jay Butler use Month over Month numbers or Year over Year with little regard for consistency and more focus on selling the message that we're not in trouble economically. Or the numbers will use the number of sales ignoring the number of listings, or the number of sales ignoring cancellations and expireds, etc.

To add on to one of your previous posts as well, regarding the quality of agents out there, and the fear of admitting we're in a troubled market...

As one of your commenters pointed out (and I was busy so I couldn't respond), even if it's not a "good" time to buy or sell, a quality agent like yourself will attract those that still need to buy or sell regardless, and are prepared to weather the storm. A good agent makes sure these buyers/sellers are truly understanding the market and if things look good, closes the deal and will earn their return business.

The one quality that an experienced agent will bring to the table is that they can help truly interpret the graph or statistic that a potential client is looking at, and add context to the situation. Graphs are impersonal and can only, at best, roughly describe the myriad of factors which will impact that specific person in that specific situation.

I guess that makes you the imaginary Z-axis :)