Overall sales are still down from earlier in the summer, although the numbers are slightly higher than last month. What I found most interesting is the trend of the short sales compared with the trend for bank-owned sales; if the trends continue we should see more short sales than REOs within the next couple/few months!
I’ve pulled all the homes sold since 1/1/2009 for Single Family Residences in Maricopa County.
(click each chart to see full size)
Home Sales by Type of Owner
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Home Sales by Type of Occupant
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All data was pulled from Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) and is deemed accurate but not guaranteed. (In other words, please don’t make life altering decisions based on this data!)
Your keeping his nose to the trend-line grindstone Realtor,
Chris Butterworth
Chris Butterworth spends more time analyzing statistics and reading economic reports than is healthy. He's also a husband, father, writer, and amateur photographer. In his spare time he trained for and competed in his first triathlon.
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Sunday Stats
image credit, user sgback at StockExchange
If you’re trying to complete a short sale or loan modification on your home, do not keep money in a checking or savings account with the bank that holds your mortgage.
Open accounts with another bank, savings and loan, credit union (or whatever) that is not related to your mortgage(s) and move your money there.
Of course, if you’re doing a short sale or loan modification, you should hire an attorney or a CPA/accountant, or both. Don’t take my advice as gospel. I’m a Realtor, not an attorney or CPA or accountant. Hire an expert who looks at your unique situation.
From Inman.com newswire service:
Banks routinely obtain a “right of offset” in agreements with depositors, which allows them to take money from one account to settle a debt in another account with the same bank.
. . .
[normally this doesn’t apply to mortgages and checking accounts but] Rosemary Ybarra, lead foreclosure intervention counselor [with] Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix, said she was aware of instances in which banks have exercised their right of offset against delinquent mortgage borrowers. (emphasis mine, not Inman’s)
Although Ybarra could not say how common the practice is, when clients seeking loan modifications are unable to cure their loans, “we let them know that the servicers will exercise their right (of offset), and that if they have an account open with them, to liquidate it.”
This seems like just common sense and street-smarts. You wouldn’t take a loan from a loan shark and then tell him “I can’t pay you” while clutching a wallet full of $100 bills. Would you?
What’s left in your checking/savings account might be only a couple of hundred dollars, but you’ll be really, really angry if your bank takes it and applies it to your mortgage balance.
The quote above is from an article posted August 23, 2010 on Inman.com which is a subscription news service for the real estate industry. Like a lot of news sites, Inman has a fee section and a free section. The article the quote comes from was free on August 23, 2010 and pay-for-viewing after that.
Heather Barr is a Realtor and a happy workaholic. She eats more than someone her size ought to be able, and is a runner as a consequence. Her TiVo's full of spy thrillers, police procedurals and Whedonesque sci-fi.
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Economics,
Personal Finance
