From the category archives:

Foreclosures / Short Sales

This doesn’t top some of the other nonsense we’ve discovered banks pulling, but it’s pretty nasty.

The bank selling the house our buyer fell in love with requires that the buyer’s Realtor reduce their commission (i.e. take a pay cut) if the buyer wants the seller to help pay his/her closing costs or make repairs on the house.

Lots of first time buyers (nearly all, in our experience) have saved money for their down payment but take the opportunity offered by our current market to ask the seller to cover the cost of their closing costs. And lots of bank owned homes need minor repairs before their FHA loan will be approved.

So essentially, if our buyer makes a request made by most home buyers in the field today, the bank will decrease our paycheck? Great. Just great.

*edited to add - after talking w/ my partner Chris this morning about this, I realized my post needed some clarification on 3 points:

First, the Realtors’ Ethics Code says agents can’t ever allow potential commission  earnings affect what they advise their clients to do.  If our buyer loves a house whose seller is noodling around with our paycheck because they can, and it’s a good house & deal for our client, we have to take the pay cut without comment.

Second, the bank buried this commission information deep within a set of forms buyer is required to submit with his/her purchase offer. The paycheck reduction information isn’t clearly and transparently displayed in the typical spot on the MLS data sheet like everybody else’s commission information.

Third, at the price point our buyer is shopping the bank’s savings via this method is about $125. Bottom line - the bank is being shifty to save a buck and a quarter.


heather

Heather Barr is a Realtor. She's a chow hound, a gym rat, and the only political junkie in the USA who can actually keep her political views to herself. Instead, she focuses on educating her clients about the often-confusing world of residential real estate.

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The Highs and The Lows #3

by Heather on December 10, 2009

in Foreclosures / Short Sales

Wherein I periodically post about the highest and lowest priced homes in the local MLS. Properties must be:

  • single family, detached homes
  • bank owned
  • currently Active in the ARMLS (AZ Regional Multiple Listing Service)
  • located in the general metro Phoenix region (Wickenburg, Florence, Coolidge, etc are excluded but Surprise, Buckeye, Queen Creek, etc are included)

$12,500 – The Value’s in the Land

12,500 REO Dec 10 2009

Once again, a crispy fried special for the guy or gal itching to prove their handyman skills. Seems there’s a lot of those lately. Hmmmm. Former owner rage?

From the MLS description:

Property has been damaged by fire and is sold AS IS. Seller will not make any repairs. PLEASE DO NOT ENTER THE PROPERTY DUE TO SAFETY ISSUES.

The poor house might be hexed. It’s been foreclosed on 3 times since 1992. First, HUD took it back in 1992 and sold it in 1993. A mere two years later it was foreclosed on again, and resold to a new owner. That owner was foreclosed on this past summer and the bank relisted it as a foreclosure/REO property for sale for $31,000 in September. The fire must have happened sometime in September or October, after which the price was dropped to the current $12,500.

$6,500,000 – View in Exclusive Silverleaf Community

6,900,00 REO Dec 10 2009

13,700 square feet of Italianate luxury. Marble, travertine, barrel vaulted ceilings, etc., ad naseum. Wretched excess at it’s finest. Consumerist Keeping Up with the Joneses to the max.

The land (2.48 acres) was purchased in 2004 for just over a million dollars. The owner tried to sell it as “land + house plans” from December 2006 through May 2007 for $2,600,000. Sometime between May 2007 and May 2009 somebody built the existing home and tried to sell it for $8,900,000.

Mind you, they tried to sell it with no interior photos other than this

6,500,000 REO Dec 10 2009 Seriously? You want me to shell out nearly $9 million dollars and you’re going to show me only this?

The seller finally dropped their price to $6,950,000 before the bank repossessed it in October 2009.  I bet you could get the house from the bank for about $5.5M. ‘Course, it probably needs about a million bucks in finishing and furnishing. Feeling flush? Call me!

View previous Highs and Lows posts

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heather

Heather Barr is a Realtor. She's a chow hound, a gym rat, and the only political junkie in the USA who can actually keep her political views to herself. Instead, she focuses on educating her clients about the often-confusing world of residential real estate.

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FHA and Fix ‘n Flip Do Not Mix

by Heather November 29, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

This is a phrase you’re seeing a lot lately in the MLS listings on entry-level housing in metro Phoenix:
This is a property acquired at trustee sale in the past 30 days and will not qualify for FHA due to the cure period requirements. Will qualify for VA or conventional.
Well, actually what you typically see is [...]

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Realtors Make a Ton of Money!

by Heather November 15, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

Yeah, not really. Or at least not usually. And the potential for making a bundle is accompanied by the risk of making zippo.
I’ve written before about the public’s misconception that all Realtors make a ton of money for very little work. Our broker Jay Thompson, the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, wrote about Realtor income earlier [...]

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I’m On My Soapbox Again

by Heather October 5, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

I have a short sale listing. Back in March we got 5 offers, all above list price, and I sent them to the lenders. Lender Number One approved the short sale in May and offered $2,342 to Lender Number Two, a.k.a. Chase Mortgage.
Chase has been dithering about the deal since Spring but emailed me last [...]

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Stop the Insanity!

by Heather September 23, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

image courtesy of Stock Exchange user PinkDragon
We made an offer yesterday for our first time buyer client on an adorable little starter home in Glendale.  It’s bank owned. It’s listed for $109,900. All the appliances are there, seem to be in working order and the house is move-in ready.
We looked at the comps, shared [...]

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REOs Rule, But Not Everywhere

by Heather September 21, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

Image courtesy of Stock Exchange user svilen001
Just a little blurb from one of our favorite title/escrow officers, Maggie Clark of Equity Title. This gives a good picture of just how much the REO (“real estate owned”, i.e. bank owned foreclosure) properties are driving the market lately.

Southwest Valley - REO active listings represent 16% of [...]

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Wrong On So Many Levels

by Heather September 17, 2009 First Time Buyers

Another example of REO lunacy, about which I’ve written before.
Our first time home buyer is being required to sign a document containing the following clauses. She must sign before the bank that owns the house will even look at her offer, which is one among many offers they received. These are the most heinous of [...]

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Buy Goo-Be-Gone, For Gosh Sakes

by Heather September 14, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

Photoblogging, of sorts. Snapped these while showing a bank-owned home in West Phoenix yesterday.
You see light fixtures like this one in just about every home built in the 1990’s in metro Phoenix. I even joke with my clients that the builders must have all got a jaw dropping bargain on these ugly buggers. “They must [...]

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The Highs and the Lows 2

by Heather September 8, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

Wherein I periodically post about the highest and lowest priced homes in the local MLS. Properties must be:

single family, detached homes
bank owned
currently Active in the ARMLS (AZ Regional Multiple Listing Service)
located in the general metro Phoenix region (Wickenburg, Florence, Coolidge, etc are excluded but Surprise, Buckeye, Queen Creek, etc are included)

$20,00 Fire Damaged Tear Down
Fancy [...]

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Short Sales, A Buyer’s Perspective

by Heather August 28, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

Buyer: “The price on that house is so low, and the house looks so good! Is that price in the MLS for real?!”
ThePhoenixAgents: “Probably not.”

We’re noticing an astounding number of short sale listings in the MLS that are listed for prices that seem too good to be true.  Remember what your dear old Mother taught [...]

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Short Sales are a Stalling Tactic?

by Heather August 26, 2009 Foreclosures / Short Sales

Short sales are a stall so that the lender can make their 3.5% risk free returns on the TARP cash we the taxpayers gave them without conditions. They are guaranteed profits upon which to earn bonuses and the housing market is still suffering. The short sale charade is a cruel joke on the unsuspecting owner [...]

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