Arizona Real Estate Informer

Homebuilders Buying Land After Three Years of Cutting Inventory

Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Signature Properties has been trying since 2005 to sell 4,000 finished lots in its Fiddyment Farm community, a former pasture and pistachio orchard northeast of Sacramento, California. More...

Frommer Chooses to Boycott Arizona - Scared of Guns

PHOENIX — At a time when Arizona needs tourism dollars, a well-known travel icon is letting it be known that he will stay out of the state for safety reasons.

Arthur Frommer, a founder and author of budget-travel guides wrote on his Internet blog that he won’t be making trips to the Grand Canyon State after protesters openly carried guns and rifles outside a building where President Barack Obama was speaking.

Frommer said he was “shocked beyond measure” by what he described as gun-toting “thugs” and “extremists.”

Frommer said he “will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest.”  More...

Editors note:  What a sissy.  A man his age, perhaps more than any other demographic, should know how important weapons have been to protecting our country and its way of life.

Tax Credit Extension in the Works

The House and Senate may have left Capitol Hill for their August break, but housing lobbyists are busy at work gearing up a major campaign to extend the $8,000 home buyer tax credit.

The credit for first-time purchasers is scheduled to expire November 30.

The National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors want to persuade Congress to nail down an extension of the credit, and maybe even broaden its coverage, as soon as possible. More...

Strong Gain in Existing-Home Sales

For the first time in five years, existing-home sales have increased for four months in a row, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.

Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – rose 7.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.24 million units in July from a level of 4.89 million in June. Sales are 5.0 percent above the 4.99 million-unit pace in July 2008. The last time sales rose for four consecutive months was in June 2004, and the last time sales were higher than a year earlier was November 2005.

Washington Report: Protecting Consumers

The House and Senate may still be on summer break, but the battle lines are growing sharper every day in Washington on one key real estate and mortgage issue that will be front and center in September: Should Congress create a new federal agency that does nothing but protect consumers from high-risk mortgages, bad lenders and real estate settlement rip-offs?

Last week, in an unusual move tied to possible congressional action next month, half of the country's state attorneys general weighed into the debate and said, "yes," we need more muscle from the feds.  More...

Housing experts divided over Valley real estate recovery

Housing experts mining data and economic statistics don’t agree about the current state of residential real estate in the Valley, but they have strong opinions.

The Phoenix Business Journal asked a variety of experts for their take on the housing market. Each holds different benchmarks as being particularly compelling, such as trends in median home prices, or the number of building permits pulled by home builders, or the percentage of foreclosure sales compared with traditional sales. While no one describes the current market as anything near normal, they differ on whether the Valley’s housing market is slowly improving or a more ominous outcome lies ahead.  More...

A Trickle of Hope for Housing

The real estate bears have plenty of fodder. There's the $230 billion in variable-rate home loans that will reset between now and 2012—a wave that could trigger another round of defaults. And more problems are brewing in commercial real estate, which some experts believe will generate $375 billion in losses on top of the $1.1 trillion hit from housing.

But, as the saying goes, all real estate is local. And amid all the Sturm und Drang, small signs are emerging that the housing market is starting to stabilize, even in such hard-hit areas as Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., and coastal Florida. For the first time since 2004, sales of existing homes have risen for three straight months. At the same time, the inventory of unsold homes has decreased. Equally important, more homeowners are selling their properties at or near their asking prices. Here's a look at the four groups that make the housing market go: buyers, homebuilders, mortgage lenders, and sellers.  More...

Beware of the Property Tax Review Board Scam

I received a letter today from these people, and being the incredulous type, did some research.  Read this article for more info.

The Next Fannie Mae

Ginnie Mae and FHA are becoming $1 trillion subprime guarantors.

Much to their dismay, Americans learned last year that they “owned” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Well, meet their cousin, Ginnie Mae or the Government National Mortgage Association, which will soon join them as a trillion-dollar packager of subprime mortgages. Taxpayers own Ginnie too.  More...

Nowhere to go but up? Housing begins slow rebound

It was — note the past tense — the worst housing recession anyone but survivors of the Great Depression can remember.

From the frenzied peak of the real estate boom in 2005-2006 to the recession's trough earlier this year, home resales fell 38% and sales of new homes tumbled 76%. Construction of homes and apartments skidded 79%. And for the first time in more than four decades of record keeping, home prices posted consecutive annual declines.  More...