Arizona Real Estate Informer

Democrats Agree to Extend Home-Buyer Tax Credit: Dodd

Top Democrats in the Senate have reached an agreement to extend the soon-to-expire $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said Tuesday.

"We have that. Done," Dodd told reporters.

He declined to specify the details of the agreement.

But a Republican who has worked with Dodd cautioned that they were still negotiating on the measure, which could come up for a vote Tuesday evening as part of a package that would extend unemployment benefits.  More...

Valley housing sale prices keep rising

The Valley housing market has settled into a pattern of mild price recovery, with the median sale price rising by a few thousand dollars in recent months, according to the latest Arizona State University report on same-home sales.

But the report's author warned area residents not to interpret his findings as proof that home prices have stabilized.

Professor Karl Guntermann, who published the most recent ASU Repeat Sales Index report on Tuesday, said there are signs that home foreclosures in 2010 could jolt the housing market out of its current state of relative calm. More...

Sell Short, Get $1,500 in Closing Costs

The U.S. Treasury is poised to announce a finalized plan to expand mortgage relief efforts to include short sales.

A short sale occurs when the bank allows the sale of a home for less than the existing mortgage balance.

It's a strategy to avoid foreclosure, but banks have been more likely to let a home go into foreclosure, rather than short sell it, even if it means holding the property during moratoriums set by some jurisdictions. More...

Prediction: Homes Sales to Rise 11 Percent

Sales of existing homes will rise 11 percent in 2010, and sales of new homes will climb 21 percent over this year, Mortgage Bankers Association Chief Economist Jay Brinkmann predicted in a speech Tuesday at the organization’s annual meeting.

"We still see a concentration in the lower end of the market," Brinkmann said. "The entry level homes are in demand."

Brinkmann also predicted further declines in existing home prices, with the median falling to $164,200 in the first quarter of 2010.   More...

Bank-owned . . . and not improving until the economy does

Home-foreclosure activity has spilled across every geographic and socioeconomic border this year, proving that no community was too cautious, clever or well-funded to remain unscathed.

Subprime lending

gave the home-foreclosure crisis its initial push, but the problem could not have reached existing proportions without feeding on a host of broader economic problems, according to real-estate experts responding to the latest Valley Home Values data, provided by Information Market.  More...

Home resales hold steady in September

Valley home resale transactions held steady in September with 6,135 sales recorded in Maricopa County

, compared with 5,995 sales in August, according to a report from Arizona State University.

Home foreclosure activity also remained about the same, with lenders foreclosing on 2,935 single-family homes in September - down slightly from 3,085 foreclosures in August.  More...