Foreclosure Bus Tour

Mark Stine KOLD News 13 Reporter

"I came out to find a deal, a house deal, not my dream home, but an investment," Stacey Hammond told KOLD.

Whether it's to live in or rent out, home buyers are looking for a good investment and foreclosed homes are at the top of their lists.

Hammond added, "Now's the time to buy, that's what I'm here for."

Stacey Hammond joined several other people on a bus tour of bank owned properties in the Tucson area.

Rob Curcio with the Pepper Group said, "There are a lot of foreclosed, bank owned homes on the market and there are a lot of buyers sitting on the sidelines with a lot of cash looking for some great deals."

The Pepper Group Diversified Real Estate Company hopes to find them those deals. They put the four hour tour together and will show the buyers 10 to 12 homes.

The homes on the tour range anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000. Some of them need fixing up, others are in good condition and ready to live in.

Curcio says getting the foreclosed homes off the market is a win for buyers and a win for the banks. "The banks can get the homes off their books which means they can re-lend the money which is great for our economy here in Tucson."

"This is probably the only way to go." Jane Mack is from Vail, Colorado, but hopes to move to Tucson in the near future with her husband. They're just starting their search for a new home.

"It's very very interesting, extremely informative, a great way to begin looking at properties in Tucson," Mack told KOLD.

While looking through the empty homes it's hard to forget families lost these properties to the bank for various reasons.

Mack replied, "You can't look at how the home is on the market, you have to look at it as, it's a future thing for me, not what's happened here."

So as the buyers continue their search and find the best deals, they just hope the banks will bite on their bids.

If you would like to find out more about the Foreclosure Bus Tours just call 1-888-782-5211 ext. 96.

Bus Tour of Local Repossessed Properties Planned

Arizona Daily Star

In light of the growing number of foreclosures in Tucson, one real estate firm is organizing a bus tour of foreclosed properties for prospective buyers.

The Pepper Group Diversified Real Estate Company is planning to launch the tour on March 1 for people who are interested in foreclosed homes and are pre-qualified for financing, said Rob Curcio, an agent who is helping to organize the tour. The company is planning to provide some help with finding possible lenders.

Prospective buyers can call 1-888-782-5211, Ext. 96.

Properties on the tour will include only those that have been repossessed by banks, not properties currently in the foreclosure process, Curcio said.

Tucson has the 46th-highest foreclosure rate among the 100 largest markets in the country, according to a list released today by the RealtyTrac data firm.

The report on 2007 foreclosure filings found that about 1 percent of households in Tucson went into some state of foreclosure in 2007. That amount was about 75 percent higher than in 2006, according to the RealtyTrac report.

The top foreclosure rate among the 100 metro areas was in Detroit, where nearly 5 percent of households were in foreclosure in 2007. Phoenix was 22nd-highest, with nearly 2 percent households entering foreclosure last year.

Looking for a Home Bargain by Bus

by Christie Smythe
Arizona Daily Star

If you're looking for a deal amid a down real estate market -- or you're just interested in viewing the boom's aftermath -- now you can take a bus tour of Tucson's foreclosed properties.

Prompted by media reports of similar tours across the country, agents from The Pepper Group Diversified Real Estate Company decided to start their own "Foreclosure Home Tour," which they plan to run semi- regularly on weekends.

The number of properties to choose from is growing. Earlier this year, research firm RealtyTrac reported that the number of foreclosure filings in the Tucson market rose 75 percent last year, to 7,372.

The agents said they think the bus tour will help uncork pent-up demand and stimulate the market.

On Saturday, the tour left from the parking lot of a North Side Starbucks coffeehouse, bound for repossessed homes throughout the Northwest Side.

Here's what it was like to ride the foreclosure bus:

The Buyers: Pepper Group agent Rob Curcio said more than 100 people initially showed interest in the tour. They included Jason Spath and Stacey Hammond, a couple looking for an investment property; Jane Mack, who recently relocated from Vail, Colo.; and self-described snowbirds Dave and Mimi Greene, who were looking for a winter home to share with their daughter.

Spath and Hammond, who live in Green Valley, said they've looked at more than 60 houses in the past two months. They were excited about the prospect of finding a deal.

"All of our spare time is looking at houses," Spath said.

The Tour: Stops on the first trip included a home near North La Cañada Drive and West River Road, an upscale house in the Dove Mountain development and a family home near a park in Black Horse Ranch.

For the most part, though, the mood was light as the buyers visited the homes, which were all vacant. The Pepper Group agents said they were focusing on homes that had been taken back by lenders, not those in the process of foreclosure. Getting all the facts on a home before it's been repossessed can be "a nightmare," Curcio said. Casual foreclosure buyers are better off with lender-owned properties, he said.

Most of the houses on the trip were in newer subdivisions. Some were far from pristine-looking. Some had dirty walls and carpets. "The upside to this house is you get to choose your own appliances, because the sellers took them with them when they left," Curcio joked at one house.

The prices, in some cases, had been reduced, but there were no giveaway deals on the tour. Listing prices ranged from $189,900 for the graffiti-marked home to $394,500 for the Dove Mountain minimansion.

Curcio advised the buyers that lenders might be more amenable to dropping prices, depending on how long the homes sat on the market.

When the tour came to an end, the Greenes, said they wanted to take a closer look at one house they had seen.

Other buyers said they simply appreciated the chance to get a look at the properties, which might be more difficult to find on their own.

"It's kind of nice -- you don't have to drive around," Spath said.

Housing Supply Rises
As Sellers Wait

The Wall Street Journal
by James R. Hagerty

Homeowners are competing with aggressively priced properties from builders and lenders that have acquired homes through foreclosure, said Thomas Lawler, a housing economist. Mr. Lawler said about 40% of home sales in California in last year's fourth quarter involved foreclosed properties.

Many housing economists expect home prices to continue falling in much of the country at least through the end of this year.

Metro areas with the largest January increases in listings included Tucson, Ariz. (up 5.2%); Phoenix (3.4%); and Seattle (3.2%).

Arizona, Tucson Bankruptcies Soared in '07

Arizona Daily Star

Bankruptcy filings in Arizona soared in 2007 compared with the year before.

Arizona individuals and businesses made 10,570 filings for all types of bankruptcies in 2007, up 63.2 percent from 2006, according to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court District of Arizona. In Tucson, total filings increased by 56 percent.

"I expect bankruptcies will continue to increase, most likely over the next two years but certainly while we're in the middle of this real estate downturn," said Diane Drain, a Phoenix attorney.

Here's a look at the breakdown of the most common filings for the three offices in the district (see explanation of filing types below chart):

Phoenix 5,378 186 1,637 7,204 +63%

Tucson 2,035 34 594 2,664 +56.2%

Yuma 595 20 87 702 +98.3%

Statewide 8,008 240 2,318 10,570 +63.2%

Experts Say Now is Time to Buy Real Estate
Before the Market Rebound Happens this Year

Joe Pangburn
Inside Tucson Business

Despite the perception of the current real estate market, a decade into the future, people will look back and kick themselves for not buying a home this year.

So says Lawrence Yun, chief economist and senior vice president of the National Association of Realtors, speaking at the Tucson Association of Realtors’ 2008 Forecast seminar at the Sheraton Tucson Hotel and Suites.

"This is a great market to buy in and a great time to buy," Yun said. "There seems to be an irrational pessimistic outlook on the market fed by negative stories from the media."

The audience of about 325 real estate agents, brokers, developers and builders gave a loud cheer and applause.

"It is a fact that last year is the first time home appreciation was negative since the Great Depression," he said. "But considering in Tucson over this boom we saw 50 percent appreciation, then no growth in 2006 and what we figure to be about 2 percent depreciation of values in 2007 -- it is like taking 50 steps forward and two steps back for most homeowners. Those who bought in the last year or two didn’t fare as well."

Yun said there was no way that growth of that size was going to be sustainable for longer than it did.

"We need to get rid of the excess," he said. "But when reports come out that the fed might cut rates in January, and then more in March and maybe in May too, people are going to wait and wait to buy. We are fulfilling our own prophesy."

Yun called this year the year of opportunity and said to make it work, Realtors need to begin battling the mentality and get the message out there that it is an even better time to buy than during the boom.

"Over the last few years, mortgage rates have gone down and they are at historic lows," he said. "With this slight decrease in housing prices, it is the best time for buyers to buy."

Foreclosure Crisis Hitting Arizona Hard
Sales of Such Homes Here Double the Rate of the Previous Year

Arizona Daily Star

A growing share of home sales are from foreclosures, especially in states hardest hit by the housing bust. In some parts of California lately, nearly 50 percent of home sales come from foreclosed houses.

The trend, which is putting additional downward pressure on home prices, is most notable there and in Nevada, Colorado, Tennessee and Michigan, but it's also evident in Arizona, Ohio, Georgia and Florida, according to an Associated Press comparison of 2007 sales and foreclosure data.

In Nevada, for example, 17.5 percent of home sales were from foreclosures, more than quadruple the number in 2006.

The growing proportion of foreclosure sales is both a symptom and cause of worsening conditions in the weakest housing markets, real estate experts say. Homeowners who aren't on a deadline to sell are yanking their properties off the market, and this means the remaining inventory is increasingly held by banks eager to unload foreclosed properties at fire-sale prices rather than carry the costs on their books.

Property values and local tax revenues are suffering as a result, consumer advocates say, especially in neighborhoods with lots of minority residents for whom lending standards were weakest.

"There is a real complacency, or an underappreciation, of how bad this is," said Ramsey Su, an investor and former real estate broker in San Diego who regularly combs through the local sales database to asses the impact of foreclosure sales.

Reacting to such concerns, the Bush administration and lenders including Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. unveiled a plan Tuesday to give seriously delinquent borrowers a 30-day break from foreclosure while lenders try to work out a way to make the mortgage more affordable.

The AP's foreclosure analysis compared the annual rate of existing-home sales in the third quarter of 2007 -- the most recent quarter available from the National Association of Realtors -- with foreclosure-sales data provided by RealtyTrac Inc. of Irvine, Calif. The analysis found:

• In Colorado, foreclosure sales accounted for 15.6 percent of home sales in 2007, up from 10 percent in 2006.
• In California, the number jumped to 11.3 percent from 3.7 percent.
• In Arizona, foreclosure sales accounted for 7.4 percent of sales, up from 3.4 percent in 2006.
• In Tennessee, they rose to 10.6 percent from 5.2 percent. And in Michigan, they climbed to 9.3 percent from 4.9 percent.

Nationwide, including Washington, D.C., foreclosure sales grew to 4.7 percent of existing-home sales, up from 3.3 percent in 2006. Comparable data were not available for South Dakota and New Hampshire.

The analysis underscores that the housing bust is having the most severe impact in areas where lending standards were the loosest, or where the economy is especially weak. In 18 states -- including places as diverse as Maine, New Mexico and Kansas -- foreclosure sales made up less than 2 percent of total sales.

Lax lending standards, which were especially prevalent in formerly booming housing markets in California and Nevada, allowed borrowers to buy far more expensive houses than they could afford during the boom years, and now defaults are surging.

Highly discounted foreclosure sales also can make it tougher for borrowers to refinance into more affordable loans if their property values falls, which could lead to more foreclosures and lengthen the housing crisis.

Thomas Blanchard, who sells bank-owned properties in Las Vegas, said the trend has accelerated in the past two months, and he estimates that 60 percent of properties on the market there are in foreclosure.

"The only people that you have in our market here in Las Vegas are the people that have to sell," Blanchard said.

The same is true in parts of California. In December, 46 percent of homes sold in the Sacramento area and 31 percent in the San Diego area had gone through foreclosure, up dramatically from about 4 percent a year earlier, according to San Diego-based DataQuick Information Systems, a real estate information firm.