Prescott, AZ

Eleven new foreclosed or short sale homes came on the market, about one in every seven homes being listed in the Prescott Arizona Area MLS system, and one fifth of the closings were distressed sales in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt and the outlying areas of Yavapai County. This is two weeks in a row that foreclosure activity is down.

But we're not out of the woods yet. This week there were 117 Notices of Default (NOD) filed with the County Assessor...in about 104 days, we'll see most of them come on the market as REOs.

The difference between what newly listed traditional homes and Prescott foreclosed/REO and short sale properties per square foot remains large at a 30% discount.

Last year Prescott had the distinction of becoming an MSA and our first report was to be listed as the 25th MSA in the nation with foreclosures as a percentage of our households according to RealtyTrac.

See: Prescott area is 25th in foreclosures nationwide for Q1 2009

The percentage of foreclosed/REO/short sale new listings on market decreased from 18% to 14% this week. Last week 33% of the pending sales were REO or short sales, and this week they made up 64% of the deals going into escrow. The percentage of REO/short sales that closed last week went from 26% to 19% this week. REO/short sales sold about 92% faster than traditional resales.

To see the full report including listing details and tables, click here.

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Fifteen new foreclosed or short sale homes came on the market, about one in every six homes being listed in the Prescott Arizona Area MLS system, and one quarter of the closings were distressed sales in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt and the outlying areas of Yavapai County. This shows a marked decrease from last week's numbers.

The difference between what newly listed traditional homes and Prescott foreclosed/REO and short sale properties per square foot remains large at a 40% discount.

News has been mixed last week with positive housing numbers coming out of California and the Phoenix area, but news of more foreclosures on the horizon as load modifications fail and banks are removing moratoriums on foreclosures. Watch this space for more info!

See: NAR Housing Affordability Index at Record Low: Good news for Prescott buyers!

The percentage of foreclosed/REO/short sale new listings on market increased from 17% to 18% this week. Last week 48% of the pending sales were REO or short sales, and this week they made up 33% of the deals going into escrow. The percentage of REO/short sales that closed last week went from 56% last week to 26% this week. REO/short sales sold about 92% faster than traditional resales.

See the full report on our main web site.

You can get this report sent to you via email. Sign up here.

Fico Scores/Reports

I've been investing in real estate in the Prescott AZ area for a while now, (don't ask it will reveal my age), and I am amazed at the amount of data now available on the web for individual investors. More data than any real estate agent has had or ever will. When I started, you were lucky to find a few magazines that might focus on income properties but it was hard before the web to find data about market conditions in small geos.

Today, via Twitter, I found a site called REItips.com and a thread in particular where the author, JP Moses, starts a Crowdsourcing exercise on the top REI websites.

Here's some of the results:

http://postlets.com

http://maps.google.com

http://craigslist.com/

http://www.tweetbeep.com

SeasonedFunds.com

http://www.city-data.com/

http://www.premierereo.com/

http://www.cyberhomes.com/

http://www.pasreo.com

Please pop over to the site to see the whole thread. You'll see why people selected the sites and many more links. Plus the site has a bunch of good G2 for investors:

Top Non-Guru Websites Every Real Estate Investor Should Know About (And Probably Be Using)

Happy Monday! Have a profitable day!

If you are an investor looking for foreclosures, short sales, reo, or traditional resales in the Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, and Dewey-Humboldt markets, you've come to the right place.

More good news for the Prescott, AZ market which relys so much on the Phoenix market for spillover business: a sign that foreclosure sales have peaked in the greater Phoenix area!  That's the news from the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus today regarding the decline in the rates of foreclosure sales in the Greater Phoenix area.

Investors are starting to come into the market again buying rental homes and income  with the expectation that prices will rise in the next few years.  That, and the fact that interest rates are low and 1st time buyers are finding prices that allow them to buy for what they are paying for rent. 

Here's an excerpt:

The declining prices have piqued interest for potential investors and owner-occupants, especially in the lower income ranges. For the traditional market, the median price in March was $127,000, down 45 percent from the $229,900 for a year ago. Foreclosed properties had a median price of $146,880 ($189,170 for March 2008).

Investment interest is being driven by the anticipation that home prices will rise again in the next few years. According to Butler, there are two fundamental reasons why the median price for foreclosed homes is higher than traditional transactions.

"The first reason is more expensive homes continue to be foreclosed, with 15 in March, three over $2 million, and 7 percent of the foreclosures were in the $300,000 range," he said. "The other reason is that, for the last year, slightly more than 30 percent of the traditional sales were foreclosed homes that were sold again with a median price markdown of 15 percent. The markdown varied throughout the Valley ranging from 44 percent in Maryvale to 17 percent in Avondale to 10 percent in Tempe."

Click for the full report that has details by Phoenix area neighborhood.

This is similar to the Prescott and Precott Valley markets where foreclosures made up 34% of sales in the 1st quarter.  It will be interesting to see where they end up in Q2.   For more information see: Prescott Arizona area foreclosure market report for Q1 2009.

To search for foreclosured, REOs, and short sales in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, or Dewey-Humboldt, click here.

The Precott Az area condo market finally got going again in March after having had ZERO closings in February, which was an anomoly. Two of the five closings were bank-owned, or REOs, and they were the driving factors behind the average $ per square foot at $118.

The one unit at 1716 Alpine Meadows in Hassayampa sold for $207,500, just below it's 2/1/2003 sales price of $230,503. So in this case, prices were down to 2002 levels. Wells Fargo took a bit of a bath here, but I'm sure they learned something in the process. ;) If you are waiting on the sidelines to buy a property in the Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, or Dewey-Humboldt market area, consider a foreclosured or REO property. I can make the process as painless as possible.

See this post before you get going: Top 10 tips to win the REO multiple offer game

If the chart above is garbled you can see the orginal post here:

40% of condos sold in March 2009 in Prescott area were REOs