Jennie L. James

I wanted to provide you with a market update, from a couple different sources. Generally the holiday season, which some would say we are already in ( it seems to sneak up earlier every year) shows a slow down in the real estate market. As most of my family is in the Tucson Area, I will be in town till the end of the Year, to answer any real estate questions you may have and to help you buy a property if that is what you want for Christmas or whatever winter holiday your family celebrates. Actually part of my family has been in the Tucson area since around the time Arizona became a state, so if you have any historical Tucson questions go ahead and shoot those over to me as well.

Anyway, back to our topic of the Tucson Real Estate Market. One report that I love reading monthly is from Clear Capital, a premium provider of data for real estate asset valuation, investment and risk assesment. In Last month's report, Tucson was near the top of the list of Lowest Performing Major Markets in the U.S. This month ( reportng data from October), Tucson has moved down to 13th lowest perfoming market, which is good. Our year to date decrease has been 16.9 percent. Each specific neighborhood is different, and this -16.9% is an average of the whole Tucson area. Our foreclosure saturation is 35.3%. The good news is that over the last quarter, Tucson has seen a 1.8% increase, meaning that the bottom is a little behind us. To understand these numbers let me also share with you the numbers for Las Vegas, which is currently the Lowest performing market in the country. Their year to date decease is 34.9%, with an foreclosure saturation of 60.3%, and in the last quarter they still had a decrease of 1.8% ( while we had a quarterly increase of that same amount). Kind of interesting, as this does show that Real Estate is local, and each city is really different.

Just a couple little morsels from the Tucson Association of Realtors Mutiple Listing Service report for last month released 11/05. 40% of the solds were gone in less than 30 days, which means that there are still a lot of deals that buyers are snatching up fast. The average days on market is 71 days. The 3 most active zipcodes are all on the South side. Generally, the areas that have lower prices are seeing more action, thanks to investors and first time home buyers.

And finally a WOHOO moment! The tax credit was extended and expanded!! President Obama signed into law at the end of last week a law that extends the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit till June of 2010, as long as the buyers are in contract by the end of April. Plus for move up buyers that have owned their last home for at least 5 years, they are now included and will get $6500!

Best Wishes, Jennie James RealEstate.com 520-440-0357

There are 3 weekends left in October and a few fun things to do if you want to get out and do something! Old Tucson Studios (on the West side of town) is once again continuing to scare everyone with Nightfall- Harvest of Fear! This is their rendition of a ghost town with live acts, a haunted house, plus fun and game for the whole family, although really little ones might get too scared. This event is going on till the stroke of midnight on October 31st (closed on Monday & Tuesdays). For more details go to NightfallAZ.com .

Another neat thing to do this fall is to visit Apple Annie's in the Wilcox area (520-384-2084). Till the end of the month you can visit Arizona's largest Corn Maze. Apple Annie's also has orchards, where you can pick apples, peaches & pears. They also have a burger barn, a gift shop & a bakery. They will be closing for the season October 31st.

Yesterday, I went on a tour of 5 or 6 multi-million dollar homes in The Canyons, Alvernon & Skyline area. They were all very different and each one had something I liked from the negative edge pools to the modern guest houses, and the huge closets, beautiful bathrooms, and spectacular views of the city at night, plus the mountains right behind us! The last one I looked at had a swim up bar just like at Westin La Paloma Resort, except on a slightly smaller scale. I was then looking at some Tucson Area stats, it looks like there are currently 278 homes in the Tucson area that are over listed for over 1million, and 5 have sold in the last month and a half! 63 properties over a million have sold so far this year. Fun to dream sometimes! Someone is buying these homes, will be me someday!

Jennie James-

RealEstate.com - Tucson

For a long time I did not want anything to do with listing short sales. It's too hard, we don't get paid enough, and it's too sad. Then several months ago I had a change of heart. This occurred after I kept seeing good people that didn't do anything wrong lose their home because they didn't know what to do. And then their credit was ruined for seven years on top of losing their home. The part that really made me MAD was all the people that were trying to get money from these people that had none. I don't know how these people & companies sleep at night when they are basically kicking people when they are down. Some of these companies say they can do a loan modification for the troubled homeowners for just a couple thousand dollars, and then do nothing or just disappear. In my opinion the false hope that these companies give is almost as bad as taking the money. If the troubled homeowners had a couple thousand extra they wouldn't be ask risk of losing their homes.

What my team tries to do is sit down with troubled homeowners and show them all their options. We will help them with a loan modification. We have edited countless hardship letters the last several months. I never thought I would be using my degree in English in this way! Many homeowners come to us with the goal of keeping their homes, which we try our hardest and best to help them accomplish. For some of them it just isn't possible to stay in the house, but we can usually save their credit (a little) and their dignity. After lots of research we have concluded that a foreclosure will ruin a person's credit for 7 years while a short sale will only ding their credit for 2 years. We also do a lot of counseling and listening. We know that this is probably one of the hardest times that these people may have experienced in their lives and some are so worried that they become sick, and that just makes everything worse. We try to instill before we end the first meeting that this is not the end of the world. And as Hugh Rowley (one of my partners) usually says "There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is not an oncoming train"! We also tell them that they are not alone and they probably didn't do anything wrong it is just the economy.

Inevitably, they ask why and how we can help them for free. This is a 2 part answer. First we tell them that usually out of every 10 homeowners that we meet there are a few that are so behind and underwater that the best option for them is to do a short sale, in which we get paid by the bank when it closes. We also believe in Karma, if we keep helping people, then good things will come our way. These troubled homeowners are so grateful after we have saved them from foreclosure that they tell everyone they know about us. These people might not have any money, but they probably know people with money, who want to buy or sell property.

If you aren't in Southern Arizona, I would suggest contacting Hope Now as they provide free counseling across the country.

We have a couple websites, including www.ClickTucsonmls.com

My team consists of myself, Mark Schneider, and Hugh Rowley of RealEstate.com.

A new program started last month that I think is pretty exciting! It is called Your Way Home AZ. The gist of this program is that if you meet certain income guidelines and can be approved for a mortgage you could get 22% in purchase assistance from the Arizona Department of Housing when buying an eligible foreclosed home. Basically the state will loan you 22% of the purchase price at zero percent interest, that you do not have to pay back if you live in the home for a certain amount of time. If that 22% is $15,000 or less that the amount of time you have to stay in the house is 5 years, $15,000 - $40,000 you have to live in the home for 10 years. Eligible foreclosed homes are basically ones that have no major issues but may need a little cleaning before moving in, or move in ready homes. Trust me, while there are a lot of forecloses that need a lot of work there are also eligible foreclosed homes on the market right now. In order to get this money from the program you have to use a lender that is approved to do this program and they will explain it more thoroughly to you. You will also have to attend an 8 hour home buyer education class at a Non profit. When else have you basically gotten $15,000 or more for sitting in a class for 8 hours?

In other exciting news Tucson has been celebrating it 234th birthday all month, and there will be a big party on August 20th in the Downtown area! To celebrate Tucson's birthday, the 4th Avenue underpass is being reopened at 4pm on August 20th! The 4th Ave. underpass has been underconstruction for the past 2 years and has made it difficult to walk from the 4th Ave. area to Downtown. Something I usually only do during Club Crawl, twice a year, but that extra several blocks really kills my feet, no matter what shoes I am wearing. If you have never made it down to 4th Ave., or it been at least a decade you may enjoy attending this event in which several City Council members including Karen Uhlich and Nina Trasoff will be there along with live music, an Antique and Hot Rod car show and merchant specials. My personal favorite spots in the area are Bison Wiches and The Shanty ( on 4th) and Hotel Congress (Downtown). I hope to see you there!

For the past couple months two of my associates and myself have been working on getting a new website up and running. Mark Schneider found Diverse solutions after extensive research, and Hugh Rowley and myself think they do one of the best searches around.

We really want to provide a service to buyers and sellers without alot of advertisements or asking for anyone's information.

What do you think of the site so far. We are still adding content.

www.ClickTucsonMLS.com