Vinnie Vacca - Glendale Arizona - Arrowhead Ranch

Deciding how much house you can afford

OR
Before you start house hunting, you need to determine how much house you can afford, which will entail
getting either prequalified or preapproved for a home loan. A real estate agent can help you find a
mortgage broker to begin the process. While getting preapproved is a more in-depth process, a
preapproval letter lets both real estate agents and sellers know that you're a serious shopper who means
business.

What do I do to get prequalified?

A prequalification can be done online or over the phone and does not require your submitting financial
documents. You will be asked to provide basic information about your finances - for instance, your
household income versus your debt load. With this information, the lender will estimate what your
maximum loan amount could be if you were to apply.

What about getting preapproved?

A preapproval is more involved and a real estate agent can help you prepare your documentation. The
lender will perform an extensive review of your finances, requiring pay stubs, tax records, credit accounts,
bank statements and more. This figure will not only be a more reliable estimate of what you can afford,
but your preapproval also indicates that a lender is willing to do business with you, pending the purchase
price, market appraisal and the underwriting process.

What should I ask when shopping for a lender?

Your real estate agent should have a mortgage broker they are willing to put you in contact with - this
lender will be someone they have done business with in the past, and feel comfortable recommending.
However, if you decide to do a little comparison shopping and look for a lender on your own, here are a
few important questions to ask.


1.) What loan programs do you offer and which one do you think is best for me?

2.) How long will the loan approval process take?

3.) What line items of the loan agreement - if any - are negotiable?

4.) What is your policy for locking in interest rates, and will you honor a lower rate if it declines
during the lock-in period?

5.) Are there fees for prepaying on my loan?

Between all the stats, charts, media, physics, buyers, sellers, investors, lenders, Realtors and spiritual advisor's, no one really knows when that will be. Some say 2008, some 2009, others choose not to make any predictions at all.

I've only been a Realtor for 4 years and I haven't seen a "normal" market yet. Even before I was a Realtor, I remember people complaining that they couldn't get their homes sold and I remember the economy being in a much worse condition than it is now (Of course, I'm old enough to remember the odd and even plate number to get gas days).

Way back in 1989, I sold my home in Phoenix in less than 2 weeks. This wasn't a good time for real estate sales either, if I remember right, so how did I do this you ask? I listen to my Realtor and priced my home right and I did my part by getting rid of all the clutter and making sure that it was in showing condition 100% of the time.

In 2004 and 2005, Real estate sales went sky high here in Phoenix (especially 2005). Homeowners were getting multiple offers within minutes after their agent posted in the MLS. This is no exaggeration, in less than an hour, you would have several offers to choose from. Is this a normal market? Boy, I sure had a lot of buyers in those days. Driving around all day, putting in offer after offer. What a great way to learn your contracts.

I think the real question is,"Is there such thing as a normal housing market?" We need to all be aware that anything can happen, this is a constantly changing market that requires careful attention to details, building a good foundation in the community, and be prepared for the next wave of Ups and Downs and All Arounds. Even though we lose our ambition to market ourselves during these trying times, it's even more important now to keep marketing ourselves and stay active in the community.

I've made an observation in my first 4 years of real estate, this market doesn't preform like any other market. At least not for the most part. Let's take a fruit market for example and focus on apples. If you love apples as much as I do, you know that in the fall, when it's apple picking season, there are groves upon groves of apples ripe and ready to go to market. The price of these apples goes from $1.29 per lb. to $0.25 per lb in you local grocers market. That's when everyone rushes out to the orchards to pick bushels, and to the grocery stores load up theirs carts so they can do their canning or make their pies or just have their fill of eating good fresh apples cheap. With real estate the average consumer usually jumps on the band wagon when the prices have already gone up. A lot of good opportunities are missed when the prices are low. I know the investors don't think this way.

I'm not sure about anywhere else in the country, but here in Phoenix, I would have to say that Home Picking Season is just around the corner. Maybe, prices may fall a little more this winter, but that would be only because of the buyer confidence syndrome. My own brother is in the mind set that real estate prices are doomed to fall back down to the 1989 prices. Sure that may happen, When Javelinas Fly.

Arrowhead Ranch in Glendale Arizona, here's what you need to know about it... It's Purdy, It's Beautilushious, and it's darn right gorgeous. If you're from around here, you know it's the place to live, everybody wants to, if you're not from these parts, than I'm here to tell you about it.

Arrowhead has several counterparts which are all appropriately made. For instance, Arrowhead Lakes, Top of the Ranch, Arrowhead Legends, Sierra Verde, Fletcher Heights and so on.

Each one of these Arrowhead neighborhoods has it's charm about it, so it just wouldn't be right to clump them all together in this on article. In this Post I just want to focus on the original Arrowhead Ranch. Located between Union Hills and Beardsley RD/ 67th AVE and 79Tth AVE., this portion of the Ranch is the most lush. Of course the reason being that it's been around the longest and the landscape has matured more.

Speaking of landscape, you would find any brown lawns or untrimmed trees in this neighborhood. The homeowners display a true pride of ownership for their properties. They are proud of their community and take care of it very well.

You can drive down the streets any time of the day or night and fall in love with the quaint and quiet charm of this golf community.

Did I forget to mention that it's stunning? Well it is.

Oh yeah, you heard me say golf community. So the residence in this community have plenty of palm trees, lakes, ducks, geese, rabbits (long eared galoots), heck you might even see a few Blue Herons (Crazy things look like Pterydactil when they're in flight). All this just adds to charm of Arrowhead Ranch. By the way, did you notice the bike path on the side of the road? That's a pretty standard feature on the busier roads in Arrowhead.

You must be asking yourself, well Vin, are the medians divided with beautiful landscape? Yes They Are. At least the main roads are.

There nicely accented water features scattered throughout the neighborhood, so those evening walks can be a lot more pleasant and enjoyable.

You can spend some quality time at the neighborhood parks with your children or grandchildren. It's a great place to relax or play and just built a strong family unit. If you don't have any children, than I suppose you can walk your dog to the park, just don't forget to pick up the poopy after the puppy. Glendale also has a dog park which I will feature in a future article.

Well, that's all I have for now, hope I didn't bore you too much. I did add some pictures this time, so I hope you enjoyed them.

Who's the doofus standing on the waterfall, over the pool? That would be me. Don't worry, I took my cell phone out of my pocket in case I fall in. I'm not going to do that again.

2008 has been rough, here we are, 4 days into the year, and I haven't sold a thing. When is it going to change? I thought by now the market would be on the rebound and there would be buyers and sellers knocking on my door to help them with their real estate needs.

The housing prices are good, the economy is strong, the unemployment rate is low, the stock market is high, the Super Bowl is coming to town. I just don't get it...I thought for sure...now what? Okay Vin, don't panic, stay calm, take a deep breath. After all, it's not as if it's been a whole week, maybe things can still change.

Okay so things aren't going as planned, let's go back and review my goals to date for 2008:

January 1st- Sell a home.

January 2nd- Review my goals to date.

January 3rd- Sell another home.

January 4th- Review my goals to date.

Wow! I feel really, really stupid, I don't know why I was getting so worked up, I've acheived half my goals.

I know everybody has their own reasons for getting into real estate, so I am in no way implying that these reason reflect every agents opinions. But in my opinion these are some pretty darn good ones.

10.) Your family and friends will be star struck every time you enter the room.

9.) You get to cut out that pesky middle man, the health insurance company, and pay the doctors directly.

8.) You feel sorry for the oil companies, so you want to do your part in helping them by driving around for hours.

7.) Everybody is dying to get a card with your picture on it.

6.) You get to use words like; subprime meltdown, burnout, and gazump and gazunder.

5.) It's a great excuse to decorate your car like a clown mobile.

4.) You love taking people you don't know out for lunch.

3.) Free lunch is provided with almost every meeting.

2.) You have always wanted to be a mind reader.

And the #1 reason that everyone gets into this business is...

...It beats having a REAL job.

There you have it maybe you found this humorous, maybe offensive, how you look at life will determine your reaction. Personally I believe you have to be able to laugh at yourself and not take life so seriously, otherwise it will take it's toll on you. What do you think?

PS, My personal reason for going into real estate is to share this kind of valuable information with my friends at ActiveRain.

Lately it seems that all we hear about is the doom we're facing...oil prices are out of control, sub-prime lending has disappeared off the face of the earth, the stock market is unstable, foreclosures are through the roof, we're in a declining housing market, and so on, and so on, and so on. But are we forgetting that "every cloud has a silver lining", that "from all bad things, something good comes of it", that "everything happens for a reason", that "justice conquers all".

When I got into real estate in 2004, I had no idea, that this would be such a tough industry to master. I thought that I would just get my license, sign up with a brokerage, and become a millionaire in a year or two. After all, I was a well liked, highly spirited, and I might add a "very successful" director of banquets in the hotel hospitality industry, how hard could it be to sell real estate. Little did I know I would be facing my own private little doom, yes, I fell right on my face. But I learned. As cliché as those sayings that I listed above are, I really do believe in them, and since I love this business, I choose to review my past failures, learn from them and move forward.

So, let's take a look at the doom we're facing, the bad and good that could come of it:

High Gas Prices

This is a tough one; nobody wants higher gas prices, right? What I can't figure out, with prices soaring over $3.00 a gallon, why are there so many SUVs, mammoth 4 wheel drive trucks and high powered sedans and sports cars speeding down the roads? They can't all belong to REALTORS. Well, this is America, and Americans have always loved big high powered vehicles, its part of the American dream. If we lose this privilege, a little of our confidence goes with it.

The good news is the auto industry is restructuring their way of thinking and coming up with better ways to build those big cars with cleaner burning and more efficient engines. So, I'm sure that the future outlook in this area is on the road to recovery.

The other good thing that came from this is that Al Gore was able to find his niche that made him the billionaire that he is today. I was beginning to worry that his confidence was shot forever.

Subprime Loans

Okay, so I lied, not all subprime lending has disappeared, just the bad ones have. That's a great thing. Yes, we all want to live in million dollar homes, but not if we can't afford it. This is what has lead to the high foreclosure rate of today. What a hard lesson to learn, but none the less, one that had eventually come to pass. I think we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but we were all so caught up to the housing gold rush that we just simply chose to ignore it. Sure we all warned our clients that interest only loans were only good for short term investment, but how were we to know that we were going to go from a booming profit turning machine, to a dead stand still, and finally, a declining market, all within a year.

The good news is that this is now behind us and those FHA loans of the past, were carefully wrapped and tucked away for just such an emergency. This is definitely a better and safer loan for the low-and-moderate income family. They carry much favorable interest rates and they have infrastructure already set up for counseling and loss mitigation.

Unstable Stock Market

This is hardly a problem for the average consumer; in fact the stock market is not an enemy of real estate. The latest NAR research on vacation-home buyers reveals that many of them rely on stock market wealth to fund that second-home purchase. The stock market may appear to be unstable but it's also at an all time high. For the rest of us we need to focus on our local economy, the job growth. The sound local economy has been the principle reason why home prices have largely held on average for Maricopa County

Foreclosures

This has definitely put a damper on home values in the Phoenix Valley, its causing sellers a lot of frustration. The impact became definite in the fall of 2007, forcing sellers to lower their prices to compete with the foreclosure property down the street that sold for thousands less than their asking price. This is just going to have to run its course. Uncle Sam has provided some relief to homeowners facing foreclosure, by eliminating to capital gains tax on short sales, but we're just going to have to wait and see if that produces any favorable results.

The good news here is that it may be accelerating the declining prices, so hopefully, those qualified buyers and investors will get off the sidelines and scoop up these great deals, and ideally decrease our 18 months of inventory to a more negotiable level, one that is fair to the buyers and the sellers. Now that would be niceJ

The lack of buyer confidence to enter the market has been the one principle reason in holding back home sales. The qualified buyers are afraid of a possible price decline. And the media is fueling that fear. It's crucial that we talk to our clients, family, friends and everyone we come in contact with, and educate them on the dos and don'ts of real estate. People are naturally afraid of the unknown, if we're upfront and forthcoming with our prospects, maybe, just maybe, the buyer confidence will be stored at a faster pace.

Now, let's get out there with our shiny, smiling faces, inform all the good people of America that it's a great time to buy a home.

Above is a picture of the heart of Fountain Hills, you can see where the town gets the name. The fountian turnd on every hour, on the hour, people come from miles around to enjoy this park. I know this has nothing to do with the post, I just love Fountain Hills and thought it would be a nice picture to share with you all.

So let's begin, of course the unwritten step but most important is, always use a REALTOR, for both resale homes and New Construction. If you decide to go with new construction, a real estate agent can be a powerful advocate in your corner as you negotiate upgrades, a move-in date and other terms with the home builder. The builders represent themselves, not the buyer.
DEFINE YOUR NEEDS
Congratulations on your decision to purchase a new home! Before you go house hunting, it's a good
idea to define what kind of home and neighborhood would best suit your desires and needs, so make a
wish list. Share this list with your real estate agent. The finer the details, the more effective your home
search will be. To further define your needs, you may want to divide your lists into negotiable and
non-negotiable items (AKA wants and needs), so your agent can operate with some flexibility when scouting for homes on your behalf.

GET PREAPPROVED

Now that you know what you want in a home and neighborhood, you need to find out what you can afford.
Your real estate agent can refer you to a mortgage broker to begin the process. Your preapproved status lets the seller know that you have gone through an extensive financial background check. that a lender is willing to do business with you and the likelihood of unexpected obstacles regarding financing is minimal.

BEGIN YOUR HOME SEARCH
Now you are ready to begin your home search - an endeavor that can prove overwhelming if not
approached with some forethought. The most efficient route is to allow your real estate agent do the
initial scouting for you. Using your wish list as a guide, he or she will alert you of new and existing
listings that have strong potential. If these listings spark your interest, your agent will arrange home
tours at your convenience. Many agents send alerts via email - sometimes as often as daily, depending
on the available inventory in your market. Let your agent know how you'd like to receive these alerts, whether by phone, email or fax.
You also can do some research on your own. Read local real estate publications, contact your local
neighborhood associations, visit the local chamber of commerce, surf the Internet, or drive around your
favorite neighborhoods. While these methods certainly can lead to your dream home, it's important to
note that 82 percent of home sales are the result of agent connections.* That means it's more likely your
agent will find your dream home through being in the real estate business than you driving around on
the weekends.

MAKE AN OFFER

When you're ready to make an offer on a home, your real estate agent will help you determine the offer price by reviewing recent sales of homes similar in size, quality and amenities. With your input, your agent will draft a written contract that outlines what needs to be done by both parties to execute the transaction. If the seller accepts the offer, the document becomes a binding agreement, so it is imperative that you carefully review it with your agent and speak up if anything is not clear to you. It's important to note that if the seller changes any aspect of the offer, it is not a binding agreement until the buyer agrees to the seller's changes.

STRIKE THE DEAL
Sometimes, you get lucky and the seller accepts your offer as is. However, in most instances, the seller
will make a counteroffer. This is where your real estate agent's experience in negotiations will be
invaluable. Keep in mind almost everything is negotiable when you are buying a house. This can give
you a great deal of leverage in the buying process - that is, if you have adequate information and you use
it in an appropriate manner. Some items you may negotiate:
* Price
* Financing
* Closing costs
* Move-in date
* Repairs
* Appliances and fixtures
* Landscaping
* Painting
Remain in close contact with your real estate agent so you can quickly review any changes from the
seller. Remember: Bargaining is not a winner-take-all deal. It is a business process that involves
compromise and mutual respect.

PREPARE FOR CLOSING When an offer becomes a binding agreement, your real estate agent will help you tackle the checklist of
action items that you, as the buyer, have agreed to perform prior to closing. Depending on how the
responsibilities are divvied up in the agreement, this is typically when you will:
* Conduct a home inspection.
* Get an appraisal and finalize your financing.
* Secure title insurance.
* Shop for a home warranty.
Having these procedures done in a timely and professional manner is a must, as any delays could
threaten a successful closing. A first-rate real estate agent should be able to serve as your "one-stop
shopping" referral source for service providers. Your agent also should serve as your advocate, helping
to coordinate activities and making sure the vendors have access to the property to perform their jobs.

CLOSE THE DEAL
Congratulations! The moment you've been anticipating has arrived. The closing is where home
ownership is legally transferred from the seller to the buyer. It is a formal meeting that most parties
involved in the transaction will attend. Closing procedures usually are held at the title company's or
lawyer's office. The closing officer will coordinate all the document-signing and the collection and
disbursement of funds. A few days before your closing date, your lender will send a final closing
statement that outlines your closing costs, if applicable. Your real estate agent will review this document
with you to ensure its accuracy, as well as help you gather any necessary documentation that you'll need
to bring to closing.

Wow! Wow! and wow! What a great place to live! It's a first for Glendale Residents, it's time to reveal our, "New, State-of-the-Art, Climate Controlled, with Retractable Roof, Movable Wall, and Roll Out Field...TO THE WORLD!!! First the 2007 American Idol winner and now a Super Bowl in our home town. Yes, we're loving every minute of it.

> >WHAT NEXT?

Restaurants, hotels, night clubs, casinos, shopping centers, and every other business under the desert sun, are gearing up for what hopes to be an exciting week for tourists and residents alike. An event that will not only extend the joy of the holiday season into the new year but should also give our local economy a healthy boost.

Both, out of state investors, and local homeowners are cashing in on their rental properties, with weekly rental prices range anywhere from $3000 to infinity. In fact, you can pick up an amazing deal on a Luxury Penthouse in Downtown Phoenix for a mere $100,000. This includes a years lease and a Rental Package For The Week that includes Limo and Maid Service, as well as SUNS vs. SPURS tickets and FBR OPEN tickets. So, if you have an extra 100K burning a hole in your pocket, check it out. http://azsportshub.com/super-bowl-xlii-penthouse-plus-extras-rental-in-phoenix-arizona/Now I know that this sounds like a lot of money to most of us, but I also know that there are folks out there that will seize this opportunity and won't blink an eye.

Being a resident of Glendale, this may sound a little bias, but I have been known to say that Glendale is one of the best places to live in America (all the Americas). Now, just so you know, I haven't always lived here, I chose to live here, and you know what they about that; there's more loving it when you choose the place you live in than when you're born there. Well, maybe I just say that, but Super Bowl or no Super Bowl, I'm just glad to be here:-)

Just in case you couldn't already tell, this is the first time that I have ever blogged anything, I hope I didn't mess up too bad. But even if I did, I had a lot fun doing it.