(McCain's Home State - AZ) Foreclosures hit SW Valley hard

[UpInArms]

Source: The Arizona Republic

No Southwest Valley city has come out of the housing crisis unscathed, judging by the sharp rise in foreclosures.

Combined, there were 2,195 foreclosures in Avondale, Buckeye, Goodyear, Litchfield Park and Tolleson during the first half of 2008. That's up from 413 during the same period last year.

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An Arizona Republic analysis shows that Tolleson and Litchfield Park led the Valley in percentage increase in home foreclosures - 665 percent and 563 percent, respectively.

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"In Goodyear, 60 to 70 percent of homes are bank-owned," Marthaler said. "I also know that, based on statistics from Coldwell Banker, close to 75 percent of the homes we sold last month - and we had a good month - were bank-owned properties. Sales are up, sure, but prices are way down."

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/200...

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Why is McCain so out of touch with his home state? McCain: ‘I Still Believe The Fundamentals Of The Economy Are Strong’

[OhioChick]

1. K&R

[Doctor_J]

2. Yes, Cindy has only one $4.5M residence in Phoenix

times are tough.

[Chovexani]

3. The Valley is one of the worst areas for foreclosures in the country

Phoenix metro is being hit hard and McInsane hasn't said shit.

I lived out there for 2 1/2 years until I moved back east last month, and gas prices are contributing to a lot of the problem too. A lot of the places mentioned in that article (especially Buckeye) are way the fuck out in the boonies where land is cheaper, and there's nothing but McMansion planned communities...I remember a glut of TV ads and spam in my mailbox for these places when I first moved to Tempe.

Thing is there's no jobs out there, so everyone commutes to Phoenix/Tempe/Chandler where the jobs are...and with gas at $4 people just can't afford it anymore. There was a lady in my office in south Tempe who lived out in Buckeye so she could get the McMansion of her dreams but is now faced with having to sell it because she can't afford either the mortgage payments or the commute. That "bargain" turned out to be anything but.

There's a LOT of people in the Phoenix area with the same story.

[Greyhound]

8. One of the reasons for AZ being hit so hard (beyond the insane hyper-inflation of home prices)

is the "business friendly" government. My case is one example, I bought the property I had been leasing from the owners for an astronomical price, with the sale contingent on them doing about $50K in repairs. The owners were mortgage brokers themselves and set up the deal with the repairs in the contract, so far so good.

The sale goes through and is financed by the now infamous New Century mortgage company in CA. Problem is that the original owners never did any of the repairs by continually postponing and delaying, they even tried to purchase a home warranty and get them to foot the bill for the repairs.

In the end I ended up hiring attorneys and going to the county and state attorneys, where we were politely informed that, yes this is a violation of the contract and yes they, being mortgage brokers, are subject to the elevated standard of performance of real estate professionals, and yes this is probably a violation of the law, and no they would not file a case against them. They simply refused to enforce the law.

My attorneys then informed me that pursuing this in civil court would be a 50 - 50 proposition at best, would cost me between $40K - $100K, and even if we win, the chances are that they would just close up the office, run back to CA, and bankrupt the debt.

Now that property has been foreclosed and, three years later, still sits vacant and is disintegrating. Oh, and to make it even better, the other formerly million dollar homes around it are being further devalued because this house is in the neighborhood.

[Tansy_Gold]

4. My former residence in Buckeye, AZ

I sold in Feb 2006 for $340K. Buyer had -0- down, financed additional $40K+ for remodeling.

Foreclosed in Jan. 2008. Sold at auction for $252K.

Listed on zillow.com a few months ago by realtor (and indications were it was agent-owned) at $196K.

Currently AGAIN in foreclosure (according to zillow.com) and listed at $159,600.




Tansy Gold

[UpInArms]

6. I wondered if you had been near all of that when I read and posted

the article.

[Tansy_Gold]

7. Yeah, I was right in the thick of it.

The Town of Buckeye took the lead in the late 1980s by annexing thousands upon thousands upon thousands of acres of undeveloped land, then allowed the developers to come in and do whatever they wanted. My husband and I had bought a 1+ acre lot and house in 1988 about 7 miles outside of "downtown" Buckeye. We were surrounded by desert.

In 2000, the developers decided the time was right. They began bulldozing the desert flat and putting up thousands and thousands of little ticky tacky boxes that all looked the same. Prices went up overnight. One woman I worked with bought one of these mass-produced houses and lived on the rise in equity for a year -- and she lived LAVISHLY. I don't know what happened to her after I moved away.

They put in infrastructure first -- widened roads, built a freeway interchange, the whole thing. Several golf courses, schools, water treatment plant, the works. And then they started selling houses.

After my husband died in 2005, I decided to get out. There was nothing tying me to Buckeye and I wanted to come to the East Valley, so I put the house on the market. Listed at $340K on Monday and sold it for $340K on Friday. My next-door-neighbor was the agent and she handled both the sale and the purchase, so I had a lot of information on the buyer that I might not have.

We closed escrow the end of March 2006. My agent had been closing two sales a week for almost a year up to that time; after mine, her entire office went on a dry spell. A month later, when I had to get in touch with her about something, she said she had not had a single close since mine. Her office had started to resort to week-end open houses again, and the Sunday before I talked to her (this was in late April or early May 2006) they had held five open houses and had not one single looker at any of them!

Her house, by the way, was for sale as of about two months ago. Listed at $368K it is now on zillow with a "zestimate" value of for $255K, so apparently no longer for sale. She is no longer in real estate, and since her husband was self-employed in a construction-related business, I suspect they may have fallen on hard times.

The bizarre thing is that I never really had any emotional attachment to the house in Buckeye, even though I lived there for 18 years. Now that I've been gone and now that the price is sooooo low, I feel sorry for it.


Tansy Gold, incurable sentimentalist but not willing to leave Apache Junction!

[hasssan1]

5. K&R