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Patrick Walsh
REALTOR®

    CNE: Certified Negotiation Expert
    Green

Direct: (602) 369-3224



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Posts Tagged ‘investor’

eBay for Serious Real Estate Investors?

Monday, June 14th, 2010

To serve a new wave of computer savvy real estate investors, an Arizona company, called Smart Arizona Foreclosures, has set up a website reminiscent of eBay, which offers online bidding for qualified cash buyers.  Now you can bid on bank owned residential properties without even leaving your home!  Sound too good to be true? We don’t think so.

My associates at Smart Arizona Foreclosures  have designed a streamlined website with a number of fail-safe devices (title search, photographs, minimum/maximum bids, etc.) to minimize the risk. In addition, my clients will have my assistance in double-checking property values, resale estimates, rehab charges, and other details.

Here’s how it works:

•             We have a preliminary conversation to establish your maximum purchase price, city/neighborhood preferences, hold-and-rent or fix-and-flip intentions, etc.

•             You send $10,000 to be held in escrow for each purchase. (You also need to be able to wire the balance within 24 hours of a successful bid.)

•             You sign up at the website for a buyer name and log in. You are now ready to select from a short list of properties coming up for auction in the next couple of days. (I will work with you to establish your parameters and set up your search.) We will request a title search and photos of the selected properties at this stage.

•             When you find a property that fits your specifications, you enter your starting bid and your maximum bid, click ‘submit’ and wait to see if you are successful. Monday’s bids will be auctioned on Tuesday, Tuesday’s bids on Wednesday, etc.

Of course, this opportunity is not for everybody but this is a way for ordinary investors to get access to the ‘county steps’ auctions of bank owned properties which are normally not accessible to the general public. Bidding at these auctions has historically been a closed shop, with participation limited to a few experts who take all the spoils.

If you’re interested, email me at pwalsh@kw.com  or call me at 602-369-3224.

Real Estate prices are up, according to the Arizona Republic

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Real Estate prices are up for single family homes in the Phoenix Valley http://www.azcentral.com/realestate/homevalues/homevalues.php but you could have missed it if you hadn’t read the end of two articles buried on page D-2 of the Wednesday and Thursday editions of the Arizona Republic.

As I have been saying for some time now, prices bottomed out in March of 2009.

On Wednesday we learned that Phoenix is one of 91 major cities out of 152 nationwide to post an increase in home prices during the past year.

This National Association of Realtors survey showed that prices of existing homes climbed 9.1% in the Phoenix area for the year ended March 31, 2010.  You might have expected that kind of good news would have been a headline — but no.

On Thursday, the following day, there was even better news … yet again buried on page D-2 of the Republic’s Business section:  The median resale price for a single family home in April was $144,000, up 15.2% from $125,000 a year ago.

So there you have it. In historic terms, that is a huge increase.  Several of my clients who have recently purchased homes at great prices realize that, if they had started nine months earlier, they might have realized even more of an increase. I had to confirm their speculation.

So what does all this news mean?  It means the real estate market has officially bottomed out and that home prices are rising. Good news for homeowners hoping to sell in the not-too-distant future. And some homeowners may no longer be upside down.

To investors, I would say “the train is leaving the station.”  A conversation yesterday with one of the top REO (bank-owned property) realtors in our office confirmed that the number of foreclosed properties coming his way has slowed down to a trickle. At a recent national conference several of the large banks indicated they are severing their relationship with thousands of realtors. Apparently the banks are actively pursuing every possible alternative before going the foreclosure route. So MLS investment properties will be diminishing and those that do appear will create a bidding frenzy and prices at the wholesale end should start climbing again.

Attention investors:
My next blog will cover a new option for bidding on line for bank properties and getting them before they hit the MLS listings. Stay tuned.

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