AZREIA January Meeting
Jan 14th, 2009 by Vinny
Got back from the AZERIA meeting Monday night (1/12/09) and was very excited about whats to come in Arizona real estate. If you are not aware, AZREIA stands for the Arizona Real Estate Investors Association, and is a great group headed by Alan Langston. They hold monthly meetings with market updates, and have great educational seminars and panels of experts. This is the very place where I signed up as a guest and heard the seminar that changed my view on life!
One large theme from the conference is that the majority of home sales are REO (real estate owned) or owned by the mortgage companies. This is no surprise if you have done a search on any Realtor website. There is about a 10 month supply of homes right now, which is still very high but hasn’t increased noticeably.Most of these homes are being financed by FHA loan programs.
83% of the sales in the city of Phoenix were distressed properties (foreclosures, pre-foreclosures). Scottsdale on the other hand is a different kind of market. Many people are still selling conventionally with only 32% being distressed properties.
2009 is turning out to be a great year for home sales. January has seen a spike in home sales in the past two weeks, more than all of December which is very promising.
The number of active foreclosures is still increasing in Arizona. It is constant flux, with a great deal being sold, and even more being added to the market.
One interesting item I heard from a residential broker is the length of time it takes a property to come onto the market from a foreclosure. It can be anywhere from a couple weeks to seven months! So there are even more properties that will be available this year. Many banks do not even list the property for sale at the same time due to the fact it will only bring down the value of their other properties.
Most of the panel interviewed during the meeting believes that 2009 will be the year to clear out all the excess inventory and 2010 will be a year of appreciation again. This means to start your investing now! There are houses that cost next to nothing that can be turned into cash generating machines with a little fix-up.
The best piece of information is the home value graphs, we are clearly in the over-correction phase, the drop has been so steep over the last 17 months from the highs.
You can find the ASU real estate data here: http://wpcarey.asu.edu/realestate/Housing-Market-Reports.cfm
So the gist is: start to invest! This is the best market we have seen in a long time and it won’t be around forever.
