Tucson AZ Real Estate

All over the Sonoran desert cactus of different size color and varieties are in bloom this spring. They bring a special kind of color to the desert.

This image is a pair of buckhorn cholla taken late in the evening. To see more images of cactus in bloom click the flower or the link to: Sonoran Cactus in Bloom.

This is just a sample of the many beautiful cactus and other flowering plants to see in the Sonoran Desert this spring.

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Everything seems to be blooming earlier this year. Not only are the plants and trees blooming earlier they have more blooms than usual, a lot more.

This week I’m seeing the ironwood trees full of blossoms. They are an amazing tree and not far from where I live there is a 20 acre preserve for them. The high school just down the road is “Ironwood High School“. This is the time of year they are easiest to identify because of the purple and white blossoms.

This coming Saturday May 10, 2008 is The ninth annual Tucson Audubon Society Ironwood Festival. The article in Sundays paper paid tribute to this amazing tree and in the sidebar you will find the schedule for the festival.

Ironwood trees can take 100 years to grow 30 feet. The wood is so dense it won’t float. You may have seen it but didn’t know it. Many things are carved out of ironwood and sold in southern Arizona and Mexico.

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I was listening to NPR Morning Edition on the way to breakfast the other morning when I heard that Costco and Sam’s Club were limiting the amount of rice that could be purchased at any one time.

Food Rationing in America? Are you kidding me. I listened on with interest. The limits were on the number of 20 lbs. bags that could purchased. There are countries in the world right now facings huge shortages of rice bringing inflations roaring into that market. The price of rice along with milk, bread, and eggs is increasing all the time.

I was tempted to go right down to Costco and get a 20 pound bag in case I couldn’t get one, or couldn’t afford one later.

Then I remembered “We don’t eat rice!” Nope, we don’t eat rice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bag of rice in our cupboard. I know I haven’t cooked with rice in years. The shortage of rice and the price will change, it will eventually come down. Will I notice? Not unless I’m in the market to buy rice.

Tucson Real Estate and the Price of Rice

Thankfully, the homes we live in are not consumables. Unless we are termites that is. What’s my point. Unless you are selling a house or plan on buying a house don’t get caught up in the frenzy over housing. The value of a piece of property is determined at the sale/purchase of that property. Everything in between is speculative value not real value. It is like the value of stocks, no matter if it is up or down you aren’t any richer if it is up or poorer if it is down unless on that day you are buying or selling.

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I don’t usually write about foreclosures or rates of foreclosure. But I want to address the article that topped the business section of this mornings “Arizona Daily Star“. For those who haven’t read my post in the past at Tucson Real Estate in The News or for those needing a refresher lets look at some of the tools we use for digging into the content of an article.

What is the Topic?

• Residential Real Estate
• Commercial Real Estate
• Single Family Residential etc.

The topic of Foreclosures

Is this Local or National.

“NEW YORK — In a bad omen for sellers and lenders this spring home-selling season, the erosion of house values is accelerating and foreclosure filings are doubling, new data showed Tuesday.”

Is it State or Local.

“AZ 3rd-highest in foreclosures”

Is there a local angle.

“Tucson ranked 54th, with one filing for every 224 households. The area’s 1,864 filings were up 14.5 percent from the prior quarter and 90 percent from first-quarter 2007.”

Now lets look at the overall details of the article

Rates of Foreclosures and the number of foreclosures continues to climb. Arizona is the third highest on the list with 27,404

Phoenix has 23,135 of the 27,404 in the state. Tucson has 1,884 leaving the rest of the state with 2,385.

Next it begins to mix the data in an apples to oranges approach to statistics. It compares the number of households to the number of foreclosures. This is not a valid comparison. Why? Because households are not foreclosed upon, neither are homes. They aren’t? I thought they were.

Loans, specifically in this instance Mortgage loans are foreclosed upon.

In the old days they were the same thing. You bought a house with a mortgage loan, when the loan was foreclosed upon it was the same as foreclosing on the house. But things changed a few years back. Why?

Because in the past if you didn’t have 20% down for the purchase of the home you had to purchase “Private Mortgage Insurance” (PMI). If you defaulted on your mortgage then the investor who holds the mortgage would be paid. You were purchasing this insurance for the investor not you.  PMI does nothing to prevent you from loosing your home.

Along came the “Second Mortgage”. If you didn’t have 20% down and didn’t want to pay PMI you could get a second mortgage to cover the 20% you didn’t have. (That’s right many people didn’t have anything to put down let alone 20%)

With two mortgages you avoided having to have PMI. The second mortgage always cost more and had a higher rate of interest. However, now you had TWO loans on ONE house. Remember the loans are what are foreclosed upon not the house.

But that’s not all in some states Home Owners Associations can foreclose on a property if the home owner is behind of payments. Two of the states that have this provision for HOA foreclosures are California and Nevada.

Guess what California and Nevada are number 1 and number 2 in foreclosure rates. In those states a single property can have THREE foreclosures at the same time.

None of this information is provided in the article. It is made to appear as one foreclosure = one house.

Now we have filled in another piece of this puzzle and “Bad Omen”.

Since the majority, I would say 99% of the homes in foreclosure had 1st and 2nd mortgages the actual number of homes being foreclosed upon in Tucson would be 942. But wait there is more (as they say in the commercials).

Not all of these homes are in foreclosure because if a home owner has missed a payment or has been late with a payment they will be sent a “Notice of Foreclosure Proceedings” on EACH LOAN. You guessed it. These numbers are not based on actual foreclosures, but on foreclosure notices.

I can’t say how many of these are in that category, but I would venture a guess of 1/3 to 1/2.

Feeling better yet? Is there a “Bad Omen” yes, but it isn’t for the home sellers. They are not competing with foreclosure properties for the sale of their home. Statistically that number is so low it isn’t even a blip. The Bad Omen is for those that made these terrible loans in the first place. They hold both loans. Their numbers are these numbers.

Finally, when looking back historically at home foreclosure rates the reporting is still comparing apples to oranges, since it is house for house reporting, it is single mortgage properties of the past compared to multiple mortgage properties of the recent past (yes, in some cases there were THREE mortgages, go figure).

When it comes to the reporting of bad news there are always ways to magnify reporting.

What you really need to be worried about are the Giant Man Eating Hybiscus invading Tucson.

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As they used to say on Monty Python “Now for something completely different”

I read this week about the continued search for proof of Dark Matter.

Old mine may hold universal mystery

SPEARFISH — A Black Hills underground science laboratory could help physicists learn more about a mysterious particle thought to make up nearly a quarter of the mass of the universe, a California professor said Thursday night.

University of California-Davis physicist Bob Svoboda and his collaborators plan to go 4,850 feet down into the former Homestake gold mine to detect dark matter in a tank containing 600 pounds of liquid xenon, a cold substance that is three times heavier than water.

“We hope to actually be the first to discover dark matter within the next few years,” Svoboda said. “That’s our goal.”

Dark matter doesn’t emit light, but light passing near the mass will go around it, so scientists can detect it using a process called gravitational lensing, Svoboda said.

The Large Underground Xenon detector experiment — or LUX — will be equipped with light sensors that will keep an eye out for these weakly interacting massive particles, affectionately called WIMPs.

If lucky, the scientists might see one dark matter particle a week, Svoboda said.

Isn’t it fascinating to think about a tank of 600 gallons of Xenon in a mine shaft down in the earth 4850 feet and from this liquid xenon they think they can see something that isn’t visible by looking for WIMPs Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. Using a LUX Large Underground Xenon detector.

If lucky they will see one dark matter particle a week.

This isn’t actually setup yet. They hope to have it set up and working later this year. I know there are several other LUX projects going on around the world at the moment also looking for WIMPs.

Then I thought there has to be a simpler way to prove dark matter.

Stimulus Check showing up in Bank Accounts Today

Reading this headline made it all click. Dark Matter is in my bank account and wallet. It makes everything disappear. Dark Matter is in your bank account and wallet as well. Want proof of dark matter, then just see how all those checks being sent out will simply disappear.

Large Undetected Xpenditures will totally wipe out What Increased Money Provided.

There you have it. Proof Dark Matter exist. We don’t need a mine shaft or 600 gallons of Xenon. We will see the effect faster and more often than one particle of dark matter a week. (If Lucky).

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