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Tucson Foreclosures Short Sale REO Bank Owned July 2008

July 28, 2008

Post Tags: Arizona-Daily-Star , Tucson Real Estate , Tucson-bank-owned , Tucson-Foreclosures , Tucson-MLS , tucson-REO , tucson-short-sales

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There they are;  all the buzz words of Real Estate these days.  After seeing the headline “Foreclosures more than double here” in the Saturday, July 27, 2008 Arizona Daily Star I decided I wanted to see for myself where all this stacks up in the Tucson MLS system.

According to an aside on the front page Tucson ranks 37th Nationally with 1 foreclosure for every 148 homes.

By contrast Phoenix/Mesa has 51.  The top 10 are all in Calfornia, Utah, Florida, and Phx/Mesa ranks 7th to round out the top 10.  Not a top 10 list any city wants to make.

I decided to do a little searching inside the Tucson MLS system to see what I could learn in a general way about where foreclosures and short sales were taking place around Tucson.

Data Snapshot July 28, 2008

I placed the criteria for the following words to be in the property description.

foreclosure, bank owned, reo, short sale

There were a total of 541 active listings with one of these phrases in the property description.

Those 541 broke down in the following areas:

• SFR  500
• TH      30
• CD      11

I decided to focus on single family residence since this was by far the largest group.  If you own a condo or town home it doesn’t look like (at the moment) you have too much market pressure on sale price.

The table below breaks down the number of active listings by area and the number of properties that fit the criteria for the search.  It also includes a column for percentage of active listings for each area.  At the end of this post are two links.  These links are to PDF documents of the searches run to gather this data.  It breaks each down into more detail than the table.  It will show price ranges and bedrooms of each area.

The Foreclosure Short sale Bank owned REO breakdown

It very much appears the areas in the south are by far the hardest hit. S,SW,SE,XS are all in double digits.
The XW at 0% and N at 2% are the best. But none of the other areas are in double digits and the percentages of home for the entire area are quite small.

Yes there are foreclosures, short sales, bank owned and REO properties in the Tucson real estate market. However, for most of the areas the percentages are small; these properties should not effect overall property values for the area.

I know the article created a lot of concern over falling property values. It is a valid concern for some areas in double digits. But, if you don’t have to sell and don’t plan on selling any time in the next year you should be fine in the future.

Here are the links to the two PDF files:

Report on Foreclosures, Short Sales, Bank Owned, REO

Report on All SFR Active Listings

By the way, that 1 in 148 homes in Tucson in foreclosure works out to 99.7% of the homes being paid for just fine. And by any definition 3 tenths of a percent do not a “housing crisis” make.

No Responses to “Tucson Foreclosures Short Sale REO Bank Owned July 2008”

1. James Wheelock (4 comments.) Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 2:46 pm

   @David - When do you see things turning around completely for Tucson. I have been thinking about buying some property out west for some time. And California is still just to expensive.

2. David Smith (115 comments.) Says:
   August 13th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

   James,

   It depends on the financing of the property. If it is a cash purchase I would think now sometime in Sept. or Oct. It will be a month by month analysis. I’m still seeing a slight drop in average sale price in most areas.

   However, if the property is to be financed, I think we have already seen bottom in the sense that interest rates in my opinion are going to continue to rise off setting any reduction in sale prices. The inventory each month has been declining. Some areas of town are down to 5 months of inventory.

3. Barbara Says:
   August 15th, 2008 at 10:20 am

   I have a rental in Vail. I don’t know if I should hold on to it any longer. I’m paying out of pocket. Do you see a turn around in the near future? Thanks for your help.

4. David Smith (115 comments.) Says:
   August 15th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

   Barbara,

   At this point average sale prices are continuing to dip slightly month over month.

   If you bought it before 2004 you still should see some gain. If after that, you might want to continue to rent it for awhile.

   This month (Aug. 2008) there are a lot of mortgages that are resetting. It is going to take a couple more months to see what effect if any this will have on the Tucson real estate market.

   There is a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) Request at http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/cma-request/ If you fill this out we can let you know what you could price it for. There isn’t any obligation and knowing what the market value is right now would help you have a better idea of what to do.

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