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Home inspection warning: The one important thing many buyers miss  WCPO 9 Cincinnati

Process for selling houses changes in Arizona following lawsuit  Arizona's Family

Home inspection warning: The one important thing many buyers miss  WCPO 9 Cincinnati

Buyer Agents Support MA Legislature's Home Inspection Protections  EIN News

RPV home inspections  LAist

RPV home inspections  LAist

RPV home inspections  LAist

 
Renters looking for houses in metro Phoenix areexperiencing much of the same frenzy as buyers.
As reported in http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/09/04/20120904phoenix-area-rental-homes-red-hot-commodity.htm, new data from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service and real-estate analyst Mike Orr show  the supply of houses for rent in the region is nearly as tight as the supply of homes for sale, and the number of leases signed in  the past few months is at record levels.
High demand for rentals is another indicator of metro Phoenix’s housing-market recovery.
Rob and Sandra O’Dell discovered how competitive metro Phoenix’s rental market has become when they began looking for ...

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Nearly a dozen people have been indicted in an alleged California-based mortgage modification scam that targeted struggling homeowners, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. 
More than 4,000 homeowners lost at least $7 million in fees paid to the company; many lost their homes to foreclosure through the scheme.
Here’s information from the federal announcement:
+  Federal agents this morning arrested 10 defendants who worked at a Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.,-based business that allegedly offered bogus loan modification programs to financially distressed homeowners. As a result of the scheme allegedly run out of 21st ...

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Metro Phoenix’s housing market took a breather in July. Home prices fell less than 1 percent instead of the 5 to 7 percent monthly jumps seen earlier this year.
Here are the highlights from the report from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University:
 The median single-family home price dropped slightly between June and July this year – down less than 1 percent. It went from $150,000 to $149,000.
The median single-family home price was still up almost 31 percent from last ...

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 More than 7,700 Arizona borrowers have recently received aid from one of the nation's five biggest lenders, according to a preliminary federal report on the $25 million lender settlement with the nation's attorneys general. The lenders settled over accusations of abusive foreclosure practices.
This week's report says that so far, the five lenders have spent more than $500 million in Arizona to help homeowners.
But it's been hard to find many of those homeowners. So far, after working with several of Arizona's top housing non-profits and soliciting responses from readers, I have found two people who have received aid from the settlement. ...

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Real Estate Commission Judy Lowe emailed this out last night: From Fannie Mae:
There appears to be a misunderstanding regarding Fannie Mae's short sale process, involving a company called Kazork.  Kazork is a company that, among other things, conducts auctions of residential  properties that have not been able to be sold through traditional marketing practices.  Fannie Mae at one time had a limited engagement with Kazork, but has said that Kazork is not an exclusive partner on short sales.  Fannie Mae is reaching out to Kazork to stop them from using Fannie Mae's name in any marketing activities.   Any changes that Fannie Mae makes to its short ...

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The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices shows home prices in metro Phoenix climbed 14 percent  between June 2011 and June 2012.
That's higher than any of the other major metros tracked. But Phoenix-area median home price has actually  climbed more than 40 percent in the past year.
Part of the discrepancy could be that the index uses seasonally-adjusted numbers. But there's a pretty big difference between its numbers and median prices tracked by Phoenix-based data firms. ...

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 Foreclosures have slowed in metro Phoenix from last year, but there are still homeowners struggling to make their payments.
Here's some updated advice from one of Arizona's top housing advocates, Patricia Garcia Duarte, chief executive of Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix.
Her first piece of advice for homeowners facing losing their homes is to call the Arizona Foreclosure Prevention Hotline at 877-448-1211 or go to www.azforeclosureprevention.org.
What is the biggest hurdle Arizona homeowners facing foreclosure now are dealing with?
"Understanding the many resources that are available," Duarte said. "(Housing) program updates and changes have been made, and the transition to new and improved resources may ...

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 Foreclosures have slowed in metro Phoenix from last year, but there are still homeowners struggling to make their payments.
Here's some updated advice from one of Arizona's top housing advocates, Patricia Garcia Duarte, chief executive of Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix.
Her first piece of advice for homeowners facing losing their homes is to call the Arizona Foreclosure Prevention Hotline at 877-448-1211 or go to www.azforeclosureprevention.org.
What is the biggest hurdle Arizona homeowners facing foreclosure now are dealing with?
"Understanding the many resources that are available," Duarte said. "(Housing) program updates and changes have been made, and the transition to new and improved resources may ...

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 Buyers growing demand for new homes in metro Phoenix continued in July, but home building could slow during the next few months if builders run out of lots in the most popular developments.
New home permits climbed to 1,303 in July, their second highest monthly level this year, according to RL Brown and Greg Burger’s Phoenix Housing Market Letter. Monthly tallies of residential building permits have been above 1,000 for the past five months in the region. A year ago, home building activity was half that pace each month.
Metro Phoenix’s most popular new home communities now will be out of home ...

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The debate among housing market watchers over whether metro Phoenix has a looming shadow inventory goes on even as foreclosures fall and home prices keep rising.
Some believe there are thousands of homes in the region that mortgage payments haven’t been made on for years, but lenders haven’t moved to foreclose on.
The concern is those homes make up a “shadow inventory” that could be dumped on the market anytime or all at once – stalling the current recovery.
Other housing experts, including Mike Orr of Arizona State University, don’t think the area has a shadow inventory problem.
New numbers on mortgage delinquencies ...

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 The debate among housing market watchers over whether metro Phoenix has a looming shadow inventory goes on even as foreclosures fall and home prices keep rising.
Some believe there are thousands of homes in the region that mortgage payments haven’t been made on for years, but lenders haven’t moved to foreclose on.
The concern is those homes make up a “shadow inventory” that could be dumped on the market anytime or all at once – stalling the current recovery.
Other housing experts, including Mike Orr of Arizona State University, don’t think the area has a shadow inventory problem.
New numbers on mortgage delinquencies ...

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 The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Services is acquiring data provider The Information Market. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. 
The Information Market is a leader in real estate datap research. It's client include Arizona State University,  The Arizona Republic, The Cromford Report and several Valley cities. 
With the acquisition, ARMLS members will have access to Information Market data from public records on home sales and foreclosures. 
The 30-year-old regional Realtor group has been undergoing changes since a deal to become statewide failed last year. Bob Beamis, the industry group's last chief executive, left in February to join Zillow. ...

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A few days ago, 275 foreclosure houses across metro Phoenix were purchased through a very quiet $34 million cash deal. But it's not clear yet who the buyer is.
In February, Fannie Mae announced it would auction 2,490 foreclosure homes in Phoenix, Atlanta, Chicago, Florida, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It was the first time the government-owned mortgage firm agreed to openly sell groups of foreclosure houses located in just one metro area. Since the crash, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac usually have sold homes they get back from lenders one by one, or ...

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