It’s been one of those weeks. Sick kids, appointments with specialists, showings and new clients have eaten up all of my time and energy and I’ve been taking it out on my website. Shame on me. I do, however, anticipate a brand new listing this weekend to give you information about. I promise it will be up as soon as I have it in my hot little hands!
To tide you over, I have a couple of mortgage rate tidbits:
1. Mortgage rates are at a 2.5 year high, you may have heard. They are still historically quite low. The 30-year fixed is at about 6.5% and the 15-year fixed is at 6.125% (according to my in-house lender, Chad Peare with Hamilton Mortgage). So if you’re thinking of buying; sooner, rather than later, might be a good idea. Some analysts are predicting the rates will be up to 7% by year end. I did, however, hear the same thing last year, so, grain of salt, people, is all I’m saying.
2. I learned something interesting this week from another mortgage broker I know (Maria Gonzalez – Pacific Coast Mortgage, email: a-mgonzalez@cox.net, cell: 602-525-4347). If you are trying to obtain a loan to purchase a condo or other ‘apartment-style’ dwelling, a property on the first floor will have a lower interest rate than a property on a higher floor. In the case she was researching for one of my clients, the difference was almost .5%. That much interest can make a huge difference in your monthly payments. It’s something to keep in mind.
And a for the baby-lovers out there:
Sometimes Gray gets so tired from his exhausting routine of trashing the house, terrorizing the cats and pulling his brother’s hair that he just needs a little rest.
I have to make a small deviation from my usual path of real estate, kids, recipes and crafts today to mention something that is totally freaking me out: my best friend from 6th and 7th grade is on The Apprentice! Check this out:
This gorgeous gal and I, back when she was Roxy and I was Liz, spent most of our time ditching band practice (we both played the clarinet), manipulating our sixth grade teacher, Mr. Smith and fixing the computers in the other sixth grade classrooms so that everyone else could also play Oregon Trail. In seventh grade we locked ourselves in a practice room in the chorus classroom for a semester and recorded, from memory, the entire script to the movie Heathers. She was always brilliant, assertive (and if you know her you know that’s the understatement of the year) and hilarious. I’m so proud of her! So far she has been the epitome of grace, intelligence and composure on the show. I’m totally rooting for her!
This weekend I visited La Terraza with my mom and sister. There was this whole plan going in about how I am NOT related to them and we have a normal ‘client/agent’ relationship so as not to detract from anyone’s credibility or seriousness of purchasing. Unfortunately, that plan rapidly deteriorated when I called her ‘Mom’ and then my sister and I started discussing how the stairs in one of the units looked just like the ones in the house when we lived on the farm. I’m feeling like it probably wouldn’t have been that successful anyway since my mother and I are notorious for looking and sounding alike and my sister and I have really similar mannerisms.
Regardless of that little snafu, the overall experience was quite positive. La Terraza sits about half a mile south and about a block west of the Biltmore Fashion Park. It’s a great area. The apartment complex was built in 1997 and they are being sold for the most part ‘as-is’. Because my parents want to use this as a rental property, we toured the three 2 bedroom floor plans. We liked the B1 unit the best. It is 1095 square feet, has two bedrooms and two bathrooms all on the same level, and an attached single car garage. It starts at $288,000. La Terraza is not as nicely appointed as the Montage condos are (no granite counters or flat-top range and everything inside is 6 years older) but to me it definitely makes up for this in the garage and location. It seems to me that if someone was well-enough off to rent a condo near The Biltmore, they will most likely have a nice enough car to keep in a garage. The other two floor plans were interesting as well. The largest is over 1400 square feet and has a loft in addition to the two bedrooms. It also has two one car garages (one on each side of the unit). I can see how this floor plan would be ideal for a high-powered couple who works downtown. They have the master bedroom for themselves, a guest bedroom, the loft to use as an office and a garage for each of their cars. This unit starts at $380,000.
I am still gathering details about the complex, but it seems like it at least has the potential to be a smart purchase. There are apparently some of the units that will be sold with leases still in place for up to a year from now. Depending on what they are currently paying in rent, this might be a very low-hassle option. One of the incentives currently being offered is that Montecito will pay the Home Owner’s Association fees (around $200 per month) for the first year if the buyer uses a preferred lender and closes within 25 days. I believe this was created to offset the lower rent the current tenants are paying. Once the first year is up, everyone will need to renegotiate rents to include the HOA fees.
For now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we will get a decent appointment time on sales day. There are only 28 of the unit we like in the complex.
Contact me if you’re interested in La Terraza too!
I woke up this morning to this email from the local Realtor association I belong to, the Southeast Valley Regional Association of Realtors (SEVRAR):
Elizabeth,
All of us at SEVRAR would like to thank you for your continued membership on today your membership anniversary date!
I’ve been a real estate agent for exactly a year! That makes me happy. I’m pleased about what I’ve accomplished so far, thrilled with all I’ve learned and even happier about what I plan to accomplish in the next year. And I hope to serve all of my clients (past, present and future) the best I possibly can.
We are cat people. I know, I know, half of you are rolling your eyes and saying, “Cats? Really? Just when I thought I liked her…” and the other half are going, “AW! I love kitties too!” It’s practically more controversial than religion. Catholics and Jews intermarry all the time, but a dog person sharing his life with a cat gal? Well it just wouldn’t be civilized.
Whatever. My point is, not only are we cat people, but we are up to our ears in feline friends. Until this week we had four cats living inside our house; our two, my sister’s crazy kitten and my Uncle Robin’s giant recluse of a cat. This week my sister came and picked up her cat. We figured life with the cats would quickly settle down. And then this morning Jason woke up with this:
That’s right, at 2 AM one of the idiot cats started chasing another one around the house. The chasee dashed (LOUDLY) across our wood floors and into our bedroom and leaped up to perch on top of our headboard (which has a little ledge) and missed. I sat straight up in bed and Jason didn’t make it up fast enough. She landed on his face. Do you have any idea how shocking it is to be woken from a dead sleep by terrified hairy ball of fluff with 20 outstretched talons landing an inch from your eye? Let me just tell you that the kitties are sleeping in the garage tonight.
I think we may have to convert.
I’d like to clarify a couple of things on the condo conversion I mentioned yesterday.
I have several clients who are interested in possibly purchasing something to rent as an investment. Most of these clients are very gung ho in about the theory of investing in real estate, and then get a little gun shy when they are presented with something to purchase (this applies to my mother, especially, who regularly bugs me with, ‘Find something for us!’ and then when something comes up, says, ‘OK, can you show me proof on paper of what this investment will yield in the next five years? Cause I’m not sure it’s for us…’). It’s a very reasonable feeling, and let me tell you, I am all for doing your research and taking smart risks. However, it’s important to remember there will always be an element of risk involved. Investing in real estate is really just refined gambling.
Anyway, the condo conversion I mentioned yesterday, is possibly a smart investment. I don’t actually know much about them yet, because I haven’t done any real research, but the area they are in is upscale and the company doing the conversion is well-known for nice condos in great locations. The point of all of this is, they have an appointment list for their sales day. They started taking appointments February 24th. Sale day is April 1st. The way it works is that they start at 7 AM and schedule 100 or so people every half hour all day. There are only 224 units available. Now, of course not everyone will purchase, but you can see where a hot complex would go quickly. I honestly didn’t believe this hype at the last sale day I went to. We had an 11 AM appointment and I thought we would be fine. The units were long gone by the time our group shuffled through. If you want to have a chance at buying a condo at all, and if you want to have any kind of choice in the unit you get, it’s vital to get an early appointment.
This is why I want to urge any investor or possible investor to contact me quickly. In order to get an appointment you have to sign a form (which I currently have in my hands) simply giving you the rules for sale day (minimum earnest money deposit, preferred lender incentives, etc) and you need to be preapproved by one of their preferred lenders. This does not lock you into ANYTHING. In fact, you don’t even have to attend your appointment if you decide it’s not for you. However, it does give you the opportunity to purchase and a month to research the investment.
I have talked my parents into getting an appointment and will be visiting the sales office to find out answers to questions like what the units have been renting for and the percentage that are rented at any given time. I will, of course, report on this research here and let you know my yay or nay on La Terraza (which, of course will be nothing but the opinion of one newish Realtor), but by then it may well be too late to get a decent appointment. All is not lost, of course, with Montage, several of the units fell out of escrow and because we managed to annoy the sales office regularly and did purchase one. It was just a much more difficult process.
So if you think you’re interested, let’s get an early appointment and avoid the mess!
I’ve got a couple of bits of info here for you today:
1. Montecito Properties is doing another condo conversion. They are the same company that handled both the Montage sale (of which I have done some extensive blogging about) and Biltmore Square. Both of these condo conversions sold out in hours and have been a hotbed of interest for investors and those want to live the high life in a great location. Sale day is April 1st (or maybe this is all just a big April Fool’s Day Trick! Nah…) and if you have an interest at all in purchasing a condo in the Biltmore area, it is worth your while to get an appointment. The earlier your appointment, the better. You will have to be preapproved through one of their preferred lenders (Wells Fargo, Country Wide, Chase and Washington Mutual) in order to reserve a time slot, so call or email me and I will walk you through the process. You can purchase these without an agent, but it doesn’t cost you anything to use one, and it’s a sticky situation I wouldn’t step into without adequate representation. The condos range in price from $216,000 up to $388,000 and have garages.
2. The number of houses currently on the market in the Metro Phoenix area is currently at a 3-year high: 32,000+. This is up from about 5,000 last May. It’s a significant softening of the seller’s market. Buyers have way more choice and prices are even starting to drop a bit. We still have lots of activity, but it’s something to keep in mind when you’re getting ready to sell your house. Average days on market are up at 46 (this is from about 7 last year). That’s still a very low number if you look at stats around the country, but it’s definitely higher than what people have been used to here in the last year or so.
The market is an ever changing animal. If you want to understand it, you’ve got to keep an eye on it’s every move. I’m just here to help.