Real Estate Tangent

The highs and lows of parenting and real estate.

Monthly Archives for
February 2009

Foreclosure Fears

This post is in response to the person who visited my website today using the search term “terrified to call mortgage company about my foreclosure.”

My heart goes out to this googler. Not only is she losing a home, but she is additionally paralyzed by fear (and probably guilt) over the situation and unable to act. There are way too many people in this situation right now. And unfortunately, avoidance is only making things worse.

So if this is ringing true to your life, here is my advice:

CALL YOUR MORTGAGE COMPANY IMMEDIATELY. They don’t want to take your house. In this economy, not only will it not make them any money, but it will cost them big bucks to get it turned around and back on the market. Mortgage companies don’t want to own houses. They will do anything they can to keep you in yours.

Try to keep in mind that although this is possibly a humiliating and unthinkable event for you, nothing you have to tell the bank will be something they haven’t heard before. You aren’t alone and the representative you speak to will be unlikely to admonish or scold you. The rep won’t be happy, but he most likely won’t mock you either.

Take the tactic that you want to work with the bank to make this have the best outcome for both of you. What do you need to get through the rough period? A deferment of payment for a few months until you find a new job? A reduced interest rate to lower your payments? An extended loan period to lower your payments?

Let them know what you are doing to make things better. Are you job searching daily? Cutting back on non-necessity spending? Convey all of this information to the bank to let them know you’re doing your part in all of this.

I’m not saying the bank will make this easy. You need to be diligent with paperwork they will request and you may have to call back several times (I took a class a few weeks back where the instructor told us that banks train their representatives to say no to any request three times). Don’t be deterred.

You have options in this situation, but it’s important to get out in front of it. Don’t let your fear drag you down further. Man up and call.

3 Days – 4 Clients – 37 Houses

It’s been a wild weekend of houses and more houses. The title of this post says it all. I’ve been to South Chandler, North Mesa, Ahawatukee, Gilbert, the Historic Districts of Phoenix and the majority of the new builds in the South East Valley.

The buyers are out there and looking for deals. Of the things I’ve seen in the last few weeks, a few stand out to me:

1. Out in Maricopa, there’s a new build in The Lakes at Rancho El Dorado with 1200+ square foot houses starting at $95,900. Can’t rent for less than that!

2. One of my clients has been looking at historical homes in downtown Phoenix, which is super fun. I tend to show suburban cookie cutters in the East Valley, so an adorable 1950s bungalow with a milk door makse me squeal. This cutie:

That has been totally redone with granite in the kitchen and a fabulous detached garage in back at $159,900 made me want to live downtown. Sure, it only has one bathroom, but so well done and in such a great location, how can you beat that?

3. Well, and if I’m going to post about great houses I’ve seen lately, I would be remiss not to mention this amazing Fountain Hills home:

My client who was looking in this area and I called it ‘the bridge house’ because it sits up above a bit of a wash. If you stand in front and look down underneath you can see to the other side. It’s an incredibly modern and well thought out home. We looked at many houses in this price range and our breath was taken away by this beauty. It’s currently listed at $1,980,000. Let me assure you, if I had two million, that’s where I’d be living.

4. The last is another downtown historical home. This one wasn’t in amazing shape, and it definitely was the scariest on the block from the exterior (driving down the street with my client, we couldn’t figure out which house we were looking for; when I finally realized which house was our destination, I said, “Of course that one. The one we wouldn’t want to go into. Awesome.”), however, the layout was generally good and the house was totally livable. It has a garage with a laundry room and three bedrooms and two baths, plus a decent sized kitchen, not to mention a ginormous yard. Add to that a neighborhood close to the light rail and with mostly fabulous houses (with expensive cars parked out front) and I’m thinking that with a little bit of elbow grease and time to get the market back on track and the $132,900 price tag will be looking like money in some smarty’s pocket. Yeah, I know it doesn’t look like much:

But I think I could amount to something special in the long run (although someone should totally clean the 8 huge cockroaches out of the bottom cabinet in the kitchen ASAP).

And that’s my market take for the day. Call if you want to see anything!

The 'Other' Airport

I’m sure you’ve heard of it. That little airport over in East Mesa? The one that used to have a really cheap flight to Vegas, but apparently discontinued it? Yeah, that’s all I had ever heard about it too.

Two weeks ago we needed to get to Portland, Oregon on short notice (72 hours). I checked all the usual places first: orbitz.com, travelocity.com, Southwest, etc. The cheapest I could find was $420/each for a roundtrip with a layover in Salt Lake City. Then I checked our airline credit card that we put everything on to accrue miles and we had enough for one free roundtrip ticket. Unfortunately, it would have been $670 to add the second person on the same flight. So basically our options were $840 and no miles for a flight with a layover, $670 and all of our miles for a direct flight, or $420 and all of our miles for a direct flight and one with a layover (so two different drop off/pick up times at the airport and no moral support for me and my nail-biting flying fear). Not particularly attractive options.

Then I got a thought to check the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport… Because I’m the QUEEN of cheap travel. That’s right, bow down. The Mesa airport flies to a really limited amount of locations, but they do fly to Eugene, Oregon, which is about 100ish miles from Portland. Two roundtrip tickets from Mesa to Eugene was $215 (that’s including one roundtrip checked bag). Of course, being 100 miles from our destination meant that we had to rent a car, but that was only an additional $100 (and we got to keep it for the weekend). So for $315 we made the trip.

The other fabulousness of the Mesa airport is that it’s so small that parking, check-in, security and baggage claim is all super quick and easy.

Jason was worried that because it is a small airport, the plane would be super small (and my flying fear would be increased). But that was not a worry because it was a 5 seat wide, 35 seat deep jet; nice and big. The flight out of Phoenix was bumpy (as per usual), but the one in was smooth as silk.

So my vote is thumbs up! Fly Phoenix-Mesa Gateway when you get a chance. Here are the cities they fly to:

Bellingham, WA (BLI)
Billings, MT (BIL)
Bismarck, ND (BIS)
Cedar Rapids, IA (CID)
Eugene, OR (EUG)
Fargo, ND (FAR)
Great Falls, MT (GTF)
Medford, OR (MFR)
Missoula, MT (MSO)
Peoria, IL (PIA)
Rapid City, SD (RAP)
Redmond-Bend, OR (RDM)
Rockford, IL (RFD)
Sioux Falls, SD (FSD)
Springfield, MO (SGF)