Housing Doom

There aren’t a lot of condo buyers left in Las Vegas, and apparently a good chunk of those brave or deluded souls haven’t gotten the memo that your odds of "fast condo flipping for fun and profit" are not as good as your odds in the casinos.  It’s tough to be a condo reseller these days.

Hubble Smith reported in yesterday’s Review Journal: [Hat tip Judge!]

Industry insiders are saying that many high-rise condos are being put back on the market for resale and, like single-family detached homes, they’re not selling.

One luxury condo broker said he walked he floors at Metropolis and saw lockboxes on nearly every door.  Real-estate agents use lockboxes to access empty homes for showing.  He said 70 percent of the units at SoHo Lofts are listed for sale.

You’d think that slower sales would discourange flippers, but apparently not.

About one-third of high-rise closings are showing up for resale the next day on the Multiple Listing Service, SalesTraq President Larry Murphy said.

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This one sounds like a disaster in the making- Cottonwood Estates, a luxury home development by Coe-bilt, Inc. currently has 50 lots, 12 completed sales and 13 preforeclosures.

The housing downturn has been rough for private Arizona homebuilders.  Two builders, Turner Dunn and AmericaBuilt, have already filed for bankruptcy.   Another homebuilder that appears to be in trouble is Coe-bilt Inc., a private builder of luxury homes in Phoenix and Prescott. 

Their Cottonwood Estates development is located off of Bethany Home Road, east of Perryville Road.  This area, like so many on the edges of the Phoenix, has been hurt by rising gas prices as well as the downturn- fewer people are willing to drive out that far these days. Homes in Cottonwood Estates were listed on the MLS from $796K to $1.8M.

Coe-bilt acquired 25 lots in Cottonwood Estates in May 2005, and an additional 25 lots in January 2006.  The Maricopa County Assessor’s Office lists 12 properties that have sold in this development. [including one to the developer]  Apparently all but two of these properties are financed with 80/20 loans, and most appear to be non-owner-occupied. (NOO)  The MLS lists an additional six properties as "pending."  Interestingly, all six went pending on 1/16/2007.

Coe-bilt has apparently been facing financial difficulties, and this development is financed with quite a patchwork of loans. One of the principal creditors is Magnus Corporation.  One of the most disturbing pieces of news for this neighborhood is that PREFORECLOSURES CURRENTLY OUTNUMBER SALES IN THIS SUBDIVISION- there are 13 preforeclosures to 12 sales! [The homes are being foreclosed on by Magnus.]
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HousingDoom has asked this question before, and we’re going to keep on asking it- WHAT HAPPENS TO THE DATA ON THE COMPUTERS OF DEFUNCT LENDERS?

Yesterday the following notice appeared in the Arizona Republic.  The property of the now defunct Eagle First Mortgage is being auctioned off:[no link available, hat tip L!]

NOTICE OF PUBLIC AUCTION: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 @ 10:00am at: 5060 N. 19th Avenue, Suite 101, Phoenix, Arizona. Preview at 9:00am. The following property (miscellaneous office furniture & equipment) belonging to Eagle First Mortgage will be sold at public auction to satisfy liens per A.R.S. 33-361 (D) to pay for delinquent rents, taxes and late fees. Cash or Certified Funds Only. Pub: May 27, June 3, 10, 2007

Doom was previously informed that in the case of the auction of Golden Gate Mortgage’s office equipment, the computer disks were NOT wiped prior to being auctioned off.   Yesterday’s notice does not indicate who is holding the auction for Eagle First, so we are unable to determine if there are any computers in this sale, or if they will be wiped.  It appears likely though, that there is the potential of personal financial information falling into the wrong hands.

Given the highly sensitive information on the computers of mortgage lenders, does it really make sense to auction  them off with the data still intact? Implode-o-meter now lists 76 lenders that are no longer doing business, which represent heaven only knows how many branch offices with all their respective computers. That could represent a lot of opportunites for the misuse of data.
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It’s a quiet holiday Monday at Doom Castle, and most of us are out enjoying the nice weather, baseball, stock car racing, anything but housing and mortgage finance.  We’ll just be in and out, but the Reply window is always open.  As soon as something interesting pops up this week, we’d love to hear about it.

The markets will be in full flight again on Tuesday, and perhaps the S&P record will fall in the next few days.  Who knows what the story of this next week will be?

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Once upon a time, according to Northwest News Channel 8, 33 year-old bagholder Shane Lovett decided he wasn’t just mad about losing his Oregon home to foreclosure, he was going to get even:

Lovett bought a home on SE Wildcat Mountain Drive in Eagle Creek a few years ago. In January the house went into foreclosure. Neighbors told police that Lovett was extremely distraught over the the situation. He apparently told several [people] that he had put the animals [three pigs] inside the house over a week ago and even joked about the fact that they did not have any water.

When deputies responded to complaints about the pigs, the inside and outside of the home were trashed.

I’ve heard stories of disgruntled home owners losing their homes to foreclosure and trashing the properties, but Lovett was, pardon the pun, a real swine about this.  Here’s the video:

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If this one is legit, it’s a new one on me—-

I’m generally a little skeptical about the stuff I find on Craigslist, but I have to admit, I’m curious about an ad in the Las Vegas Craigslist with the headline:

$465950 No Payments For Three Years!

The ad also indicates that the closing costs are paid, and that the interest rate is fixed for one year.  [Although I guess those nasty resets can't plague you for another two.]  This Summerlin property is apparently listed on the MLS, through a Re/Max agent.

One year is not unheard of, but this is the first time I’ve seen three years.
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Here’s how Judy Lowe, President of the Tucson Association of Realtors (TAR) described April home sales in Tucson:

We are seeing some movement in total unit sales and sales volume, but like our other indicators, it is slight. Both decreased slightly in April, reversing a rising trend we’ve seen since the beginning of the year. Unit sales totaled 1,280 in April, down only 73 units since March 2007, so not a significant decrease.

It is not unusual for April sales to be down a bit from March, in fact, in six of the past twelve years, sales have been down somewhat from March to April.  More significant is the fact that 2007 continues to track at a much lower pace than recent years- sales have not been this low during the month of April since there were 1249 sales in April of 2003.

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I must confess though, it’s hard to say which one is scarier.  [Hat tip to E.S. for sending these to us!]

First is a news piece from Sacramento, showing the record number of foreclosures.  The second is on the lack of reality in A&E’s reality show, "Flip this House."

Enjoy- or whatever.

If that one hasn’t made you ill yet, try this one:

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Homes aren’t selling, and consequently they are starting to stack up in the aisles around here.  According to Marketwatch:

Existing home sales fell 2.6% in April to 5.99 million units on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, the slowest sales pace in four years, the National Association of Realtors said. The fall in April sales was larger than expected. Economists had forecast that sales would dip a slight 0.2% to 6.11 million units. On a year-on-year basis, existing home sales were down 10.7%. The median national sales price was down 0.8% year on year to $220,900 in April. Inventories of unsold homes rose 10.4% to 4.20 million, a 8.4 month supply, the highest in 15 years.

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It’s Op-Ed Friday, and here’s your chance to meet Ted Truitt, real estate’s sleaziest realtor.  At least he would be, if he weren’t the creation of the Virginia Association of Realtors.  You really ought to watch the video and take the Tedst.  [When you take the Tedst, Ted gives his approval for the slimy answers, or gets slimed for the ethical ones.]
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