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Category: Investment (page 5 of 20)

March 24, 2009

By applying CDSs to CDOs, did AIG go MIA? Or could the SEC, the OTS and one unhired CFO have kept it from turning up DOA?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A totally killer run down of the Wall Street mess from — you’ll never guess it — Rolling Stone magazine:

There are plenty of people who have noticed, in recent years, that when they lost their homes to foreclosure or were forced into bankruptcy because of crippling credit-card debt, no one in the government was there to rescue them. But when Goldman Sachs — a company whose average employee still made more than $350,000 last year, even in the midst of a depression — was suddenly faced with the possibility of losing money on the unregulated insurance deals it bought for its insane housing bets, the government was there in an instant to patch the hole. That’s the essence of the bailout: rich bankers bailing out rich bankers, using the taxpayers’ credit card.

The people who have spent their lives cloistered in this Wall Street community aren’t much for sharing information with the great unwashed. Because all of this shit is complicated, because most of us mortals don’t know what the hell LIBOR is or how a REIT works or how to use the word “zero coupon bond” in a sentence without sounding stupid — well, then, the people who do speak this idiotic language cannot under any circumstances be bothered to explain it to us and instead spend a lot of time rolling their eyes and asking us to trust them.

That roll of the eyes is a key part of the psychology of Paulsonism. The state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize “toxic” risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage Read more

March 10, 2009

Kicking the CAMELS Habit: Is Your Bank “Safe and Sound”?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

The FDIC developed an acroynm for the composite ratios it runs to “rate” the financial health of its member banking concerns.   An index, ranging from one to five is calculated and the FDIC premium charged to the institution is commensurate with its CAMELS rating.  “CAMELS” stands for:

  • Capital Adequacy
  • Asset Quality
  • Management
  • Earnings
  • Liquidity
  • Sensitivity

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco explains the CAMELS ratings and the highly-sensitive nature of the findings:

All exam materials are highly confidential, including the CAMELS. A bank’s CAMELS rating is directly known only by the bank’s senior management and the appropriate supervisory staff. CAMELS ratings are never released by supervisory agencies, even on a lagged basis. While exam results are confidential, the public may infer such supervisory information on bank conditions based on subsequent bank actions or specific disclosures. Overall, the private supervisory information gathered during a bank exam is not disclosed to the public by supervisors, although studies show that it does filter into the financial markets.

The average depositor might freak out if he discovered her bank had a 4 or 5 CAMELS rating and withdraw her deposits. How can a depositor do her homework if  the  bank can’t tell you its CAMELS rating ?   The good folks at BankRate.com have developed a similar system, loosely based on the CAMELS litmus test.  Here is how they describe their “Safe and Sound” ratings system:

Bankrate’s Safe & Sound ratings are comparisons to both industry peer norms and standards. In a very small number of instances, operating strategies that differ from industry norms lead to ratings that are not truly reflective of an institution’s financial condition. A Safe & Sound rating of one or two stars does not suggest that Read more

March 6, 2009

The Subprime Bank of America

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Remember those impetuous, ne’er do well subprime borrowers and those greedy subprime lenders?  Writing about them is sooo… 2007 but I’m happy to report that both greed and reckless abandon are alive and well today….

…at Bank of America.

Remember Ken Lewis?  He’s that sober-faced, bespectacled CEO of the Charlotte-based behemoth that started out as North Carolina National Bank and the Bank of Italy in San Francisco.  Ken has presided over Bank of America since 2001.  Since then, he’s been binging on banks like a subprime borrower stripped equity out of the old ranch:  He bought Fleet Bank in 2004, MBNA in 2005, and ABN-AMRO, LaSalle Bank, and US Trust Company in 2007.

That wasn’t enough.  Like a subprime borrower addicted to Vegas, strippers, and shiny new Hummers,  he was having too much fun to see the market turn.  What did Ken do while the house of cards was a-tumblin’?

He bought Countrywide Financial, America’s largest mortgage originator.

Still, that wasn’t enough.  Like a crack-addict jonesin’ for a last hit on the pipe, Ken absorbed America’s largest securities brokerage, Merrill Lynch.  Just like the crack addict who spent his welfare check on that last hit, Ken took money from the government to cure his fix for power.

Wall Street doesn’t like what Ken’s done.  Since the bailout binge, BAC has dropped from $37 to about three bucks as it became America’s largest subprime lender/servicer (Countrywide originated a boatload of subprime, option ARMs, and Alt-A paper while Merrill’s First Franklin was in the top three of subprime lenders).  A guy that eschewed the whole “subprime” lending market jumped into the deep end, drunk with power.

Now, it’s not just Wall Street that’s calling for Ken’s head.  It seems that the unions’ pension fund managers are pissed off, too:

CtW Investment Group, which said its affiliated funds own 116 million Bank of America shares, faulted Lewis for not backing out of the merger or revealing Merrill’s losses in a timely manner, and letting Merrill pay $3.6 billion in executive bonuses just before the merger closed.

It said Lewis’ actions have contributed to a 90 percent drop in Bank of America’s share price Read more

March 1, 2009

Stimulating Ideas

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

I’m just spitballing here but I think two simple (and temporary) actions could stimulate the economy and save the auto industry:

1-Suspend the payroll tax for a period of time. (not my idea but I like it)

2- allow a one-time, tax and penalty-free withdrawal, up to $25,000, from 401-k plans, for the purchase of a new vehicle , until December 31, 2009 (my crazy idea)

COMMENTARY: The payroll tax supports a bankrupt system; social security.  The faster we all accept that fact, the better.  Let’s take what’s left in the plan, commit the balance to everyone over 60, and stop the insanity.  Most anyone under 45 hasn’t expected to receive social security entitlements for ten years, now.

Allowing a one-time 401-k plan withdrawal will certainly “mortgage our future” but we’re doing that already.  The Industrious Eileens will invest in the automakers (through their 401-k)  and the Spendthrifty Sams will jump at the chance to buy a new car.  At least the individuals will be deciding what to do with THEIR money.

February 28, 2009

The federal government’s housing casino will never play fair as long as there are votes to be bought by cheating

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). Since I wrote this on Tuesday, events have overtaken some details, but it remains that few if any borrowers in the Phoenix area will be able to renegotiate or modify their loans under the Obama plan. Everyone who used to have home equity will still get to bear their losses unassisted, however.

 
The federal government’s housing casino will never play fair as long as there are votes to be bought by cheating

To qualify for a renegotiated mortgage under the plan President Obama announced last week, your new loan can be as much as 105% of your old loan — which sounds to me like curing alcoholism with a good stiff drink.

But the people who are in the worst trouble on their loans bought with 100% financing. Even if there had been no decline in values, they probably could not refinance at 105%, not without bringing cash to cover the closing costs.

But, of course, the typical home in the West Valley is down 50% from its peak value in December of 2005.

Suppose you bought a new home for Christmas 2005, paying $275,000. If you get everything just right, you might be able to sell it today for $135,000. You still owe $275,000, but you can refinance your note at only $141,750 under the Obama plan.

Something’s going to have to give.

But what about the people who were move-up buyers in 2005? They may have put 50% down, which means they’ve lost all their equity, but they probably can’t lay claim on a hardship refinancing. What about the people who paid all-cash? Now we’re talking about people who have actually lost real money — their own money.

Meanwhile, many of the people who end up qualifying for restructuring could easily continue to pay on their notes. We all of us pay on our car loans, even though a car loses half its value when you drive it off the lot.

But we don’t think of our cars, clothing, furniture or appliances as investments. By mucking around in the real estate market, the federal government Read more

February 24, 2009

Sorry Europe. Our President Might Just “Cowboy Up”

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Bank of America is getting slaughtered by short sellers.  The stock has plummeted to under 10% of its March, 2008 value.  Of course, a few things happened on the way to the slaughterhouse:

  • The bought Countrywide, America’s largest mortgage originator.
  • They bought Merrill Lynch, America’s largest retail securities firm.

Ken Lewis took on a lot of crap on the road to ubiquity.  2009 promises to be more bad news for the financial supermarket as  Countrywide option ARMs and  subprime loans, originated in 2007 by Merrill Lynch unit First Franklin, become wallpaper.

Comrades Obama and Geithner will surely nationalize the Company, to better reflect its name, right?

“Not so fast” says Jason Schwartz of Seeking Alpha.  Just because Obama admitted to sharing his toys in Kindergarten, that doesn’t necessarily make him a died-in-the-wool Marxist.  Schwartz chalks the whole thing up to wishful thinking by our European cousins:

The market is running wild on some hyped up article written in the Financial Times that claims Obama is considering nationalizing the banks. If you actually read the article you’ll notice the anti-American sentiment at the very beginning when they say that ‘nationalization has long been regarded in the U.S. as a folly of Europeans…’ Ok, I get it, Europe has been right all along. Whatever. Obama’s true feelings on nationalization came out in his ABC interview after Geither’s banking speech when he laughed out loud and said, “Sweden had like five banks. We’ve got thousands of banks…managing and overseeing anything of that scale…wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country.”

Source documents suggest that Schwartz might be as credible as our resident “tin foil hat” theorist:

Long regarded in the US as a folly of Europeans, nationalisation is gaining rapid acceptance among Washington opinion-formers – and not just with Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman. Perhaps stranger still, many of those talking about nationalising banks are Republicans.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for South Carolina, says that many of his colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agree with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”.

“Nationalisation” sounds a whole lot more “civilized” than Read more

January 9, 2009

Silver Lining of Real Estate Market Correction Hiding In Plain Sight

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Gonna be down and dirty today with a strategy real estate investors aren’t using nearly as much as they should. I wrote a post on the subject on my own turf, but thought it important and valuable enough to give it some visibility here. The results this strategy can potentially produce are, in my experience, sometimes pivotal in getting retirement goals back on track, or even more dramatically, raising them from the dead.

So many real estate investors own many properties. They’re located in different areas. sometimes different parts of the country. Some were acquired long ago, some, not so long ago. Some in areas blessed with ungodly appreciation — some that dropped like the anchor on the USS Ronald Reagan 20 minutes after escrow closed.

Earlier this week I spoke to an investor wanting to know how to get out from under some losing income properties. They were worth less than he paid for them, but there was still some equity there if he were to sell them. Further questioning revealed his portfolio also had some long term winners that had increased in value impressively over the years, even after nearly four years of the current brutal market correction.

This is one of those silver lining strategies that should really be looked at as the perfect silver lining storm.

Told this investor he should sell ’em all this year, and to get started around 4:30 yesterday afternoon. Now, of course that doesn’t mean everyone should take that route, but the strategy is as follows.

Long term capital losses (held more than a year) offset long term capital gains. Simple as that. If, for example, you own a couple props bought with bad timing, that will produce losses, those losses will offset the gains on your gold medal props. This approach will yield many different very positive results — the escape from capital gains taxes being just one — and sans the use of a tax deferred exchange. How cool is that? The various perks are listed in the linked post. Not all of the cool potential results are listed, as Read more

December 20, 2008

Joe Strummer: My thoughts on the looming crisis

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Joe Strummer” is the pseudonym of a frequent commenter on BloodhoundBlog. He runs a weblog of his own — under a different pseudonym — and leads a life of joy, contemplation and undisturbed privacy under his real name. But no matter how he is denominated, Strummer is an expert in the Austrian School of Economics, a colloquium of great minds who are, alas, the eternally unheeded Cassandras of the decline of Western Capitalism. In this essay, penned yesterday, Strummer shares with us his reflections upon the burgeoning economic crisis:

 
My thoughts on the looming crisis

by Joe Strummer

This is a graph of the nominal value of the assets that the Fed has “owned” over time. Notice the fairly flat, slightly rising line until September/October of 2008.

Two points about this graph. First, the Fed did not get value for the $1.2 trillion it has purchased in “assets” since October. The $1.2 trillion in nominal value is actually nearly worthless. That’s because these “assets” are the mortgage backed securities backed by now- or soon-to-be-broken promises to pay by individual homeowners.

Second, the Fed has merely pumped about 1.2 trillion of dollars into the market place free. In other words, it has taken nothing out of the economy of value. When the government adds currency – what Jim Cramer calls, dropping wads of cash from helicopters – without getting anything in return, it’s called inflation.

Now, $1.2 trillion in new currency is bad, but not nearly as bad as when the Fed loans money to banks at a .5 interest rate. The Fed simply is printing money for any bank that wants to borrow it at .5 percent. Consequently, banks are now borrowing to 1) cover the losses they incurred to make themselves solvent, and 2) to have cash reserves that they can then use when the economy picks up to lend at future, higher interest rates.

All of this inflation hasn’t hit the real economy because banks are hoarding that money to wait for better borrowers or because borrowers simply are hunkered down right now trying to wait out the storm.

When the economy starts Read more

December 20, 2008

Workable real estate deals may require even more creativity

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
Workable real estate deals may require even more creativity

I do a lot of work with buy-and-hold rental home investors, more and more of whom are able to come into Phoenix with all-cash offers. Poor me, I know.

But: I’ve been spending a lot of my time, lately, thinking about “triangle-trade” strategies — old-style funding mechanisms that we were happy to forget all about when money was easy.

So picture a buy-and-hold investor with 100% equity who wants the best deal he can get when he sells his former rental home. Why not do a lease-purchase instead of a straight sale? The investor can help his buyers accumulate a down-payment, perhaps working with them to improve their credit score at the same time. The investor gets a higher purchase price, the buyers get a lower monthly payment, everybody wins.

Or how about selling with a contract-for-deed? There are a lot of people out there with great incomes but lousy credit — more every day. If an investor — or ordinary homeowner — is willing to take on the risk of a carrying back a note, the home can sell now, rather than languishing on the market.

Or if the seller isn’t able to carry the whole mortgage, how about carrying back a second loan? If the seller has the equity, and if that will swing the balance with the buyer’s lender, it can make sense.

San Diego Realtor Don Reedy has come up with his own blast from the past: Parents help their kids get into homes by co-signing on the loan and helping with the payments, then share in the equity on resale.

Single people or single parents or childless couples could do the same sort of thing with a larger home: Go in on the home together as tenants-in-common, using their combined income to qualify for the loan, then paying the mortgage and sharing in the equity on a pro-rated basis.

Buyers are not in short supply, nor are homes available for sale. Creativity could make all the difference, going forward, in putting workable deals Read more

November 23, 2008

The bottom of the Phoenix real estate market may be in sight — but, alas, the end is not near

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
The bottom of the Phoenix real estate market may be in sight — but, alas, the end is not near

When will the Phoenix real estate market finally hit bottom?

Believe it or not, I can answer that question with a high degree of precision: When the number of homes being added to the available inventory each month is generally lower than the number of homes sold each month.

But that’s a sleight of hand, isn’t it? I can’t say which month on the calendar will be the market’s nadir, I can only tell you what kind of market activity to watch for.

So here’s one way of looking at things. A newer suburban tract home in the West Valley is selling for $100 a square foot, on average. Practically speaking, this makes new home building unprofitable. Very few new homes will be built, so that source of new inventory is cut off for now.

Meanwhile, various loan workout programs are depleting the foreclosure pipeline. Where before a house might be offered as a short sale and then as a lender-owned home, now there will be an interregnum for the workout. What had been a gusher of lender-owed homes may slow down to a trickle, at least for the next few years.

Meanwhile, the low prices of currently available lender-owned homes are providing incentives for monied investors to come to Phoenix to snap up bargains. The nationwide economic slowdown might put the brakes on our normal in-migration patterns, but if people do move here, they’re going to be soaking up inventory as well.

So we should see some slowing in newly-listed homes, and we have upticks in demand. Are these enough to stop the general decline in home values in the Phoenix market? Ask me in three months.

But even if they are, we’re very far from being out of trouble. The loan workouts, particularly, may well keep home prices from plummeting. But because they will stretch out what in most cases will be an unavoidable foreclosure process, they will probably keep home prices low for years Read more

November 16, 2008

Can California cultivate anything better than the seeds of its own destruction? Urbanologist Joel Kotkin tallies the state’s ills

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Joel Kotkin on the rise and fall of the Golden State:

Twenty-five years ago, along with another young journalist, I coauthored a book called California, Inc. about our adopted home state. The book described “California’s rise to economic, political, and cultural ascendancy.”

As relative newcomers at the time, we saw California as a place of limitless possibility. And over most of the next two decades, my coauthor, Paul Grabowicz, and I could feel comfortable that we were indeed predicting the future.

But much has changed in recent years. And today our Golden State appears headed, if not for imminent disaster, then toward an unanticipated, maddening, and largely unnecessary mediocrity.

Since 2000, California’s job growth rate— which in the late 1970s surged at many times the national average—has lagged behind the national average by almost 20 percent. Rapid population growth, once synonymous with the state, has slowed dramatically. Most troubling of all, domestic out-migration, about even in 2001, swelled to over 260,000 in 2007 and now surpasses international immigration. Texas has replaced California as the leading growth center for Hispanics.

Out-migration is a key factor, along with a weak economy, for the collapse of the housing market. Simply put, the population growth expected for many areas has not materialized, nor the new jobs that might attract newcomers. In the past year, four of the top six housing markets in terms of price decline have been in California, including Sacramento, San Diego, Riverside, and Los Angeles. The Central Valley towns of Stockton, Merced, and Modesto have all been awarded the dubious honors of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation during the past year.

Even with prices down, many of the most desirable places in California are also among the most unaffordable in the nation. Less than 15 percent of households earning the local median income can afford a home in L.A. or San Francisco. In Santa Barbara, San Diego, Oxnard, Santa Cruz, or San Jose, it’s less than a third. That’s about half the number who can buy in the big Texas or North Carolina markets. Moreover, state officials warned in October that they might have to seek Read more

November 10, 2008

How the new president is going to prolong the housing bust

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
How the new president is going to prolong the housing bust

I’m writing this before the election, so I don’t know who will have won by the time you read this. But here’s something I do know: The forty-fourth president of the United States, whomever is chosen, will prolong the housing bust.

How do I know this? Because both candidates have promised to implement programs that will artificially buttress home prices above their market value. John McCain wants to refinance failing mortgages. Barack Obama wants a freeze on foreclosures. Congress and the fifty state legislatures have ideas of their own.

To make matters worse, lenders are putting a friendlier spin on the foreclosure process with elaborate workout schemes. If you qualify for a loan workout, instead of liquidating the home as a non-performing asset, some lenders will roll your existing loans into a new interest-only loan. You would make small payments for the next two or three years, and only then resume your full obligation.

What’s wrong with all these ideas? They’re simply delaying the inevitable. If you’re not making your payment now, you probably won’t make it after a refinance, after a foreclosure moratorium or after a three-year workout. Some people may find their salvation in these programs, but most of the affected homes are going to end up in the lender-owned inventory — later rather than sooner.

And that’s the problem. Our only way out of this mess is to clear the resale homes pipeline of foreclosure inventory. By delaying eventual foreclosures, we are preventing the real estate market from finding its bottom-dollar price. But we will see renewed appreciation only after the market has absorbed this glut of foreclosed homes.

The good news — for buyers: Homes are going to be selling very near their bottom-dollar price for the next few years. The bad news — for sellers: Homes are going to be selling very near their bottom-dollar price for the next few years.

The alternative is to let markets operate freely — a short, sharp pain followed by a robust recovery. But Read more

October 30, 2008

Credit Default Swaps Are Not The Bad Guys

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

David Shafer is a frequent commenter here on BHB and his insights often make me think.  We do not always agree, but I always listen to what he has to say.  He recently posted an interesting and (typically) well written article entitled Credit Default Swaps; The real financial WMD.  You can imagine from the title his take on these instruments.  Part of the article quotes from a recent 60 Minutes segment on credit default swaps  called The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street which is a hatchet job… I mean fair and balanced investigation for which this particular news show has gained such renown.

I commented on this article to the point that it was obvious I was writing a post, which brings us up to date.  I do not agree with the popular sentiment regarding CDS’s and I definitely do not agree with the simplistic view put out by sources such as 60 Minutes that imply derivatives are nothing more than gambling.  The problem is not with the tool but rather the hand that wields the tool (and no doubt, some of the hands at the helm of the credit default swaps market belonged to real tools, if you know what I mean).

Read this very carefully: Credit Default Swaps serve a very legitimate and important purpose.  Derivatives are a must in the market place and here’s why: they provide a hedge on risk.  The ability to hedge risk is an extremely important aspect of our markets.  Without it equities would be lower, rates would be higher and capital would move more slowly.  Derivatives are NOT some bastardized form of gambling.  The suggestion by 60 Minutes and others that they should be outlawed only reflects their rudimentary understanding of how markets work.

I’ll give you an example using a derivative called options, which were my area of specialty as a floor trader.

ABC company insures the debt of XYZ company, allowing XYZ company to borrow desperately needed funds for expansion, research and other job creating endeavors from a large pension fund that would not otherwise have bought XYZ’s bonds (lent them the money).  Read more

October 27, 2008

Arthur Laffer: “The Age of Prosperity Is Over”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The author of the Laffer Curve in the Wall Street Journal:

When markets are free, asset values are supposed to go up and down, and competition opens up opportunities for profits and losses. Profits and stock appreciation are not rights, but rewards for insight mixed with a willingness to take risk. People who buy homes and the banks who give them mortgages are no different, in principle, than investors in the stock market, commodity speculators or shop owners. Good decisions should be rewarded and bad decisions should be punished. The market does just that with its profits and losses.

No one likes to see people lose their homes when housing prices fall and they can’t afford to pay their mortgages; nor does any one of us enjoy watching banks go belly-up for making subprime loans without enough equity. But the taxpayers had nothing to do with either side of the mortgage transaction. If the house’s value had appreciated, believe you me the overleveraged homeowner and the overly aggressive bank would never have shared their gain with taxpayers. Housing price declines and their consequences are signals to the market to stop building so many houses, pure and simple.

But here’s the rub. Now enter the government and the prospects of a kinder and gentler economy. To alleviate the obvious hardships to both homeowners and banks, the government commits to buy mortgages and inject capital into banks, which on the face of it seems like a very nice thing to do. But unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn’t create anything; it just redistributes. Whenever the government bails someone out of trouble, they always put someone into trouble, plus of course a toll for the troll. Every $100 billion in bailout requires at least $130 billion in taxes, where the $30 billion extra is the cost of getting government involved.

If you don’t believe me, just watch how Congress and Barney Frank run the banks. If you thought they did a bad job running the post office, Amtrak, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the military, just wait till you see what Read more

October 25, 2008

Foreclosure homes are sold “as-is” — but most need only minor restoration to bring them back to fully-livable condition

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
Foreclosure homes are sold “as-is” — but most need only minor restoration to bring them back to fully-livable condition

If we were to have a contest for the Valley’s most-gutted home, judging might take a while.

A significant number of homes for sale in the Phoenix area, especially at the low end of the price spectrum, are in the foreclosure process. Not all of these homes are in rough shape, but a lot of them are. At a minimum, buyers of short-sale or lender-owned homes should anticipate painting the walls and replacing the carpets.

But virtually all foreclosure homes will be sold “as-is.” This means, first, that any defects discovered in the inspection process will be the buyer’s responsibility to repair after close of escrow. But the “as-is” addendum also often implies that there may be serious deferred-maintenance issues.

Still worse, many lender-owned homes will have been looted, either by the former owners on their way out or by burglars. Missing ranges, microwave ovens and dishwashers are common. Air-conditioner compressors and hot-water heaters are also absent from many homes. It is not uncommon to see that all of the ceiling fans or all of the knobs on drawers and cabinets have been removed.

My pick for the most-gutted Valley home? The entire kitchen was gone — even the kitchen sink — and the air-handler had been removed from the attic.

I would not want to refurbish that last home, since there is no telling what else has been taken. But for most lender-owned properties, the cost of bringing the home back to livable condition is fairly low.

A new set of kitchen appliances is maybe $2,500. A brand new air-conditioner compressor is around $4,000. A decent water heater is perhaps $1,200 installed. Paint, carpet and tile in the high-traffic areas should run $5,000 for a typical suburban home, less if you do the work yourself.

There definitely are homes to avoid in this market, but there are many, many others that are selling for very low prices. These properties need only very minor restoration efforts to bring Read more

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