Well the experts were in town this past week to tell us what 2009 and 2010 hold in store for us in the Real Estate field in Greater Phoenix.  The bottom line is this...expect continued price declines in 2009, with small (maybe 1 percent) price increases returning in 2010.

There was a summit held on our economy, where it is now, where it is going, and what this all means to the consumer and local businesses.  The Arizona Republic reported on the Real Estate specific portion of this summit.

Centerpoint Towers in Tempe sit unfinished

     Avenue Communities, actually the company they formed to build Centerpoint Condo's in downtown Tempe, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.  The 23 story and 30 story towers sit unfinished in downtown Tempe, due to the bankruptcy of its construction lender, Mortgages Limited.

An alert went out today from the U.S. Government for sellers to watch out for buyers using fake "U.S. Treasury" documents that are now being used to purchase both real estate and autos.  These "fake" documents are known on the street as a Personal Promissory Notes and Private Offset Bonds, and both have the name of Henry Paulsen on the face of both documents.

A client of mine decided that putting their home up for Auction might just be the ticked to selling the home faster in this down market.  There was to be an Auction in Phoenix with hundreds of homes auctioned off to the highest bidder in mid November 2008!  The sales pitch sounded great as they told my client that open houses would now get 10-20 additional people from the auction to look at the home.   We had both heard both positive and negative comments about a Real Estate Auctions in the past.  So what really happened at this auction?

9,000 Foreclosures a day! That is how many homes were lost by families in the U.S. in October.
Arizona, our home state, ranked number two in the nation that month with 17,507 homes foreclosed. 

Phoenix resales were up almost 70 percent in September (from September 2007), but a study from S&P/Case-Shiller shows that the home prices fell over 30% August  2007 to August 2008.  What is going on?