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Long Realty plans to bust Tucson housing market 'myths'

ellasilveira — Sat, 24 May 2008 23:17:44 CDT

Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.14.2008

If you think the market is a "disaster," Long Realty representatives want to set you straight.
Playing on the name of the Discovery Channel show MythBusters — where urban legends are often debunked by exploding things or hurling projectiles — Long Realty representatives are planning a public information seminar called "MythBusters: Designed to Bust the Myth of Buying and Selling a Home in Tucson."

The event will be from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Tucson Association of Realtors, 2445 N. Tucson Blvd. The session, which is free, will feature presentations by real estate experts, including Long Cos. CEO Rosey Koberlein, real-estate related vendors, door prizes and light refreshments.

"We're just trying to get some factual information out there to help with consumer confidence," said Linda Moore, manager of Long's East River Road and North Cambell Ave. office. "The Tucson real estate market is really not a disaster right now," she said.
Some of the beliefs the real estate representatives will discount are "that the real estate market is in a crisis" and "that there's a credit crisis ... and that houses aren't selling," Moore said.
Read more on this story and local real estate in tomorrow's Star

Buffett sees "long, deep" U.S. recession

ellasilveira — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:17:55 CDT

Sat May 24, 7:30 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States is already in a recession and it will be longer as well as deeper than many people expect, U.S. investor Warren Buffett said in an interview published in German magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday.

He said the United States was "already in recession" and added: "Perhaps not in the sense that economists would define it" with two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

"But the people are already feeling the effects," said Buffett, the world's richest man. "It will be deeper and last longer than many think."
But he said that won't stop him from investing in selected companies and said he remained interested in well-managed German family-owned companies.

"If the world were falling apart I'd still invest in companies," he said.
Buffett also renewed his criticism of derivatives trading.

"It's not right that hundreds of thousands of jobs are being eliminated, that entire industrial sectors in the real economy are being wiped out by financial bets even though the sectors are actually in good health."
Buffett complained about the lack of effective controls.

"That's the problem," he said. "You can't steer it, you can't regulate it anymore. You can't get the genie back in the bottle."
(Writing by Erik Kirschbaum; editing by James Jukwey)

Falsified Documents

ellasilveira — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:01:18 CDT

To follow:

News 13 / Foreclosure Hot Spots.

ellasilveira — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:01:38 CDT

Posted By: KOLD News 13 Producer Karla Ronquillo Arizona is one of the worst states when it comes to Americans falling behind on mortgage payments. In the month of April, RealtyTrac found more than 243,000 homes received at least one foreclosure related filing. That number is up from 148,000 and an increase of 65% during April of 2007. The figure is up five percent since March of this year. The research company also found Nevada, California and Florida are among the hardest hit.
One million homes are expected to go into foreclosure for 2008.

Foreclosure Hot Spots Posted: May 14, 2008 07:37 PM CDT KOLD News 13 Anchor Dan Marries There's an old saying, "a man's home is his castle." Not so much anymore for millions of Americans and thousands of Tucsonans. Southern Arizona families are losing their homes at a record pace as foreclosures continue to rock the economy and the numbers continue to skyrocket.
Foreclosures in Pima County were up 241 percent from April 2007 to April of this year. Drive through any neighborhood and you're sure to find a foreclosure sign, "this is the most substantial foreclosure market we've seen in years," says James A. Whitehill a real estate lawyer and certified specialist with Quigley & Whitehill, "it's crossing all economic strata, in all parts of the county."
From million dollar homes in the foothills to starters on the south side, Dina Westermeyer (dinawestermeyer@comcast.net) with Tierra Antigua Realty agrees,"there's no one excluded from the foreclosures. We've got houses from the 70-thousand dollar range all the way up to 2.5 million dollars. They affect everyone."
Take a look at the 85718 foothills area code which includes the ritzy Skyline Bel-Aire Estates. There are currently 131 homes either owned by the bank, being auctioned off, or in the pre-foreclosure status here. That's compared to 87 in a section of the south side near Kennedy Park. On the northwest side, around Ina and Thornydale there are 144 homes. It's even worse on the east side. Two-hundred-eleven homes are listed as pre-foreclosure, auction, and bank owned in a nine square area mile around Broadway and Craycroft. These aren't just dots on a map. Westermeyer says each one represents a family losing their home, their hope, their dreams, "for the person who's going through the foreclosure, it's kind of like you're drowning in a glass of water. You don't know what to do."
There is an emotional toll for those losing their home and for those fighting off foreclosure there is hope, "I was able to make last month's (mortgage payment), not this month, I'm not." Rafael Lopez tells a room full of people at a weekly foreclosure avoidance class. Lopez's story is like many others in our city. He was laid off from his company after working there for 10 years. Although he has a new job his wallet took a hit. Lopez went from making $40,000/year to $27,000/year while his mortgage went up 2400 dollars a year because of an adjustable interest rate, "it is frustrating. I have two kids and of course the wife you have to think about the family and we worked hard to get this house."
It's a similar story for Ricardo Roa and his wife Colleen, "it's a loss of sleep, it's a lot of stress, it's a lot of migraine headaches," Colleen says. Ricardo lost his job for a short period of time but with modest salaries, climbing gas prices and a rising interest rate, they found themselves 4 months behind in house payments, ""our payments were just shy of 500 dollars about four years ago and now we're up to over 700 dollars per month." The stress of a looming foreclosure led Ricardo and Colleen to ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Every Tuesday night ACORN hosts a foreclosure avoidance class where homeowners are paired up with a housing counselor to try and find a solution and that's exactly what Rafael Lopez is looking for; a solution, "all I want is to have a chance to refinance, that's all I want, that's why I'm here."
While foreclosures take their emotional toll on those losing their homes they're also taking a financial hit on their neighbors. As more foreclosure signs go up the value of your home can go down, "overall it's definitely hurting the marketplace, it's bringing down values in a lot of different neighborhoods," says Paul Volpe with Nova Home Loans, "and we're having issues with appraisals coming in under value due to the fact there's been a short sale or foreclosure down the street and that's hurting everybody in the neighborhood." That's a far cry from just a few years ago when homes sold in a matter of minutes to the highest bidder.
Dina Westermeyer with Atigua Realty says the booming market attracted lenders ready to loan to eager buyers, "literally, if you had a social security number you could get a loan." That's when it was a seller's market. Today it's buyer's market; perhaps a thin silver lining to the foreclosure crisis, "real estate is a long term investment," Volpe explains, "eventually the market is going to turn. It's a good time to buy." That is if you have the money and good enough credit to secure a loan.
A lot of Tucsonans may be just a paycheck away from losing their home and dreams but that doesn't mean you have to give up hope. Real Estate Specialist James Whitehill wants people to remember, "there are a number of options available and there are a number of people who are interested in helping them." Like those at ACORN (http://www.acornhousing.org/index.php) a grass roots organization working with lenders to try and keep homeowners in their homes. ACORN's slogan is, "Don't Give Up. Fight Back."
If you're facing foreclosure ACORN encourages you to call its hotline at 520-623-9389 or 866-67-ACORN. The State Bar of Arizona has a listing of certified real estate specialists who can offer help at: http://www.myazbar.org/members/bls/specialistpdfs/estate_list.pdf. And the Pima County Bar Association(http://www.pimacountybar.org) has a lawyer referral program.

Home deal gone sour reflects tough market

ellasilveira — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:47:58 CDT

By Christie Smythe / Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.02.2008

For months, Ellis Herman, an 81-year-old World War II veteran, has fought a losing battle against Long Realty Co.
Armed with poster-board signs, he, his daughter Ella Silveira and 17-year-old granddaughter Aubree Booth, have stood for hours each week near the company's offices, telling anyone who will listen that Long agents led them into a bad property deal. Herman said he was pressured into buying the house over just two weeks last February without having it properly inspected, and using a loan that he couldn't afford.
Long real estate agent Pam Treece said it was Herman's choice to proceed without a home inspection and that she and other agents did all they could after the sale to address Herman's complaints.
On Wednesday, the house was repossessed after a foreclosure auction outside Pima County Superior Court. Herman believes this wouldn't have happened had Treece not pushed him so — something she denies. But Herman might have avoided the predicament altogether by taking basic consumer-protection measures.
The story of Herman's purchase and loss of the house at 328 W. 38th St. demonstrates the misfortunes some people are finding in the aftermath of the real estate boom. Experts said the run-up in real estate prices provided temptations for sellers, agents and mortgage brokers to push buyers into homes and loans they couldn't afford. Herman says that's what happened to him, although experts point out that many buyers caused their own problems either because of their hopes for quick riches or because of ignorance.
Herman is one a growing group of consumers upset over real estate deals gone bad. In addition to picketing, he filed a complaint with the Arizona Attorney General's Office but not with the state Department of Real Estate, which handles such cases.
Last year, real estate misrepresentations made the Federal Trade Commission's list of top consumer complaints, with 9,475 filed by consumers with various government agencies and business associations. Real estate did not appear on the FTC's top complaint lists in 2005 or 2006.
In 2007, the FBI also reported that it was working more than triple the number of mortgage fraud cases it did in 2002. The cases included misrepresentations by loan officers, borrowers, appraisers and other parties.
Buyer's remorse Herman and his daughter say they were not allowed sufficient access to the house before they bought it — a house they later learned had bathroom drains that didn't work, a heater that blew cold air and a stove declared unsafe by the gas company. They also say the loan officer inflated Herman's income on application documents to make the sale go through.
Long agent Treece said her husband — also a Long agent — showed Herman through the house at least once during the inspection period. The mortgage broker has left the state and could not be located.
"We would have never bought this house if we'd known what we know now," Herman said.
But if Herman had been a better consumer, he may not have ended up in the house at all, let alone in foreclosure. He acknowledged that he knew little about property transactions, and didn't understand most of the real estate and loan documents he signed.
He also used an old inspection conducted for a previous potential buyer rather than hiring his own inspector, and raised no major complaints about the property during the inspection period. Sale contracts may be final unless buyers find problems and bring them to the sellers' attention, according to the Arizona Department of Real Estate.
At the height of the real-estate boom, about when Herman bought the house, it wasn't unusual for buyers to be tempted to forgo inspections to make sure they landed deals quickly, or to be pressured out of doing them by sellers, said Brad Tebow, a real estate attorney who teaches at Arizona State University. That had the potential to leave buyers with unpleasant surprises, he said.
"It happens all the time," he said. "If (the sale) didn't happen quickly, you didn't get it." A two-week sale Herman and Silveira, who was disabled by a mild stroke, and Silveira's daughter came to Tucson in 2006 from Fair Oaks, Calif. They lived in an RV park near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base while they looked for a house.
With about $1,800 in monthly income and limited savings, Herman wanted to stick to lower prices. After contacting Treece in January 2007, Herman was shown a roughly 800-square-foot, more than 60-year-old adobe home along West 38th Street, near Interstate 10 and priced at $127,500.
The house had been on the market about five months, and the price was reduced from $130,500, said the listing agent, Susie DeConcini, in an e-mail forwarded by Jerome King, the agents' designated broker. The house had attracted an offer from one other prospective buyer, Katherine Maas, who said she had trouble finding financing because lenders thought the house was overpriced.
Herman signed a purchase contract on Jan. 23, 2007. About two weeks later, the deal closed. The seller, DeConcini's son, Timothy Hagyard, made more than $63,000 on the sale after paying off a mortgage and transaction costs, according to a settlement statement. Signs of problems crop up From the moment he started discussing the house with Treece, Herman said she urged him to buy it quickly and told him it wouldn't last. When Herman asked about getting a home inspection, he said, Treece told him he wouldn't need one. He said Treece immediately referred him to Joe Neal, a loan officer at Pinnacle Mortgage, owned by the now-bankrupt First Magnus Financial Corp. Treece started discussing Herman's loan options with Neal over the phone while Herman was in her office, he said.
After the sale, Herman and Silveira said, they noticed problems with the bathroom drains and the heater. The heater was eventually fixed with help from their real estate agent, but fixing the drains could require jack-hammering the foundation, contractor estimates said. Later, after Herman and Silveira became worried there was a gas leak, a Southwest Gas Corp. inspector shut off their stove because it wasn't vented properly, company spokeswoman Libby Howell said. Sticker shock Herman's mortgage payments, about $920 per month for a fixed-rate loan, were about $100 more than he expected.
When looking through Herman's paperwork, he and Silveira found inconsistencies and missing documents. After contacting Pinnacle Mortgage and Citi Mortgage, the buyer of the loan, they found disclosure documents about the price of the loan left unsigned by Herman. They also tracked down an application document, which was signed, that had inflated income figures for Herman.
Loan officer Neal has left the state, according to former work associates.
Herman said he doesn't remember looking at the document. He said he tried to ask questions about documents, but little was explained to him. Agents: We were trying to help Blaming Long for their difficulties, Herman and Silveira have picketed, distributed fliers and created a Web site accusing the company of misdeeds. King, the designated broker, said he was "surprised and disappointed" by Herman and Silveira's tactics. He said Treece simply tried to help Herman and his family, who were living in a camper when they approached her, looking for a house.
Treece said the market was still strong then, and the house "met their lifestyle." She said she suggested Herman use an older inspection report only because he wanted to save money.
She and DeConcini said they didn't know of the problems Herman and Silveira said they found. Hagyard, the previous owner, declined to comment. King, the designated broker, said Treece did her part to help Herman by having Hagyard pay $2,700 in closing costs for Herman along with a premium for a home warranty plan.
After the sale, Treece said she helped pay for service calls for Herman's heater. King also stayed in contact with Herman and Silveira for months afterward, and at one time offered $3,500 to Herman for repairs, much of it coming from Treece and DeConcini.
"Even though we don't have liability in our mind, we're sympathetic," King said. "We really want to help."
The Arizona Department of Real Estate Web site lists no complaints against either agent involved in the deal.
Now that the house has been repossessed, Herman and Silveira say they're not sure where they'll live.
Herman said Treece should have done a better job looking out for his interests, and Neal shouldn't have approved a loan that was too expensive for him.
"If I was guilty of anything, I'm guilty and ignorant, or whatever you want to call it, of trusting people," Herman said.
See a video of Ellis Herman and his daughter describing the problems they ran into after moving into their now-foreclosed house. **Editor's note: If you sent an e-mail to reporter Christie Smythe between Sunday night and Monday morning, please resend. She was unable to receive her e-mails during that time. Thank you. ● Contact reporter Christie Smythe at 434-4083 or csmythe@azstarnet.com. .uasportsnewsletter { margin:5px 0 5px 0; } .subscribeinstory { margin-top:2px; padding: 3px; border:1px solid #cccccc; width:228px; text-align:center; float: left; } .subscribeinstory a { font-weight:bold; color:#C30; }