How To Avoid Taking A "Bubble Bath"

The Scottsdale Arizona Republic, reports on Scottsdale real estate broker Robert Long seminar titled "Understanding Bubbles and Busts", which talks about how homeowners can avoid a bubble bath, meaning losing their house to foreclosure.

Long said that the Valley housing market has an inventory of about 42,000 resale homes in April, nearly five times as many as the previous April. What's worse is that about a third of these homes are vacant, noting that investors are more likely to slash their sales price than someone who is living in their home and does not have to move.

RL Brown in his latest Phoenix Housing Market Letter notes that consumers cancelled contracts for new homes because they cannot sell their present homes in a "faltering resale market".

The big question Long talks about in his seminar is how low will prices go. He also goes over how to avoid foreclosure. Realty Trac reports that about 6,200 Arizona homes went into foreclosure in the first quarter of 2006, up 6 percent from the same period a year ago. Nationally, foreclosures were up 72 percent year-over-year in the first quarter. More...