Arizona Republic: The newspaper created an online searchable calculator to determine home values in Maricopa, County, Arizona. “Click on any ZIP code on the map for statistics about home sales trends, or use the search box below. Our home sales information includes median sales prices for single-family houses in Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe and other Valley of the Sun cities in Maricopa and Pinal counties.”
AZCentral: Alaska has a reality show about ice truckers trying to survive deadly hauls. New York has Donald Trump’s cutthroat competition to be his apprentice. And Georgia has Billy the Exterminator, who battles rodents and alligators.
Soon, Phoenix will be the setting for a new reality show about one of the region’s most competitive and heart-racing activities – bidding on foreclosure homes.
Agents who work at Maricopa County’s foreclosure auctions are in negotiations to appear on the show, which is planned to start airing on the Discovery Channel next year.
Filming for “Betting the House” is expected to begin in the next few weeks.
New York-based Sharp Entertainment, producer of the show, also created “Punkin Chunkin” for the Discovery Channel, “Man vs. Food” for the Travel Channel and “Extreme Couponing” for TLC.
Now, cameras will be filming outside the county courthouse in downtown Phoenix.
ABA Journal: As the housing market continues to slide, the U.S. government is considering a mortgage refinancing plan and other options to help struggling homeowners.
Many homeowners have been unable to refinance because they are underwater on their mortgages or their credit rating is tainted. Specifics of the plan are unclear, but it would allow some homeowners with government-backed mortgages to refinance at today’s lower rates, the New York Times reports. The hope is that the money saved will be spent elsewhere, helping to shore up the economy.
Phoenix Business Journal: New data from Arizona State University show foreclosures are becoming a smaller portion of the total home transactions in the Phoenix area. The report from ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business shows foreclosures represented about 35 percent of the existing home transactions in the Phoenix area in May. That continued a decline from 43 percent in January and February, to 38 percent in March, to 36 percent in April.
AZ Central: When the Legislature passed a law in 2010 attempting to forbid cities from collecting delinquent water bills from landlords with four or fewer rental units, several cities found ways to still hold landlords accountable.
So the Arizona Association of Realtors, the lobbyists behind the bill, went back to the Legislature in the past session and got House Bill 2193 passed.
Tom Farley, CEO and lobbyist for the Realtors association, said the new legislation, which mostly holds whoever lives on the property responsible for water bills, was necessary because some cities did “an end run” around the 2010 legislation.