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The foreclosed properties weren't always in ready-to-impress condition, as this ill-maintained swimming pool attests. Agents touted fixer-upper opportunities.
Christie Smythe / Arizona Daily Star
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Business

Foreclosure tour

Real Estate by Christie Smythe: Looking for a home bargain by bus

Real Estate by Christie Smythe
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.04.2008
This might not be the kind of trip local tourism officials will brag about.
But if you're looking for a deal amid a down real estate market — or you're just interested in viewing the boom's ugly aftermath — now you can take a bus tour of Tucson's foreclosed properties.
Prompted by media reports of similar tours across the country, agents from The Pepper Group Diversified Real Estate Co. decided to start their own "Foreclosure Home Tour," which they plan to run semi- regularly on weekends.
The number of properties to choose from is growing. Earlier this year, research firm RealtyTrac reported that the number of foreclosure filings in the Tucson market rose 75 percent last year, to 7,372.
The agents said they think the bus tour will help uncork pent-up demand and stimulate the market.
"There are people sitting on the sidelines, waiting for someone to tell them it's time to buy," said Gary Andros, a Pepper Group agent. "It's embarrassing to buy something that's overpriced."
On Saturday, the inaugural tour left from the parking lot of a North Side Starbucks coffeehouse, bound for repossessed homes throughout the Northwest Side. Here's what it was like to ride the foreclosure bus:
The buyers
Pepper Group agent Rob Curcio said more than 100 people initially showed interest in the tour, but only a handful turned out for Saturday's trip. They included Jason Spath and Stacey Hammond, a couple looking for an investment property; Jane Mack, who recently relocated from Vail, Colo.; and self-described snowbirds Dave and Mimi Greene, who were looking for a winter home to share with their daughter.
Spath and Hammond, who live in Green Valley, said they've looked at more than 60 houses in the past two months. They were excited about the prospect of finding a deal.
"All of our spare time is looking at houses," Spath said.
The tour
Stops on the first trip included a graffiti-scarred home near North La Cañada Drive and West River Road, an upscale house in the Dove Mountain development and a family home near a park in Black Horse Ranch.
"That one bothered me," Andros said about the family house, which had bright pink and blue children's rooms. It was "a little too close to home," he said.
For the most part, though, the mood was light as the buyers visited the homes, which were all vacant. The Pepper Group agents said they were focusing on homes that had been taken back by lenders, not those in the process of foreclosure. Getting all the facts on a home before it's been repossessed can be "a nightmare," Curcio said. Casual foreclosure buyers are better off with lender-owned properties, he said.
Most of the houses on the trip were in newer subdivisions. They often were surrounded by several other houses with "for sale" signs out front. At one stop, the buyers were able to walk from one foreclosed home to another on the same street.
Some were far from pristine-looking. Two had swampy pools. Some had dirty walls and carpets. In one house, a telephone jack appeared to have been ripped from the wall.
"The upside to this house is you get to choose your own appliances, because the sellers took them with them when they left," Curcio joked at one house.
The prices, in some cases, had been reduced, but there were no giveaway deals on the tour. Listing prices ranged from $189,900 for the graffiti-marked home to $394,500 for the Dove Mountain minimansion.
Curcio advised the buyers that lenders might be more amenable to dropping prices, depending on how long the homes sat on the market.
When the tour came to an end, at least one couple of buyers, the Greenes, said they wanted to take a closer look at one house they had seen.
Other buyers said they simply appreciated the chance to get a look at the properties, which might be more difficult to find on their own.
"It's kind of nice — you don't have to drive around," Spath said.
● Christie Smythe covers real estate for the Star and writes a weekly column on the industry. Send news about commercial and residential real estate to her at Business, Arizona Daily Star, P.O. Box 26807, Tucson, AZ 85726; fax to 573-4144; or e-mail to csmythe@azstarnet.com.
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