Purchasing a Home in Estrella Mountain Goodyear, AZ

I’m using my new blog to help people who are looking to purchase a home in Arizona and put in a backyard. What to say about the world of foreclosures, banks, and finally realtors?  We started looking for a foreclosure in November of 2010 and finally after making an offer on at least 20 to 30 homes we closed in June 2011.  The first recommendation I have to an out of state home buyer is to find a good realtor.  We started out with a guy which I’m not going to mention his name in the blog that was just too slow.  He was very nice however did not match the demands of my personality.  We flew down to learn about the area and where we wanted a home.  We had a very detailed list of requirements down to the way the home faced the evening sun.  Basically we are very high maintenance and living in Oregon trying to find a home in Arizona was our worst nightmare.  I regretfully had to fire the first realtor because he had absolutely no urgency.  We finally found someone that was amazing.  We outlined all of our requirements and she plugged it into her realtor software which my husband spent most of his time watching and bothering her.  My husband looked at homes day and night emailing her bugging her to go take pictures.  Literally my husband was her full time job and I’m surprised that she did not fire us.  Her name is Rachele Funk   If you live out of state like we do you need someone who is diligent, creative, and owns a camera.  Rachele advised us and made us feel very comfortable about purchasing a $350K home without seeing the inside.  Rachele took tons of photo’s of homes that we wanted to look at.  She moved quickly in preparing offers and talking to the agents or banks.  Given the funny business with the banks and backup offers it was a nightmare.  I could not understand how we would go in at a higher price and then lose the home to someone else at a lower offer.  Then the games with the banks waiting until the last minute and then taking the homes to auction.  I’m not sure but I think the reason for auction is so the government will make up the difference in the loss from the original price to help the banks out.  The problems that we noticed are the homes sit vacant for months at a time and then the pigeons move in.  I will say that the housing market in Arizona is just a mess with the foreclosure and shady things going on.  The banks are just a mess as well.  I contribute my husband’s due diligence on the computer all day everyday and Rachele’s quick response to us finally getting a home.  We wanted a TW Lewis home and even my husband started becoming creative by finding the rental homes and having Rachele approach the builders.  I guess TW Lewis has several rentals because they did not want to take a loss on the homes so they rented them.  That did not work because they still wanted more money than we were willing to give. Apparently they did not get the memo about the foreclosure mess.  We visited once and had decided that we wanted to be in Estrella Mountain on the golf course.  After months and tons of offers we pretty much gave up on the golf course and started finding ourselves desperate to just find a home in Estrella Mountain.  Finally my husband noticed early morning a home that just came back into the portal he called Rachele and she jumped on it with a full offer.  She called Bank of American directly and told them we were prequalified and our first mortgage in Oregon is currently with Bank of American.  She submitted our offer that morning with everything completed.  We were in first place with a full offer package.  We found out that they accepted our offer and had multiple back up offers. The other piece of good information I can give you is to have your financials organized and ready to go.  We had everything in one file in an email format.  Remember they need three years of taxes and your last three employment stubs.  I hope this helps.