Gilbert Home Auction

Looking for a good deal?  Not interested in the outskirts of Maricopa, Buckeye, Surprise, or Queen Creek?  Consider Gilbert!  Stillbrooke builders have thrown in the towel at their Higley Park Villages community and have handed over the 17 already-built homes over to a company to auction them off to the public at a steep discount.  What type of discount you ask?  How about $89,000 opening bid for a house that was once valued at $250,000?  The smallest home (1,550 square feet) in the Higley Park Villages going to auction starting out at $69,000 (allegedly once $236,000).  The largest home (2,302 square feet) will start bidding at $109,000 (allegedly once valued at $301,000).  Higley Park Villages is a neighborhood near the crossroads of Ray and Higley!

If you’d like to see pictures, prices and floorplans of the 17 homes being auctioned, let me know and I’ll get you the information.

The Auction will be held at the Sheraton Wild Horse Resort and Spa in Chandler on Saturday, April 19th only.  You must inspect properties prior to that date.  If you’d like more details about this action, feel welcome to email me at Becky@BeckyWyattOnline.com or call me at 480-383-9209. I plan on going to observe – I’d love some company!

Wanna Investment?

Builders resort to selling homes at auctions
Opening bid for a $349,900 home: $190,000

Rebekah L. Sanders
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 22, 2008 12:00 AM

Home builders in Arizona, whose lavish incentives haven’t attracted buyers in the slumping market, are turning to the auction block as a last resort to sell empty houses. Scottsdale-based Cachet Homes is auctioning 28 of its luxury homes on Sunday in the West Valley, some once priced at more than $750,000. Bids start at about half of the homes’ original prices. Most properties will have no minimum reserve. The developer is following a national trend of builders’ letting home buyers set their own prices. The sale is the first live auction in Maricopa County by a home builder, said Diane Byrne, Cachet Homes vice president of marketing. Online auctions and sales of foreclosed or individual homeowner properties also are gaining traction, she said….

…In Arizona and nationally, home builders are faced with a glut of unsold homes and canceled contracts, as well as less traffic and fewer offers at their developments. Potential customers are fighting suddenly stiffer credit hurdles and often the challenge of selling their existing homes.  Cachet has faced similar problems with its homes at Verrado, a DMB master-planned community in Buckeye. “We’re tired of being landlords; we’d rather be builders,” Byrne said. Recent marketing strategies, such as promising two-year Lexus leases with home sales last fall, failed to unload enough inventory, she said. “We would like to see those homes filled up with families,” Byrne said.

Such low prices show how eager the developer is to get homes off its hands, said RL Brown, publisher of the Phoenix Housing Market Letter.
“Not only is it a cost drag every month to keep (inventory) on hand and fresh,” he said, “as long as a builder has inventory, his lenders are likely not going to allow him to build more houses.”  Similar new-home auctions have taken place in Florida, California and Colorado, said Rhett Winchell, president of the Kennedy Wilson Auction Group, which is conducting Sunday’s sale.  “Most sellers don’t think about auction-marketing programs when the market is hot,” he said.  But when the market is slow and previous incentives haven’t worked, sellers rely on auctions to get rid of one to two years’ worth of homes in a day, Winchell said.

In Cachet Homes’ case, about $21 million in property will be on the auction block. “There has been a tremendous amount of interest in the auction,” Winchell said, declining to give information on the number of registrants. However, current Cachet Homes property owners visiting the auction office Thursday said they had paid “royally” a year ago to live in Verrado and were concerned about the auction’s low starting bids.

Cachet is offering 15 townhomes and 13 single-family homes at Verrado, as well as 16 condos at Flagstaff Ranch in Flagstaff. The prices just cover Cachet’s costs to build, Byrne said. The cheapest in the Verrado collection is a 1,975-square-foot townhome with three bedrooms and two baths starting at $190,000. Original price tag: $349,900.  The highest-priced house, at almost 5,000 square feet, features four bedrooms, a game room and 3.5 baths. It’s going for $375,000, a markdown of 55 percent.

Realtor James Lee of Jess and Associates in Phoenix said he is taking a client to the auction “looking for her dream retirement home.”
The minimum bids starting “really, really low” caught his client’s attention, he said. “She really likes the neighborhood. She wants something newer than her home in Avondale. And her husband likes to golf.” Cachet Homes’ properties have access to Verrado’s Raven Golf Course, plus features such as granite countertops, courtyards, pools and views of the White Tank Mountains. Despite current residents’ worries about pricing, marketing agents said sales could reach original listing prices with enough competition among bidders. Brown said the strategy could create a “mini-market frenzy,” driving up prices through bidding even better than other methods of sale. “If this auction has success,” he said, “you’re going to see auctions galore.”

Interested in attending an auction like this? Call or email me and I’ll get you more information.  – Becky 480-393-9209 or Becky@BeckyWyattOnline.com

Deal of the Week!

Each week as I’m out looking at property I keep my eye out for smokin’ deals.  This week I’ve found one.  This deal considers the very valid old saying “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.”  While builders typically have the best deals right now as they try to push inventory off their books in time for 2008, often the deal is tainted by a crumby “outskirts” location. Similar to a car dealership, builders are desperately trying to move product.  This week’s deal is in a community in South Gilbert – but conveniently located right near the new San Tan 202 Freeway.  It is near TONS of shopping and the new San Tan Village mall. 

This home is a brand new builder spec.  A “spec” home is simply a pre-built home where you don’t get much choice on the upgrades or options.  It’s built. Ready to go.  Begging for new owners.  The begging goes like this…

  

Hi, I want to be your new home.

• I am a popular floor plan with 3,912 square feet
• I have 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms
• I am on a huge private lot (13,500 sqft)
• I have stainless appliances, double ovens, gas cooktop
• I have granite countertops and crown moulding
• I have beautiful cherry cabinets with decorative moulding
• I have pavers in the driveway to your 3 gar garage
• I am in a neighborhood where all the homes look really nice
• I have an RV gate and Home Theatre package
• I was priced at $628,625 but now am only $463,625 ($165,000 off)

So, lets review. Almost 4,000 square feet of home, NEW, on a BIG LOT, in a NICE neighborhood for $463,625. That’s $118 per square foot – amazing price for Gilbert.  There is another spec in this neighborhood that was $109 per square foot.  But since I have very strict criteria for a Deal of the Week, that house didn’t make it because the floor plan was dumb.  If you’d like to see the floor-plan or pictures of this Deal of the Week email me at Becky@BeckyWyattOnline.com and mention “Deal of the Week in Gilbert posted Nov. 15th”.