Ugly House Photos

Houses for sale are promoted on hundreds of websites for thousands of buyers to view on the public domain.  Most homes only get one chance to impress buyers.

Will buyers be impressed by this real estate promotional photo of a band playing in the house?

Will buyers be impressed by the albino rat in a cage with a sailboat on top?

If there’s an earthquake, someone gets konked in the head.

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Ugly kitchen with ugly wall A/C unit hole and ugly flooring.  Think that one light is enough to brighten up the entire kitchen?

Ugly drapes and ugly black tile floor.  And outdated brass & glass light.

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Buyers don’t want to see fireplaces.  They’d rather see baby equipment, right?

Is the house the focal point of this photo?

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The sellers of this Glendale, Arizona home are including a piano in the sale.  This is a room addition they built.

Lots of gopher holes in the back yard?

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Converting carports or garages into living space is usually a disaster:  poor insulation, poor heating and cooling, grading issues, electric issues, zoning violations, lack of proper city permits, etc.

Here we have a one-car garage converted to a bedroom.  The owners were nice enough to leave the garage door support racks intact.  Sure to impress buyers.

This home went into foreclosure and suffered extensive damage to the hallway.

The kitchen was stripped clean of cabinets and appliances and then damaged further.

Parts of the heater were stolen.

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Two bottles of liquor and three prescription bottles on the dresser.  And some handi-wipes.  Plus other clutter.  Box of popcorn for watching movies in bed.

Lots of stuff on the walls of the other bedroom.

You can work off the calories right after you eat.

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Real Estate Statistics - June 29, 2009 update:

Bank-Owned Active Listings: There are only 4,582 active bank-owned foreclosure listings in all of the Phoenix metro area, up 17 from last week.  Buyers are absorbing the new foreclosure listings.  There is less than a one-month’s supply of foreclosure listings now in the Phoenix metro area.

Pending sales (properties currently under contract):
Currently, there are 13,549 pending sales in the Phoenix metro area plus an additional 5,479 contingency sales (shaky contracts).  Pending sales reached a high for the year on Friday May 15th at 14,374, which is the highest number of currently pending sales ever on record.  When you add the contingency contracts to the pending contracts, we had 19,354 properties under contract at one time on Friday, June 25th, the highest amount on record!  The total number of properties under contract today is 19,028.  Expect this number to drop significantly next week as the final two days on June will be heavy sales days.

Inventory continues to decline.  There are currently 32,533 active listings in MLS as of June 29, 2009, down 374 from last week.  For comparison, the highest number of active listings in 2009 was 52,685 on January 14th.  That’s over 37 percent drop in inventory in 5 months!  Over 20,000 fewer properties in 5 months.  This has resulted in multiple offers for lower priced listings.  We are in a seller’s market in the under-$250,000 price range.

Sales:
The number of contingency sales (shaky contracts) continues to climb and climb (currently 5,479, up from only 700 in early January and up 60 since last week), but they have not converted to actual sales.  Most of these contingency sales are short sale listings where buyers put in offers and then wait and wait and wait for the banks to decide yes or no.  It’s so bad that on Friday, June 26th, only 0.3% of the contingency contracts actually sold, whereas 2.3% of the pending contracts actually sold.

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Let’s look at Phoenix, Arizona specifically.

For the city of Phoenix only, as of June 29, 2009.  Numbers are based on the orange 90-day lines. However, check out the black lines (7-day trends).  The Phoenix real estate market has shifted to a seller’s market.

Median sales price for Phoenix properties: $185,908 (up $2,577 in the past week). The median sales price has increased twelve times in the past thirteen weeks.

Inventory of properties for sale in Phoenix: 7,011 (down 194 in the last week).

Median price per square foot for Phoenix properties: $106/sqft, no change in the last week for an increase in 8 of the past 10 weeks.

Average days on market for Phoenix properties: The average number of days on market refers to active listings, not sold properties.  Active listings are averaging 186 days on the market.

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Actual photo used to promote a Phoenix home, and it’s the main photo.  The caption reads, “Dream home.”  Looks magical.

Buyers will be in for a big surprise when they realize the home looks like this.  The seller added a photo from Google Street Maps to the listing.  It was too hot to go outside and take a real photo?

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Unique window coverings were used in this Phoenix fixer-upper home.

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Family room with red and pink paint.  Through the doorway, we see purple criss-cross paint in the kitchen.

The purple contrasts nicely with the bright yellow cabinet paint.

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