THE NEW
GOLD RUSH
HUFFINGTON
07.21.13
“People say, ‘We need to get prices back
up’... I find myself thinking, ‘Is everyone’s
expectation that we reach 2007, 2008
levels?’ Do we really want that?”
it, she tells clients. It is also unwise to make an offer on a house
sight-unseen.
But once she began searching for
her own home a year ago, her professional prudence found itself tested by the imperatives of purchasing
in a market fueled by speculation.
Time and again, she said, realtors have told her that pushing
the limits is the only way to compete with cash buyers.
“I’ve been in the industry since
1991,” Cervantez. “This market
is crazy.”
After a year of looking, Cervantez recently paid $137,000 for a
modest home in South Phoenix, in
a neighborhood she had sought to
avoid given her fears of crime. She
settled on the area fearing that she
had no alternative: She had made
dozens of failed bids, she said.
Cervantez supplied data on 10
of the most recent offers she made
for The Huffington Post to review.
According to public records,
five of the homes she lost were
purchased by individuals or institutions paying cash, and three of
these indicated the buyer planned
to rent the homes.
Two of these cash buyers were
large institutional investors. Empire Institutional