Lobo2087 said:
I am not sure where you got your information about Surprise's downhill slide but you are incorrect. Surprise is a wonderful city to live in and I have found our citizens to be among the best to work for.
Some areas there may very well be now... But they sure as hell weren't then. Remember, I'm talking about 2008 / 2009. Roughly 12 years ago. Many areas were badly effected by that crash. Even Verrado. I remember when they had a hard time auctioning off homes there for less than $200K, that before the crash were selling for over $400K.
Surprise was hit harder because you had too many people buying overpriced houses they didn't need, with little to nothing down. Which is what caused the whole mess to begin with. "Creative Financing" that created nothing but problems. These people had the idea of living there for 4 to 5 years, paying on an interest only, "Piggyback Loan", then refinancing before their mortgage ballooned, and pocketing big profits that never came. This all happened because of the bigger idiot theory. With the banks being the bigger idiots, by lending money to people who should have NEVER received it in the first place.
The crash came, and they couldn't refinance because they owed twice as much than the house was worth. So they just walked away. The result was an over abundance of abandoned homes in Surprise that plummeted in value even further, because the banks couldn't sell them. I saw it. As I said, they ended up being auctioned off for literally pennies on the dollar. This brought in a lot of people who never would have been able to move into such a large house. The government didn't help matters by encouraging many of these banks to loan greater amounts to minorities. Notice this didn't happen across the tracks in Sun City West. As always money talks while B.S. walks.
As I also said, Surprise wasn't the only area effected in this manner. Buckeye is still suffering in this regard. Houses there are still cheap in relationship to other areas. Unfinished sub divisions abound. And many homes are hard to sell because of the way the neighborhood transgressed. I used to live near Camelback and 103 rd Ave.
When we bought there in 1997 it was beautiful. When we sold this past September it had deteriorated badly. It took 23 years, but it did. A lot of unkept homes, rentals, litter in the streets, loud music at night, street racing by idiots, graffiti with racial components on walls, etc. I was fortunate, and got an excellent price. But you can bet that isn't going to last.
So don't get your panties all twisted because I included Surprise in this whole cluster "F". It happens. It will happen again. It's the biggest contributing factor why we moved back to Lake Havasu. It's racially stable enough here to where I don't have to gamble with my housing value, on a deteriorating neighborhood. I don't need to be dealing with that kind of crap at this point in my life.
All of my neighbors on my block all left there for the same reason. We all can't be wrong. That entire block was all white when the builder left. I was the last white guy to sell. That whole area of the west side is going to end up like Maryvale. It was nice at one time too. Now the whole place is a crime ridden stink hole.
