By Catherine Reagor | The Arizona Republic
Early in the housing crisis, financial experts estimated it might take up to seven years for people who lost a home through a foreclosure or short sale to qualify for a mortgage to buy again.
Thousands of new Phoenix-area homeowners are proving the experts wrong. These “boomerang buyers” — so called by real-estate insiders because they were out of the market and have now come back — have returned as a major market force much earlier than expected. Many buyers are qualifying for a new loan only a few years after defaulting on their last mortgage.
Boomerang buyers are expected to account for almost one in every five home sales in metro Phoenix this year, according to a national housing analyst. That’s double the projected U.S. rate.
The boomerang phenomenon is being driven by several factors. Many former owners face rising rents, and now that their finances and the housing economy are more stable, they want to own again. And many of these tens of thousands of metro Phoenix families who are renting are attractive to mortgage backers and some lenders again because they have rebuilt their credit and because any purchases they make add strength to the real-estate recovery.
“Probably 25 to 30 percent of the borrowers calling us now have had a short sale or foreclosure in their past,” said Mike Metz, managing director of Scottsdale-based Sun State Home Loans.
