Home sellers warp time

Sometime this weekend, while you're shuttling the kids to soccer tournaments or picking up milk at the grocery store, several dozen of your neighbors will go back in time nearly 10 years.

There, they'll see a 3,128-square-foot Christopher Homes house in Summerlin's upscale Country Rose Estates on sale for its circa 2000 price of $370,000.

So how, you want to know, will people revisit this past era? Through a time machine? Virtual reality? A tear in the fabric of a parallel universe?

Nope, no fancy physics here: They'll simply hop a ride on a foreclosure bus tour led by Barbara and Marshall Zucker of Prudential Americana Group, Realtors. Such tours have been hot since the fall in distressed housing markets in California, Florida, Michigan and Georgia. Now, they're revving up here.

The Zuckers will roll out their first tours, focusing on Summerlin and southwest Las Vegas, today and Sunday. Prudential Americana Realtors Jennifer Weinberg and Andrew Newcomb guided their inaugural circuit last weekend, also in Summerlin. Other Realtors at Prudential Americana, as well as sales agents at Coldwell Banker Premier Realty, are planning or are already conducting bus rides. Through the tours, Realtors hope to chip away, 10 and 15 properties at a time, at the valley's 7,000-home inventory of foreclosed houses.

"We just think there are a lot of people out there who want to take advantage of the foreclosure market, but they're not sure how to go about it," Barbara Zucker said. "It's an opportunity to take quantities of people and put them in front of a lot of houses at once, and have everyone from Realtors to lenders there to answer their questions."

For Jennifer Weinberg, foreclosure tours aren't only about ginning up sales; they're also about public service.

"It's a great way to stimulate business for us," she said. "But more importantly, I've been a resident here for 30 years, and my house has gone down in value based on (comparable sales prices), too. The only way to recover from this crazy market is to get houses off the books quickly, so we're helping out the community, too."

Here's a how a foreclosure tour works: Realtors pre-screen foreclosed homes, "cherry-picking" 10 to 20 properties in the best condition, Weinberg said. Potential home buyers meet the bus at agents' offices, and spend several hours stopping at each home, checking out the inside and yard. Some tours bring lenders and title-company representatives along to discuss mortgage terms for interested buyers. The tours are free.

In addition to the Christopher home in Summerlin -- which last sold in 2004 for $750,000 -- Zucker's tour will take in a 1,470-square-foot home in Summerlin's Hills listed for $212,000. The most expensive house on the tour will be the Christopher property, Zucker said.

Among the deals offered on Weinberg's tours is a four-bedroom, two-bath home in Summerlin that's been reduced from $500,000 to $320,000.

It's too early to tell whether local foreclosure tours are generating many sales. But Weinberg said at least one prospective buyer on her first tour was poised to sign a contract for a property. Her tours, with 24 seats on each bus, are fully booked in the near term, as are Zucker's. About half the people on Weinberg's want investment properties, while the rest want primary homes.

Cesar Dias, a Realtor in Stockton, Calif., has led foreclosure tours there since September, and though business was slow at first, sales rose toward the end of the year. From September through December, Dias said, he sold nearly 40 homes via the tours.

"The tours are working great," Dias said. "They're bringing home buyers an awareness of how attractive prices have become."

And though they haven't put down cash on a new home yet, people who have taken foreclosure tours in Las Vegas say the bus rides are useful.

Las Vegan Karen Goedderz took Weinberg's Sunday tour with her boyfriend, Karl Fonger, and the couple nearly ended up buying a place.

Goedderz spotted a well-maintained Summerlin home with four bedrooms and nearly 3,000 square feet of space, listed at $320,000. That's down from the $440,000 the home would have commanded two years ago. But Fonger felt the yard was too small for the couple's dogs, so they decided against the purchase.

Goedderz is undaunted. She plans to join more foreclosure tours next weekend because she likes the volume of properties she can see in one afternoon. Plus, with someone else driving, she and Fonger can skip scouring the streets for signs and addresses and instead study surrounding neighborhoods for troublesome indicators such as a big supply of homes for sale.

For Las Vegans Tara and Marty Faber, Weinberg's tour was less an opportunity to buy than a chance to get a reality check. "You hear all kinds of rumors, and we thought it might be a good idea, since it was free, to see if the rumors were true," Tara Faber said. "People say, 'There are all these foreclosures, and they're great deals, but they're in really bad shape.'"

Instead, Faber said, she found "some great deals out there, and they're in a lot better condition than we anticipated." The Fabers, who own a home in southwest Las Vegas, probably will go on future tours but won't buy unless they find the "perfect" floor plan at the best price, Faber said.

Realtors said they'll keep trying for the foreseeable future to get buyers such as the Fabers off the fence and into bank-owned properties.

"The more of these houses we're able to sell, the better it will be for all of us," Zucker said. "It's a win-win for the city, the buyers and the collateral businesses, like lenders and title companies. We're all stroking the same oar. We all have the same goal in mind."

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or (702) 380-4512.