Latest on Anti-Deficiency

You might recall that I wrote about anti-deficiency a couple months ago.

It is a dry topic, but incredibly important to the market in Arizona. Had the law stuck, we would have seen a huge disruption in the sale of homes through the end of the year. Well, here’s the latest.

The House of Representatives passed SB 1004, the anti-deficiency fix, on November 23rd in a special session with a vote of 53-0. SB 1004 included the repeal and replacement of ARS§ 33-814 essentially returning the statute to its original status prior to the passage of SB 1271. With this fix, Arizona will continue to operate as a deed of trust state with the protections that have been in existence since 1971.

SB 1004 did pass both the Arizona State Senate and House of Representatives with an emergency clause, and it will go into effect upon Governor Brewer’s signature.

The Arizona Association of Realtors promises to continue to work on language to address “speculative builders” in the upcoming session in order to resolve this issue entirely.

Of course, it begs the question of where they were when all of this originally happened!