Instead of spending several years repairing his credit rating, which he said was marred by two forgotten cell phone bills and identity theft, the 37-year-old real estate agent paid $1,800 to an Internet-based company to bump up his score almost overnight.

Instantcreditbuilders.com, or ICB, helped Estruch boost his score by arranging for him to be added as an authorized user on several credit cards of people with stellar credit who were paid to allow this coattailing. Parents also use this practice when they add their children to their credit cards to help them build solid credit.

The pitch to those who are essentially renting their credit history for pay is seductive: You don’t need to worry about users of this service receiving duplicate copies of your credit cards, account numbers or any of your personal information. It’s essentially free money, they are told.

In the past if a borrower needed a few points extra to qualify for a loan program loan officers would ask them if any of their family members had an account they could get authorized on. Once the borrower is authorized as a user on the account, they do a rapid rescore and 75% of the time the prior history would be attached to the newly authorized user. This company however is taking it to a new level.

After five years of blockbuster home sales, 2006 delivered a reality check for homeowners in Tucson. Sales of single-family homes skidded 33% from 2005, and price appreciation last year dropped to 8%, down from nearly 27% in 2005, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

only 8% appreciation? THE SKY IS FALLING!

“December was a little quiet, and 2006 was definitely a time of adjustment here,” says Martha Briggs, an agent at Long Realty. But last year’s sales figures were on par with the 2000-03 period; they “only look terrible in comparison with 2005.”

What happened to the bubble?

Dave from Barbaralasky.com has some more in depth MLS analysis for the month of December.

• Every active foreclosure investor works a lot more than people working 9-5 jobs.

• Serious foreclosure investors either have large sums of money of their own or have another investor backing them up.

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