How Is National Mortgage Settlement $ Being Spent?
September 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Medical Debt Bill Could Aid Real Estate
September 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The Medical Debt Responsibility Act — which would require medical collections to be scrubbed from consumer credit reports within 45 days of payment — could bolster the housing market if passed, given that some consumers have been unable to obtain home loans because their credit scores have suffered due to problems with medical debts even after they have been paid. The Mortgage Bankers Association is among the trade groups that signed a letter in support of the legislation.
Source: "Medical Debt Responsibility Act Enters Critical Phase," National Mortgage Professional (09/04/12)
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Where Foreclosures Are Still the Biggest Problem
September 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The states with the highest percentages of foreclosures are seeing a drop, but distressed sales still remain high. Georgia and Nevada had the biggest bulk of foreclosure sales in the second quarter, RealtyTrac reports.
The greater Seattle area, while having some inventory sold at auction, the percentage of the volume relative to new construction and resale, is relatively small.
The states with the highest percentage of foreclosure sales in the second quarter — in which foreclosure-related sales account for at least one in five sales — were:
- Georgia: 43 percent of all residential sales
- Nevada: 43 percent
- California: 40 percent
- Michigan: 35 percent
- Arizona: 33 percent
- Illinois: 27 percent
- New Hampshire: 24 percent
- Colorado: 22 percent
- Wisconsin: 22 percent
- Minnesota: 22 percent
- Oregon: 21 percent
- Florida: 21 percent
When broken down by city, California metros occupied seven of the top 10 spots for the highest percentage of foreclosure-related sales. Modesto, Calif., had the highest percentage of any metro area in the country, with 57 percent of all residential sales being foreclosures. Other California metro areas with a high percentage of foreclosure sales included: Stockton (54 percent); Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (47 percent), Bakersfield (46 percent), Sacramento (45 percent), Fresno (44 percent), and Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura (39 percent).
Source: RealtyTrac
Buyers Worried They’re Losing Bargaining Power
August 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
While home buyers have been holding a lot of bargaining power in the housing market the last few years, more of them say they are now feeling the market shift against them, according to a new survey.
Seven in 10 home buyers say they’ve faced competition on a home for at least one offer, according to a recent survey of 982 buyers in 19 markets conducted by Redfin. Of those surveyed, 46 percent say now is a good time to purchase a home — that’s down from 56 percent in the first quarter. On the other hand, the number of those who are saying it’s a good time to sell grew by 13 percent in that period. Thirty-two percent now say it’s a good time to sell.
“Many buyers who emerged from hibernation this spring eager to take advantage of low rates and near-bottom prices now seem to have become demoralized by the intense competition for a limited selection of homes for sale,” Redfin said in a public statement about the survey results.
Home buyers may feel more urgency too. The survey found the number of buyers expecting home prices to rise drastically grew — 61 percent say prices will rise compared to 32 percent during the first quarter. However, they are reluctant to get in a multiple-offer situation. Thirty-one percent of those surveyed said that if they faced a multiple-offer situation, they would back off.
Source: “Survey: Buyers Think Market Is Shifting Against Them,” Inman News
Survey: Housing is Part of the American Dream
August 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Americans are getting more optimistic about their financial future, and they believe housing still plays an important part in that, according to a poll of 1,000 to 2,000 people conducted by FTI Strategic Communications.
Sixty-two percent of Americans say they expect the economy to improve within the next year. What’s more, 73 percent of those surveyed say home ownership is part of achieving the American Dream.
According to the survey, Americans believe they increasingly hold their financial fate, with 60 percent saying that they can be comfortable financially by working hard and being savvy with their investing.
What’s more, 44 percent say they believe they’ve had more opportunities than their parents.
The survey found that the chief worries among the public is paying for health care, losing a job, and the high costs of education.
Source: “Consumer Corner: Americans Still Optimists,” Bloomberg Businessweek
Builder Brings Starter Homes to Gen Y Buyers
August 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As a real estate broker who works with Generation Y buyers, this is a very smart move!
A national homebuilder is wooing Generation Y renters with back-to-basics homes that offer all of the advantages of home ownership on a comfortable budget.
Chicago, San Antonio, and St. Louis are the test markets that Centex Homes is using to convert younger tenants to owners. Fred Ehle, vice president of marketing for PulteGroup, Centex’s parent company, told writer Mary Umberger that the huge demographic was poised for the transition.
"We’re marketing these homes, not with an advertised sales price of $130,000, but with the monthly cost of that home," Ehle said. "Our goal in designing these houses was to make sure we could compete with local rents.
"We can tell this buyer, for what you’re paying in rent, you could be in a new home — this is a revelation for them, because many people in this demographic don’t think they could afford it or they don’t think they could qualify for a loan. For this reason, we offer to connect each buyer to a mortgage adviser before they sign up to buy," Ehle added.
Source: "Builder Woos Gen Y Renters," Chicago Tribune
Gold Medal Doesn’t Guarantee Win in Real Estate
August 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Swimmer Michael Phelps is finding that being the most-decorated Olympian of all time doesn’t necessarily help you in real estate. Phelps’ 4,000-square-foot condo along the popular Inner Harbor area of Baltimore lingered on the market for several months before reportedly being sold for $440,000 less than what he originally paid for it.
The three-bedroom, four-floor condo “loft” features hardwood floors, 2.5 baths, granite countertops, and floor-to-ceiling windows with waterfront views. (View the listing.)
Phelps purchased the condo in 2007 for just under $1.7 million. The condo was listed recently for $1.42 million. Some media agencies are reporting the property just recently went under contract for $1.25 million.
Source: “Where Phelps Can’t Finish: The Housing Market,” Zillow (Aug. 2, 2012) and “Michael Phelps Wire: Has the Phenom Sold His Townhouse?” Curbed.com (Aug. 2, 2012)
Home values rise for first time in 5 years
August 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Home prices nationwide have hit a bottom, and home values are finally on the rise.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Home prices hit a bottom and are finally bouncing back, according to an industry report released Tuesday.
Nationwide, home values rose 0.2% year-over-year to a median $149,300 during the second quarter, the first annual increase since 2007, real estate listing site Zillow reported. Prices were up 2.1% from the first quarter.
Even though June marked the fourth consecutive month of home value increases, overall home prices are still down almost 24% since April 2007, when Zillow began to track home values.
“[I]t seems clear that the country has hit a bottom in home values,” said Zillow’s chief economist Stan Humphries. “The housing recovery is holding together despite lower-than-expected job growth, indicating that it has some organic strength of its own.”
Last winter, Zillow projected that the housing market turnaround would not arrive until the end of the year.
Other home price indexes have also recorded gains lately, including the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. In it latest release, it reported thathome prices in 20 major markets rose 1.3% in April, the first monthly increase in seven months.
Where home prices are rising the fastest
Zillow uses a different methodology in calculating home values than other home price indexes like Case-Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Sales of foreclosed, bank-owned properties, for example, are not factored into Zillow’s data. Zillow does include short sales, however, which are more difficult to distinguish from conventional sales.
“Our index is geared to consumers, conventional sellers deciding whether they want to put their homes on the market,” said Humphries.
The indexes that include foreclosures in their market data show larger price declines. The peak-to-trough drop for the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, for example, is about 34% compared with Zillow’s 24%.
Fewer than one third of the 167 metro areas Zillow surveyed recorded annual increases in home values, but the size of the price gains in these areas more than offset the losses posted by the remaining two-thirds of the markets.
In Phoenix, the biggest gainer, home values soared 12.1% year-over-year to a median of $136,200. Meanwhile, the biggest loss sustained by any of the 30 largest metro areas was in Chicago where median home values fell 5.8% to $158,600.
Foreclosures remain one of the biggest risks to the housing market recovery, Humphries said. In the wake of the national foreclosure settlement which clarified how banks can legally pursue foreclosures, Humphries expects the pace of foreclosures to pick up.
“That will translate to more homes on the market,” he said. “But we think demand will rise to absorb that.”
Zillow expects the housing market to continue to slowly recover, with median home values projected to climb 1.1% — relatively flat — over the next 12 months.
Most affordable cities for buying a home
Beaten down markets like Phoenix, Las Vegas and many Florida cities, will likely record greater-than-average gains over the next 12 months, said Humphries.
The results in those places, however, will be bumpy. Home price increases will cause some homeowners who have been patiently waiting for values to rebound to put their homes on the market. And those additional listings could cool prices for a while, resulting in a staircase effect with “price spikes followed by plateaus,” said Humphries.
source: cnnmoney.com