Archive for the 'Real Estate News' Category
Folsom real estate shows stability in a storm…
September 19th, 2008 Categories: Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Home Buyers, Sacramento RE Stats, Sacramento Real Estate
So even though all we hear in the media is the bad news about the housing and equity markets, life here in Folsom goes on! We are still writing contracts and closing escrows! Active, Stable, Predictable is how you can describe real estate here in Folsom. My team and I have eleven active escrows and at least that many offers out on homes with buyers who have heard all the bad news, all the negativity and still want to buy the house of their dreams! Folsom is still adding jobs and office space!
Elliott Homes has been selling an average of 9 lots per month all year up on their custom home site neighborhood of Terrazzo Estates. Jim Greer, of Elliott, told me that probably eighty percent of the lots go to cash buyers, many who have no immediate plans of building. He said that many of his buyers are in the medical profession and understand what Kaiser coming to our community will mean for the demand of those lots! Think about that; these are smart people (you would call this smart money), betting that we are close enough to the bottom, and that they will definately make more money on Folsom dirt than the Stock Market!!
Jim also told me, with some prodding, where he is finding these buyers; he told me “Forth, all my buyers come from the same place… Heaven!”
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Our Brisk Real Estate Turnover: Sacramento’s new “Bank-Owned Sellers Market”- Will it Continue?
September 19th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Home Buyers, Sacramento Real Estate
What a difference we have seen in our market compared to last summer… multiple offers, over-priced offers, market stability and finally some predictability; Can it continue with all the bad news?
For the first time in fifteen months, our Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado County Median prices held mostly stable month-to-month.
And instead of a years worth of unsold inventory sitting on the market; there is less than 4 months!
Can it continue? I guess we’ll see… This time of year usually sees swelling inventories anyway and with the mess that the stock market is in…. They are calling it the “Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet In Sight.”
I really think our under 200k market has found a price level that will hold, unless, of course, rates start moving. However; those jumbo-homes still have a long way to go. You know what they say; the bigger they are the harder they fall…
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Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: Crumbling Cornerstones
September 6th, 2008 Categories: Graphs and Charts, Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends
The federal government is poised to take over the two largest Mortgage Giants. Between the two of them they own or guarantee almost half the home loans in the country’s roughly $12 trillion mortgage market. Over the past year, the companies have recorded combined losses of around $14 billion.
Fannie and Freddie were created in the 30’s and 70’s; respectively, to create a secondary mortgage market. Banks and thrifts hold more than $1 trillion in Fannie and Freddie bonds because they are considered as good as cash.
Without the bailout, the Credit Crunch would only get worse, as the mortgage market would have huge liquidity problems; Without buyers like Fannie and Freddie, big mortgage lenders have nowhere to go to sell packaged loans in order to continue to write new loans.
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First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit/Refund; Are You Eligible?
August 31st, 2008 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Home Buyers, Sacramento Real Estate
We may start to see families and employers lending money to first time buyers for down payment Money; to be paid back after the buyers do their taxes…
You see; as part of the the recent Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, all first time home buyers who purchase a home after July 9,2008 and before July 1, 2009 are eligible for up to 7,500 in tax rebate money-
Anyone who has not bought a home for the last three years is eligible!
This is not so much a tax credit as it is an actual rebate; except it has to be paid back; so it’s like an interest free loan.
Here’s the rules:The credit will be equal to 10% of the purchase price of your home but can not be more than $7,500. You will be able to subtract the amount of the credit from your tax liability, increasing your refund or reducing the taxes you owe. For example, if you were to file your ‘normal’ tax return to find that you owe $2,000 in taxes; with the credit, your tax are lowered by $7,500—which means, you would get a $5,500 REFUND!
So, what’s with the loan part of the deal? The tax credit is really a loan; two years after the credit is claimed, you start repaying at a rate so that you will have paid the credit back in full over the course of 15 years. So for those who get the full credit, the pay back amount is $500 per year. For those getting less than the full credit, you pay equally over the 15 years. But it’s interest free!
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What Will the First Anniversary of the Credit Crunch Mean to Sacramento?
August 4th, 2008 Categories: Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Home Buyers, Sacramento Real Estate
In some ways, I can’t believe it’s already been a year… But in other ways it seems like this market is just the ‘new normal’, and its been like this forever…
Ben bernenke said just over a year ago that “Troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system”.
Wonder what he has to say about that now; with the Dow Jones down almost 15%, economic growth down more than 50% and eight major U.S. banks along with thousands of employees now gone.
Michael Burry,head of Silicon Valleys Scion Capital’s says “I doubt we’re even a third of the way through it,”see full story.
Add the financial woes of the California State Budget , four dollar a gallon gas… the future seems a little scary…
I’ve done some numbers crunching and it seems that the Sacramento area housing inventory of homes for sale over the $350,000 mark is now growing. Demand for the lower prices up to around $350,000 is still running neck and neck with supply.
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Mortgage rates headed up… Sacramento buyers: Hurry!
June 30th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Home Buyers, Sacramento Sellers
Asset managers and Homeowners have finally dropped prices enough to stimulate buyers interest here in the Sacramento area. But in order to do it, median price of an existing, single-family home in Greater Sacramento declined to $233,230 in May, a 34.5 percent fall from a year earlier. The California Association of Realtors reported a 18.1 percent increase in sales last month.
For the first time in 30 months we had a year over year increase in number of homes sold.
Now or newest alarm is on mortgage rates… As if we needed more to challenge our housing market.
Bloomberg says:Homes Less Affordable as Prices Fall, Rates Rise.
We all knew it would happen sometime…
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The Worse Housing Bust since World War II?
May 26th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Pre Foreclosures, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento History, Sacramento RE Stats, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Sellers, Shortsales
Sacramento area homesellers, more than most other areas in the country, are battling the most brutal environment in decades…
We were one of the hottest and now one of the hardest hit. In Sacramento’s Curtis Park, even Congress members are losing homes here to foreclosure!
I am seeing way more short sales coming on the market in many areas; I hope that the banks will continue on their path and eventually the short sale will become a viable option for Sacramento area homeowners to avoid foreclosure.
My team and I have closed several; more than anyone else in my office, I think, but we have also lost many to foreclosure. Loan servicers were set up to process payments, not work out loan delinquencies on a massive scale! But recently, most of the banks seem to be getting better about communicating, processing the package, ordering the Broker Price Opinions and/or appraisals, presenting the package to the “Investor”, etc…
We are not seeing the high turnover in the Loss Mitigation Departments and some of the banks are reportedly adding massive staffing. (I understand Countrywide hired over 2,000 loss mitigation rep’s recently).
Hopefully we are getting closer to some level of predictability and stability in our market here in Sacramento.
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“Defaulting middle-class U.S. homeowners are blamed…”
May 14th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Real Estate, Shortsales
This is kind of getting scarier and scarier… The more I learn bout the mortgage meltdown, the credit crunch, the sub prime debacle, the more I realize just how big our problems may be.
Found a great link today…”Defaulting middle-class U.S. homeowners are blamed, but they are merely a pawn in the game…” You see, just as housing had a crazy bubble, so did the credit markets, borrowed money was used as collateral to borrow more money, that went out in the market, bought assets that went up in value and multiplied; feeding more borrowing…
Here’s how it worked: It was just a larger version of the basic real estate market dynamics that were at work here in Sacramento… crazy to think emotions and exhuberance play such a huge part of even our global markets.
Who’s to blame? I’m not sure. Jury is still out on that… there were so many different factors, so many different players, I guess we are all to blame; except for the poor souls who were priced out or who were smart enough to realize that the crash just had to come…
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Sacramento is one of The six scariest…
May 10th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Pre Foreclosures, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Real Estate, Shortsales
Number of foreclosures, steep price drops and high unemployment put Sacramento on the map last week as one of the six scariest real estate markets.
The House of Representatives will take up legislation Wednesday that would broadly address the nation’s housing crisis and could have the government assume control of up to $300 billion in refinanced home loans to be given to distressed homeowners.
It also includes a bill that will provide up to $15 billion (yes, billion, with a “b”) to allow governments to award loans and grants to purchase and rehabilitate owner-vacated homes…
I just wonder how long it is going to take for the industry to figure out they need to get these homes refinanced or sold before foreclosure… It isn’t hard to see that a home that is occupied, being cared for, where the grass is watered and mowed, is going to sell faster and for more than the same house with broken windows, a dead, overgrown lawn, with the dishwasher, stove, ceiling fans and light fixtures missing… not to mention the green pools and missing air conditioners!
This is not only a problem Sacramento area homeowners are dealing with; it is happening all over.
When will the short-sale or short-refinance be embraced and used as a tool to slow the tide?
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More Hope for Sacramento Shortsales…
May 4th, 2008 Categories: My Stories, Pre Foreclosures, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento RE Stats, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Sellers, Shortsales
We just got an approval letter on a shortsale the other day; from Countrywide! In just three short weeks! It is for a client who’s home here in Folsom is in foreclosure. We had it on the market for only a week and received several offers, one full price with plenty down. The buyer, who understands the short sale process and the potential downfalls, is represented by a great agent I worked with at my old company. They absolutely no matter what have to live in that neighborhood and were willing to wait and take the risk of a bank saying no.
We now have two files with Indymac, another Countrywide, One with an Option One first and HSBC second (I usually don’t even try to work a shortsale listing with a first and a second, however the HSBC gal I talked to in their loss Mitigation department promised they would work with us).
We also have buyers in contract on a beautiful home in Orangevale who we are anticipating an approval letter from Homeq, this week… It is a screaming deal too– these kids will move in with 20 or 30k in equity… on a street where the last reo listing sold in two days, and in a market where we have probably reached a bottom!
Yes, these people have waited six weeks for an answer from the bank. We have seen at least thirty other houses since we wrote the offer, and the buyers have always wanted to keep the offer in and continue to try… It is always an exercise in patience and understanding for me; working with buyers who want to write on a short sale! …but it always seems to work out in the long run for the best; we either close on the short sale or find another home while we wait.
I really expect short sales to get easier… they have to!
Some banks, Indymac, Homeq, Countrywide, along with several other smaller lenders are getting their acts together and I look forward to being able to really move some real estate sometime soon.
The banks just must keep working on their systems and improving their timetables… there are so many more foreclosures coming! There has been another jump in California foreclosures last quarter, which means this summer, fall and winter, there may be another jump in shortsales and REO’s…
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