Archive for the 'Sacramento Real Estate' Category
Interesting Sacramento Market Statistics for First Two Weeks of August
August 16th, 2008 Categories: My Stories, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento RE Stats, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Sellers, Shortsales
New listings are finally outpacing pending sales. In the tri-county area (Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado) it looks like the summer flurry is already subsiding- the total available homes on the market is now building again.
| Active: 2207 | Pending: 1846 | Sold: 893 | Other: 0 | Total: 4946 |
| Bedrooms | Bathrooms | Square Feet | List Price | Selling Price | Days on Market | |
| Minimum | 0 | 0.00 | 90 | $22,900 | $28,500 | 0 |
| Average | 3 | 0.00 | 1,806 | $283,188 | $276,468 | 37 |
| Median | 3 | 2.00 | 1,575 | $232,900 | $247,000 | 12 |
| Maximum | 7 | 0.00 | 10,500 | $3,600,000 | $3,500,000 | 518 |
| Total Dollar Value | $246,886,155 |
| Average DOM Breakdown and Average % of List Price received on Solds by Market time: |
| 0-30 Days | 31-60 Days | 61-90 Days | 91-120 Days | 120+ Days | |
| No. of Listings | 488 | 124 | 76 | 86 | 119 |
| Breakdown % | 54.65 | 13.89 | 8.51 | 9.63 | 13.33 |
| Avg SP % LP | 100.96 | 97.19 | 96.18 | 94.45 | 94.25 |
| Discussion: No Comments »
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.
| Discussion: No Comments »
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.
| Discussion: No Comments »
“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…
| Discussion: 2 Comments »
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?
| Discussion: 1 Comment »
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…
| Discussion: No Comments »
How long until Sacramento Short Sales become more successfull?
April 20th, 2008 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Pre Foreclosures, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Home Buyers, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Sellers, Shortsales
We dread it. Yet We still do it… Showing the shortsale listing to clients, and then explaining reason why they should “Just Walk Away”…
Like the web site that offers a ”customized” plan to homeowners in default, I find myself many times giving the same advice to buyers in this market to just ignore most short sales. We still go look, to compare pricing and make sure we are not missing the deal of a lifetime, on the home of their dreams, but most of the time, we just look…
If the home is perfect for the buyer, we do write, but we always coach our buyers to keep looking. Most of the time, after weeks of no communication from the listing agent and/or no word form the bank, a comparable home will come on the market that we can actually close on.
In our Sacramento area, Less than five percent of short sales that go pending are actually closing and transferring ownership. Most of the nine transactions I have closed successfully have taken over 90 days to complete; one took 7 months.
We have been successful on the buyers side only twice, the listings I have closed are usually closed with the third, fourth, fifth buyer contract.
We just lost another listing to the foreclosure sale, it was with Wells Fargo, who for OVER FOUR MONTHS complained that we had never faxed in our sellers package, that they had technical problems, that the fax machine was broken, that the original fax number was no longer a good number (even though our transmission reports indicated ok)… we heard that the account manager assigned had quit and had to re-start the entire process, not once but twice! We heard that the sale date had been extended and that the bpo had finally been ordered…
Then one day an agent called to say she had been assigned the property and wanted our lock box off. During this five month process, we had seven offers submitted to the bank with completed packages, pre-approval letters, our own BPO, and showing reports… hours upon hours of work…
We tell this and other horror stories of the fifteen or twenty listings we have lost to the forclosure sale at the courthouse steps to our buyers and usually get them to concede that it would be far more appealing to get into a transaction on a listing where we could actually plan on closing.
However, in the cases where buyers have parents who live on the same street, or where kids can walk to an important school or buyers who grew up next door and played in the backyard as a child, we will write a strong offer on a shortsale; as long as the listing agent has had shortsale experience or is using a professional negotiator, that they have a full package submitted to the lender and as long as there is only one bank involed (not a fist and a second) and it is not Wells Fargo!
| Discussion: 1 Comment »
Closing out the year on Sacramento real estate…
December 31st, 2007 Categories: Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Real Estate
As 2007 ends, Experts agree: Decline in American house prices are not over yet… and economists react: as New homes sales sink to the lowest annual rate in 12 years!!
And then; More people buying into new developments are being left high and dry when their builders file for bankruptcy. Wouldn’t that be nice?
How bout this one:
Experts thought 2007 would bring a real estate recovery - not the worst collapse on record. What does that say about forecasts of a turnaround next year?
Or this one:
“Over the past decade, the exponential growth of credit derivatives has created unprecedented amounts of financial leverage on corporate credit,” he added. “Similar to the growth of subprime mortgages, the rapid rise of credit products required ideal economic conditions and disconnected the assessors of risk from those bearing it.” …what?
All I know for sure is that opportunities like this only come around every 12 to 15 years in Sacramento… for those lucky enough to have withstood the craziness of this market and are in a position to buy now: good for you; we’ll see you on easy street soon!!
Is there any doubt that prices will rebound? Does anyone wonder what will happen? Nobody knows when, but we all know this market will rebound and those who were able to buy sometime during this drop will be in the drivers seat…
| Discussion: No Comments »
Sacramento Homebuyers: Hurry; Real Estate is on Sale!! How long can these great deals last?
December 11th, 2007 Categories: Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento RE Stats, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Sellers
| Discussion: 7 Comments »
Good news, bad news about Sacramento Real Estate and Our Local Economy…
November 5th, 2007 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Pre Foreclosures, Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Sellers
| Discussion: 2 Comments »
