Archive for January, 2008
How About a SubPrime Lender Survey?
In case youre wondering about the Test Survey below, I am working on setting up a subprime lender report card.
Id like to give trouble homeowners a chance to report on how hard lenders are really working to help consumers keep their homes. From what I can tell, most of the lenders efforts are going into press releases. Lenders and legislators alike are talking a lot but doing little. They pat each other on the backs in the news while struggling homeowners continue packing the U-Haul.
The Bush administration announced FHA Secure back in late August, and by early December HUD claimed to have already helped 33,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure, with another 20k or so to come by year end. Sounds good, yet Patrick Rucker of Reuters reported on December 17th that according to government data just released, only 266 FHA Secure loans had actually been completed. Uh, thats a pretty big difference.
Jim Wasserman of the Sacramento Bee reported on Tuesday that a group of eight lenders and two CA foundations were contributing $4.6 mil to beef up counseling centers across the state. This money will be used to pay two years salary and benefits for 46 new counselors who expect to help 70,000 CA homeowners. Help them do what? Find roommates and second jobs? A counselor cant modify loans terms or freeze a resetting subprime rate. And 46 new counselors to help 70,000 people? But hey, it sounds good on the surface.
On Wednesday, Countrywide claimed to have helped more than 81,000 people save their homes in 2007, with only 1,000 of its customers losing their homes to short sale. But at CWs own site for REO properties, I did a search and found 43 pages (100 properties per page) of properties foreclosed and owned by CW in the California alone.
And what about the so called rate freeze? Because of a few short sale posts here at Lending Clarity, homeowners from across the country contact me every day asking for advice because they cant get their lenders to help them. These efforts on the part of lenders so far are voluntary, so they can easily add their names to the medias good-guy list without actually doing a thing to help anyone. And that seems to be the reality so far.
So okay, this has turned into a bit of a rant. I didnt start with that intention. And I dont want this to be about whether troubled homeowners deserve help. But since everyones boasting about what theyre doing, lets find out of its working. Lets get past the posturing and determine which lenders are helping and which are not. And lets give the consumer a voice.
What do you think?
read comments (0)Crosby, Stills and Nash once sung that the darkest hour is always just before the dawn. With all the dark news about Sacramento real estate and the economy in general, I am always looking for signs that that final hour has arrived.
Chris DeMattei over at Keller Williams Realty and I have talked a lot in recent months about the return to more affordable real estate prices. Like a junkie kicking the habit, this process is agonizing. But the sooner we get it over with the better. The other day I was talking with Brian Gardner at Metro Appraisals, and he pointed to a spot of light on the horizon.
The Entry Level Market
There was a time not that long ago that first-time buyers had to spend $300k to $400k to buy a home in South Placer County. The same thing was true in varying degrees all over the Sacramento real estate market. And under $250k? Forget it. Even condo prices had risen to the point that apartment building owners got condo-conversion fever. And Sacramento was never a strong condo market in terms of appreciation.