Archive for the 'Sac Real Estate' Category
How About a SubPrime Lender Survey?
In case you’re wondering about the Test Survey below, I am working on setting up a subprime lender report card.
I’d 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, that’s 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 can’t 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 CW’s 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 can’t 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 media’s 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 didn’t start with that intention. And I don’t want this to be about whether troubled homeowners deserve help. But since everyone’s boasting about what they’re doing, let’s find out of it’s working. Let’s get past the posturing and determine which lenders are helping and which are not. And let’s 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.
Close of Escrow dates: Resetting Your Expectations
Daily Real Estate News / October 11, 2007
Mortgage Woes: Be Patient With Closing Dates
Lenders are taking more time to get mortgage documents in order these days, and real estate professionals consequently must be prepared for a slower settlement process than they are accustomed to…
I love to grow bamboo. One of the things I love most is discovering a thick new shoot emerging from the dead leaves beneath one of my large plants. The new shoots can be as big around as a woman’s forearm.
Today’s reported drop in new home starts for August—the biggest decline in a dozen years—struck me the same way, like spotting a sturdy green shoot poke out the dry real estate landscape. This is perhaps the best news I’ve heard recently, better than the Fed’s half point cut, and it’s the first clear indication that the supply of homes may begin the retreat toward equilibrium with demand.
Shameless self-promotion here…
I just received an email that International Listings / Worldwide Luxury Real Estate Since 2001 has created the Top 100 Real Estate Blogs and selected Lending Clarity as one of only 9 mortgage blogs on the list!
It’s great to receive that kind of acknowledgment after nearly a year of blogging, particularly since my active participation in the real estate blogging community has been minimal. I should spend a lot more time commenting and linking actively with other bloggers in order to drive traffic to Lending Clarity and enhance my SEO, but that requires time I don’t have.
Instead, I write primarily for homeowners, clients, and real estate professionals in hopes of imparting insight and lending clarity to the business of home financing. Thanks to International Listings for their consideration and to all you readers, subscribers and those who leave comments for your time and thoughts.
California Consumers “Living on Fumes”
The humor of this mixed metaphor aside, the quote from Chris Thornberg of Beacon Economics points to a serious weakness in California’s economic outlook. Taken from Dale Kasler’s Sacramento Bee article today entitled Housing Clouds Economy, both writers question the strength of our job market and consumer spending set against the backdrop of falling real estate equity.
So far, economists seem to feel the real estate problem will remained contained. Seeping out from the cracks in this confidence however are some signs that the problem will spread. With credit use skyrocketing in the first half of 2007 and home equity evaporating, how long can the consumer continue to prop up the economy?
The PMI Mortgage Insurance Company has published its Summer 2007 Economic Real Estate Trends. For Sacramento area home owners, the news is not good.
While PMI’s previous model was tuned for the rapid appreciation of the first half of the decade, the revised model gives more weight to current price trends, area volatility, and the increased use of unfriendly variable interest rate products. While the inputs have been updated, the output is the same:
“…a risk index that predicts the likelihood that home prices in a given metropolitan statistical area will be lower in two years.”
How does Sacramento stack up? How about 9th among the top 50 MSA’s in the nation, and a 56% probability of lower prices in 2009.