Tag Archives: housing market

Real Estate

Foreclosure Rate Drops in California

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Foreclosure sign

The latest figures from ForeclosureRadar show that the number of distressed filings in California, one of the worst hit states in the country, fell in August.

Notices of default in California, which is the first step in the foreclosure process, dropped from July to 36,396 filings, a monthly dip of 19.1% and a 14.2% decrease from August of last year.

In a report the firm says that the government’s Home Affordable Modification Programme which provides cap incentives to servicers for the modification of loans in default or on the verge of default, appears to be having a positive impact.

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But Sean O’Toole, founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar, said that the programme could be hiding the true picture.

‘In effect the HAMP postpones a large amount of filings,’ he said. If it fails, the market would need further government intervention or there would be a wave of new foreclosures, he warned.
But overall the outlook for recovery is still muted.

According to the latest analysis from Moody’s it will be at least another 10 years before residential property prices return to the peak levels of 2006.

Source Property Wire

Real Estate

Zillow.com has Complaint Filed Against Them by NCRC

house-listed-on-Zillow

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) filed a consumer protection complaint to the Federal Trade Commission alleging Zillow.com is misleading consumers, real estate professionals and financial service providers.

Humm, I don’t know too many consumers, real estate professionals and financial service providers that put much stock in home prices by Zillow.com or other on-line valuation services. Zillow.com states you are looking at home values, not home appraisals. How could Zillow.com come up with an accurate price of your home by just using data from recent sales? To begin with, an appraiser, in order to get a true value of your home, has to look at the exterior and interior of your home in order to find homes similar to yours. Then after finding homes that were recently sold and that are similar to yours, adjustments, plus and minus, have to be made on the homes he finds that are similar to your home to account for neighborhood, landscaping, etc. Continue reading Zillow.com has Complaint Filed Against Them by NCRC →

Real Estate

Pending Homes Sales Continue Upward

upward-sales-chart

Home sales continue upward in Nevada County, increasing by 7% for the period April, May and June of this year compared to the same period last year. Nationwide, they have continued upward for the fifth consecutive month, the first time in six years for such a streak, according the National Association of Realtors®
Continue reading Pending Homes Sales Continue Upward →

Business, Real Estate

Economists Optimistic That Market Is Upward Bound

economic-upturn

Well, you can get a room full of economists and get a room full of different opinions. But according to USA Today it seems that two-thirds of the economists agree that we may have hit bottom. Here’s the article, let’s let a little sunshine in.

“Economic recovery is still a few months away, say economists surveyed by USA Today, but two-thirds of them think existing-home sales have bottomed out.

Both housing and automotive markets “have the potential to generate some quite large percentage increases,” says Bill Cheney, chief economist at MFC Global Investment.

Overall, economists say unemployment won’t peak until the first half of next year and credit markets will remain tight.

“I think (the recovery) is going to be anemic,” says Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics. “I don’t think consumers have the wherewithal to buy a lot of cars and a lot of houses.”

For full story, click here: USA Today, Paul Davidson; Barbara Hansen

Real Estate

More Signs of Housing Recovery

california-map-increase-dec

While there may be another storm of foreclosures on the horizon, at least for now there are some signs of recovery for our housing market. California is the bell weather of the economy for the nation. Any sign that the housing market in California is recovering is a sign that the economy is recovering.

It’s the first back-to-back increase in the state’s housing prices in two years, following an increase in the median price of homes in March from February. The median price of $256,700 for single-family homes in April is up from a median price of $253,040 in March, according to estimates by the California Association of Realtors. (In Nevada County for the month of May the median has ranged from $295,000 to $280,000)

Overall the housing values in California increased 1.4% statewide.

The April prices were still off 36.5% from the same month a year ago, but the sales of 540,360 homes on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis represented a 49.2% rise over the same time, the Realtors group reported Thursday.

April also marked the eighth consecutive month of single-family-home sales above 500,000 units. The inventory of unsold homes continued to shrink, to 4.6 months’ supply from 9.8 months a year ago. “It appears that the median price is now at or near the bottom,” said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the Realtors’ association, who has previously made more subdued comments.
“At best, some markets have at least temporarily leveled off in price,” said Andrew LePage, analyst at MDA Dataquick Information Services, a market-research firm in La Jolla, Calif. “I don’t see any markets that have clearly bottomed out.”

In general, the best-performing markets across the state in terms of sales volume were in lower-priced, inland areas that had seen some of the steepest declines in prices. Sales in the high-desert region outside Los Angeles, for example, more than doubled in April from the same month a year ago, after price declines of 49.5% over the same time. Median prices, even month to month, continued to fall there amid a glut of foreclosures.

But in several more densely populated areas, the median price was stronger. Los Angeles County’s median rose 1.9% in April from March, after falling 31% over the past year. In Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County, the median price rose 3.6% after a year-over-year fall of 38.2%, the Realtor’s group said. Boosting sales are some of the best affordability rates in almost a decade, say economists.
Realtors’ officials said sales remain weaker for more-expensive homes. Inventories of unsold homes in the under-$500,000 segment, for example, shrank to nearly three months’ supply in April from about 10 months a year ago. But the inventory of homes priced at more than $1 million rose to about 17 months from 10 months a year earlier.

The problem for the higher end of the market is that lending has tightened greatly for the jumbo mortgages that are often needed to buy a home costing more than $500,000, say economists. Some lenders now require down payments of as much as 30% to 40%. As a result, sales have remained anemic in pricey markets like San Francisco

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Real Estate

The Bargains in Real Estate are Going to be Gone

inside-of-church

This is an interior picture of a  listing for a three bedroom, two bath home which will save you travel time and gas for Sunday services.

Here in Nevada County, while there were almost the same amount of sales in April of this year compared to last year, the pending sales are way up. Potential buyers in areas that were hard hit by the housing downturn have read about bargains; only find it disappointing when they go shopping.

But in Southern California, housing is hopping:

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times:

“House hunters are trying to pounce on deals from sellers they expected to be frantic — if not curled in the fetal position. What they’re finding instead are bidding wars as low interest rates and pent-up demand in traditionally stable or chic areas have kept prices up — not as high as the market’s peak, but not nearly as low as they had hoped.

Bank-owned or not, the cheaper properties are dominating the sellers’ block in the notoriously expensive L.A. County real estate market. In March, 2,871 homes under $300,000 were sold compared with only 734 a year earlier, according to real estate information firm MDA DataQuick.

When the real estate bubble burst, it didn’t affect the mid-priced market, said real estate information firm MDA DataQuick. Instead, it created opportunities in troubled neighborhoods and slowed sales in the market of homes priced above $1 million. But in areas where most of the homes sell for $400,000 to $800,000, there are few discounts to be found.

Even the foreclosure market has slowed, says University of Southern California Professor of Real Estate Tracey Seslen. Seslen said lenders with foreclosures are supporting market stabilization and releasing only a few homes at a time to avoid flooding the markets.”

Like I said, if you wait to buy at the bottom of the real estate market, you’ll find that the bottom pasted you by a long time ago.

 

Real Estate

Have We Hit the Bottom of the Housing Market?

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frogs1

Another indicator that we may be nearing the bottom of the housing market is builder confidence in April made its most dramatic increase in nearly seven years, according to an industry report.

According to  CNN Money

“The Housing Market Index, a survey-based measurement of sales, as well as sales expectations, rose by more than 50% in April, according to the National Association of Home Builders, which compiles the index with Wells Fargo.

The index rose to 14 from its prior level of 9, which was the biggest increase since May 2003

“After a very long period of extreme distress, it’s given the builders some sense of reaching a bottom,” said David Crowe, chief economist for the association”

This is just one of several indicators that we may be bottoming out. Sales in Nevada County have been increasing in April to a point where we have 199 pending sales on the Nevada County Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of yesterday.

There are large home price changes occurring, some as much as minus $600,000 or more. These large price reductions are in all probability, based on sellers setting their own price based either because of emotional reasons or basing their price on what houses sold for a few years ago. In a declining market, it is very important to list your home a little below the market.

You should have a good market analysis of your home made by your real estate agent and base your listing price based on facts, not emotional reasons, how much money you need to get out of your home, or what you think your house is worth. (I know, sometimes that is hard to do) It’s an un-fortunate fact of life that the market sets what a house sells for and not what we want to sell our house for, No?

Oh, to answer if we have hit the bottom of the housing market, I don’t know and I doubt if anyone else does either. But it sure looks close to the bottom.