bubbleinfo.com

From NMN:

Fannie Mae wants out of its defaulted residential mortgage holdings as quickly as possible and is warning loan servicers not to stand in its way.

The government-sponsored enterprise notified servicers Tuesday that it will begin monitoring them to determine why there are delays in moving delinquent loans into foreclosure. If servicers cannot properly account for the holdups, it will perform on-site reviews and assess fees to give servicers “a financial incentive to comply with Fannie Mae policies and improve the overall quality of their performance.”

All year, the so-called shadow inventory of home loans that are delinquent but not yet in foreclosure has been growing. The buildup has been widely interpreted as a sign that banks and servicers are intentionally delaying foreclosures, in part to avoid taking losses on loans that they hold.

About 2.9 million homes have been repossessed by banks or are in the foreclosure process, according to Lender Processing Services. But 4.5 million borrowers are at least 30 days delinquent on their mortgage.

With the economic recovery stalled and housing prices expected to fall further, Fannie appears to be making the first move.

“This is a shot across the bow that servicers have to start paying attention,” said Kevin Kanouff, a founder of Statebridge Co., a Denver special servicer. “Now they’re going to put their feet to the fire and expect to move these loans along as opposed to throwing them in a program and just collecting the fees.”

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An example of a buyer who took a lowball shot at a listing that had some tell-tale signs:

1.  A number of other active listings nearby that weren’t selling,

2.  Out-of-town REO listing agent,

3.  A World Savings/Wachovia/Wells Fargo original loan amount of $687,000,

4. A newer tract house that was unattractive enough that it probably wasn’t getting any offers.

Yes, I’m one of the active listings impacted by the subject property herein.

The sellers and I are in the process of re-evaluating.

We try to keep focused on the SFR foreclosure activity in the North SD County Coastal region, but it takes a keen eye to see the truth.  There has been very few top quality homes foreclosed on, and offered by the bank as REO listings - but we’ll keep working on it!

Hat tip to Jason (aka osidebuyer). This nut had to call the TV-news crew on herself:

From the insider:

The housing market will experience a tepid recovery in 2010 but continue to ail for the next couple of years, according to Zelman & Associates.

“Most economists are more optimistic than I am,” noted Ivy Zelman, CEO, of the research analytics firm. Zelman spoke Wednesday about the future of housing at a Dallas loss mitigation conference sponsored by SourceMedia.

While affordability is at record levels, consumers’ balance sheets are hurting, she noted. Before the housing crash, from 2002-2006, home prices rose 28 percent while income grew only 13%, she said.

The good news, Zelman noted, is that affordability (deflation) has brought investors back into the market.

“I call it ‘Investors Gone Wild Part Two.’ For homes under $100,000, about 50% are cash purchases.” As a result, there is less risk around these investment purchases than previous ones that included exotic securities. Nonowners represented about 11-12% of purchase mortgages in Q110, she said.

Once the home becomes more expensive, investors with cash become scarcer. For homes priced from $150,000-$249,000, only 21% are cash sales, she said.

“I say, thank God for the investor.” If we didn’t have the investor, we wouldn’t have the absorption of the housing stock.

Problems compounding the housing market include the continued tight lending market as banks hoard their capital due to large numbers of nonperforming loans and problem balance sheets.  They’ve tightened underwriting standards even for those with good credit who wouldn’t have had any problem getting a home loan before the housing crisis hit, she said.

Lending won’t pick up again until bank failures have peaked, Zelman predicted, but didn’t say when she thought that would be.

To illustrate the magnitude of the problem, Zelman noted several times during her talk the 4.45m homeowners who are 90-plus days delinquent on their mortgages. While Zelman doesn’t expect all of those homeowners to lose their homes, estimates from servicers are that as many of 80% of those eventually could lose their homes.

“There will be a continuous flow of foreclosures for several years,” she said.

JtR note: I disagree with her comment in bold.  During the heyday of the subprime-REO liquidation of 12-24 months ago, there were plenty of owner-occupier buyers who got beat out by cash investors.  Today on the lower-end, the investors are drying up because the list-prices are higher, yet owner-occupiers are still buying. 

From HW:

The amount of REO properties held by Citigroup reached $1.4bn in Q210, an 81% increase from the same time last year.

In the second quarter of 2009, Citigroup held $789m in REO in North America. The latest total is a 10% increase from the $1.2bn in North American REO totaled in Q110. The bank did not break down the total among the continent’s countries.

Citigroup defines its REO as the carrying value of all property acquired by the bank through foreclosure or other legal proceedings. Worldwide, Citigroup holds $1.6bn in REO, up 73% from a year ago.

Citigroup reported earnings of $2.7bn in Q210 after posting $4.4bn in the previous quarter.

Through its servicing arm, CitiMortgage, the bank continues work to reduce the amount of foreclosures on its balance sheet. According to the latest Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) report from the Treasury Department, Citi has converted 25% of its trial modifications into permanent status through May, totaling more than 34,000 modifications.

It was in April, 2008, that we embarked on the REO trail. 

This was the first Jim TV REO video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neY1P7UvNHw

We had high hopes back then, because I was assigned 20 REO listings in the first month.  We thought if that continued, and moved up the price ladder, we’d have some really good blog material! 

I’ve been assigned about 30 REO listings since, and while I am very grateful for the business, it is a struggle trying to figure if there will be more REOs coming to justify the workload and staff required.  The latest assignment takes us back to where it all began, right around the corner from the first REO in Oceanside:

osidebuyer wants a report on the lower-tier homes.

In Oceanside the cheapie SFR foreclosures have dried up, and there’s been an incremental YOY increase in $/sf pricing, with the lowest up about 15%, with those over $400,000 being flat.

Here are the first half detached sales counts by price range, and their average $/sf:

What used to buy a house in O-side two years ago, now gets you a condo with a $318/mo HOA fee: