bubbleinfo.com

from sddt.com:

Foreclosures in San Diego County reached their highest monthly totals since September 2008, while notices of default spiked after two months of decline. 

June’s 3,715 notices of default were the second highest total for a single month on record. The figure is a 12.9 percent increase from May.

Year over year, June 2009 had 8 percent more notices of default than June 2008. Year to date, notices of default are outpacing their 2008 totals by 7 percent.

The 1,799 trustee deeds filed in June were 78.6% higher than May’s filings.

The increase in trustee’s deeds filed is not surprising after March’s record-breaking number of 4,260 notices of default filed.

“It’s a great puzzle,” said Alan Nevin, director of economic research for MarketPointe Realty Advisors. “Between the combination of lenders not being able to handle the current workload in addition to the Obama plan coercing lenders to be more kind, we don’t know what the hell’s happening out there.”

Everybody is on the forecasting bandwagon these days, here’s BW’s crack at it:

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/107219/what-your-home-will-be-worth-in-2012.html?mod=realestate-buy

An excerpt:

By 2012 we may finally get back to blissful boredom. With any luck, three years should be long enough for the U.S. economy to recover and for the nation’s housing inventory to shrink to more normal levels. At that point, housing will return to its old ways, with prices governed not by national mood swings and global credit crises but by local issues ranging from zoning to immigration to job growth.

Prices? While they’re likely to keep falling a while longer under the weight of foreclosures, the market is definitely closer to the bottom than the top. “We expect prices to drop for another year and then stabilize before starting to rise with incomes,” says Standard & Poor’s Chief Economist David Wyss. Moody’s Economy.com predicts the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, maintained by data specialist Fiserv, will fall about 16% this year before regaining ground.

While the year 2012 sounds sexy enough to sell some magazines, all of these forecasts sound safe and vague - if any of them end of being right, it’ll just be luck.   

They also included the list of places where it would be ideal to start over, for those who are looking to leave  - none of their picks were in California:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/06/0611_cities_to_start_over/index.htm

Anchorage, Alaska was #1 on their list!

Hat tip to Kwaping for sending this along, from the U-T:

The real estate slump has arrived in La Jolla, Rancho Santa Fe and other high-end San Diego County neighborhoods.

After holding their own in sales strength, sales of homes priced at $1 million or more started to fall a year after lower-priced homes hit the skids.

Now, instead of selling their multimillion-dollar homes at multimillion-dollar profits, some sellers are taking a bath or renting their properties while they wait for a sunnier day.

“The market is terrible,” said Jan Paulin, 58, who bought his 4,164-square-foot home on Hillside Drive in La Jolla for $2 million in 2000, put it on the market for $4.5 million last year and is now hoping to get $3.8 million.

If Paulin doesn’t get what he wants, he plans to rent it for $10,000 a month. Other high-end owners are following the same strategy, area agents say.

“I’d rather hold on to it for a while and wait it out until the market turns, and we can get some revenue in the meantime and at least cover the carrying costs,” Paulin said.

Yesterday in the Cielo project east of Rancho Santa Fe, Bill Menish, a former local TV anchor turned auctioneer, conducted an auction for a 5,000-square-foot home bought for $2.65 million in 2001. The highest bid was $1.965 million, which took 20 minutes to reach and was close to the seller’s reserve.

“The owners have a lot of equity in it, have moved into another house and would like to take their capital and move it into an alternative investment,” said listing agent Bill Taylor.

Through the first four months of the year, 337 homes priced at $1 million or more closed escrow, down 52.4 percent from the same time last year, according to MDA DataQuick.

Over the same period, sales of homes less than $1 million totaled 10,987, up 37.5 percent. The overall median price in April was $290,000, down 44 percent from the peak of $517,500 in November 2005.

“The low end has been driving the county sales higher, while the luxury market has typically remained extremely sluggish,” said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage, adding, “Wealthy folks have taken huge hits that they haven’t taken in a long time, if ever.”

Obviously, the top end represents a small fraction of the local inventory. According to Zillow, 44,500, or 5.9 percent of the nearly 750,000 homes the online company tracks locally are worth $1 million or more. They are generally concentrated in coastal communities with a few scattered throughout the rest of the county.

But of the 13,010 homes on the local multiple listing service last week, 2,537, or 19.5 percent, carry asking prices in the seven figures. The National Association of Realtors reports that the national share of sales above $750,000 is half of what it was two years ago.

In San Diego County, the drop-off of sales of homes at $1 million or more is even more dramatic, down from 73 percent this year from 2006’s peak rate.

“I’ve been doing this since 1975 and never seen anything quite as volatile,” said Willis-Allen Real Estate agent Linda Daniels.

Daniels said buyers are playing it cool, offering 40 percent below asking price and walking away if sellers don’t cave.

“It’s wild,” she said.

And yet, Mike O’Brien, 38, wasn’t fazed when he put his waterfront home in Bird Rock up for sale for $8 million, three years after moving in. O’Brien and his wife, Julie, 34, paid $6.4 million and put $1.5 million into improvements.

“We’ve had a lot more showings recently,” said O’Brien, an online business entrepreneur. “I feel like we’re seeing more serious buyers. One group has come back three times.”

The O’Briens are selling because they are expecting their fourth son and would rather move than remodel.

O’Brien said the subject of real estate hardly comes up in conversations with friends: “The only thing families talk about less than sex is finances.”

There are several reasons behind the woes faced by the wealthy, experts say. Upper-end buyers have lost money in the stock market, have less to spend and, like many other San Diegans, are worried about their job security.

Those who are able to buy find that a “jumbo” loan — more than $697,500 — is hard to get and carries a premium interest charge of one or more percentage points above the norm.

“The jumbo market is not functioning,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. “We hear from our members every day — ‘Fix the jumbo market, fix the jumbo market.’?”

“You can’t buy today because you can’t get a loan, no matter how golden you are,” said Maxine Gellens, an agent with Prudential California Realty in La Jolla.

When their offers are accepted, buyers sometimes have to endure multiple appraisals by lenders before a loan closes.   “It is definitely becoming more difficult to find good comparable sales for the variety of characteristics that million-dollar properties present,” said David Eshelman of Eshelman Appraisals Inc.

The problem is most critical for what David Adamo, president of Luxury Mortgage in Stamford, Conn., calls the “HENRYs” — “high-earning but not rich yet” dual-income households — those who earn between $250,000 and $500,000 annually. They can’t buy what they want because of the difficulty of securing a jumbo loan.

To get around the financial roadblocks, some buyers have enough assets to make all-cash offers.

“Cash buyers are getting wonderful values because they can pull the trigger,” said Lou Martin, a Prudential agent in Rancho Santa Fe.

As for the future, history does not portend good times for the rest of the year. Since 2001, the proportion of million-plus homes sold in the first four months was always higher than in than the last eight months, except in 2002 to 2004.

If that trend continues this year, the 2.98 percentage share this January-April would be the high point of the year.

Andy Nelson, president of Willis Allen, said top-tier buyers may upend history as they survey the relative bargains available and press sellers to lower prices even more than the 20 percent to 25 percent reduction so many already have absorbed.

“Yes, their existing homes may not be worth as much, but there are some great values out there to upgrade their location or move to a house on a single level,” Nelson said. “They may have an opportunity in the next few months to get something because we think the bottom is close at hand.”

from WSJ, hat tip to Mr. T:

The pace of housing sales has been rising in many markets this year, but it is only partly because families seeking affordable housing are returning to the market.

It also is because of investors like former Deutsche Bank managing director Matthew Cooleen, whose firm has spent $30 million buying pools of foreclosed houses from banks.

His newly formed Greenwich, Conn.-based firm, HudsonCross Financial, is betting it can make a profit reselling in beaten-down markets in states like Nevada, Arizona and Florida and in Southern California because it is paying so little for the homes.

Outside San Francisco, a former Morgan Stanley executive director’s new firm is buying four houses for 75% less than they cost four years ago, and is raising $6 million to purchase others.

In Phoenix, Mark Allen, a former division president at D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest home builder, is reselling homes he is buying at courthouse auctions with funding from Gorilla Capital, an Oregon-based firm that targets foreclosures. “It’s the only way to make money in Phoenix residential real estate right now,” Mr. Allen says.

Below: Gorilla Capital’s Mark Allen, center left, attends auction for foreclosed homes in Phoenix on Monday.

After mostly retreating from the housing market after the bubble burst, investors are returning in droves, hoping to take advantage of the distress. In many cases, Realtors say, investors also are outbidding first-time home buyers and other would-be occupants because they often come to the table with all-cash offerings.

Some of the new investors profited while home prices boomed and are now trying to cash in on their decline. Far from their trading rooms and executive suites, some are spending their days looking for deals in far-flung suburbs and staking out courthouse auctions.

While many real-estate trade groups don’t track investor purchasing on a monthly basis, real-estate agents in many markets say investor buying is high. One telltale sign is how many home buyers are paying all cash.

Though not every cash sale involves an investor, the investors often use cash because they can close quicker and get a better return. In the Phoenix area, for example, about 38% of April sales of single-family homes were all-cash deals. In Punta Gorda, Fla., the figure was 67%, and in the Las Vegas area, total cash sales were 39%.

It isn’t the easiest way to earn money. Managing a far-flung collection of houses can be time-intensive and fraught with hidden costs.

Buying houses, rather than apartment buildings or other commercial property, tends to favor small investors who are agile and understand local submarkets. The work often involves replacing carpets, repainting and kicking out squatters. Much of today’s buying is being done by mom-and-pop investors, who are acquiring a few houses to rent out.

But in some markets, where prices have fallen the most, the bargains are difficult to pass up for larger investors.

“Foreclosures are low-hanging fruit at the moment,” says Laurence Pelosi, who helped close big land and housing-development deals for Morgan Stanley before he left the bank earlier this year and joined McKinley Partners, a small investment firm that is buying foreclosures in California.

McKinley and a partner are in contract to buy four homes in Pittsburg, a small city east of Oakland. The firm is buying one house, which was valued at $412,000 near the peak in 2005, for $84,000. McKinley plans to rent out the homes for as much as $1,200 a month. After paying to manage the property and other expenses, it expects 5% to 7% returns on its investment from the rental income and, hopefully, a big payoff from a resale when the market improves.

The firm is paying cash up front, but has a commitment from One California Bank, an Oakland-based community bank, to finance 50% of the purchases after they close. They hope that will free up cash to buy more homes.

The firm believes homeowners losing their houses in foreclosure actions need places to rent.

“It’s tough times in the Bay area, but this isn’t Detroit,” says Paul Staley, who acquired distressed homes earlier in the decade with Fortress Investment Group and recently teamed up with McKinley. “Everyone is going to need a place to live.”

McKinley plans to resell the houses in about five years for double what it paid and is targeting 20% annualized returns for its investors, which include wealthy individuals.

HudsonCross Financial is buying pools of 10 to 200 homes. “It only makes sense if we buy in bulk,” says Mr. Cooleen, who worked in the structured credit trading group at Deutsche Bank that dealt in credit derivatives and mortgage-backed securities.

About 40% of the banks and lenders Mr. Cooleen deals with are agreeing to sell homes in bulk, but the others are reticent, he says, because they believe they can get better prices if they wait to sell them individually.

“It’s a shame. The sooner we clear the inventory of foreclosure the sooner the housing market can recover,” says Mr. Cooleen.

The competition for the houses is intensifying as the supply of foreclosed homes in some places has fallen in recent months.

But the inventory is likely to rise later this year as banks end their moratoriums on new foreclosures and begin dumping additional houses on the markets.

Barclays Capital estimates that banks and loan investors owned 765,500 foreclosed homes as of April 1, up from 629,100 a year earlier. The inventory is expected peak at about 1.3 million homes in mid- to late 2010, according to Barclays.

The investors are no panacea to the nation’s housing woes. When the market improves, many of them could put their houses up for sale, reinflating supply.

“All this investor buying isn’t depleting supply, it’s only shifting it around,” says Mr. Allen of Gorilla Capital.

From sddt.com

San Diego, like many metropolitan areas, has been slammed by the housing market’s decline.

But if reports are right, the area may have already bottomed out at a much more affordable levels.

This assessment was made during the UCLA Anderson Forecast conference at the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina Friday.

Peggy Johnson, a Qualcomm executive vice president, said while the decline in the housing market has been bad news for many, she likes the fact San Diego is now a much more affordable market.

“We couldn’t attract talent here due to the cost of housing,” Johnson related.

The California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.) reported that a starter single-family home was affordable to some 61 percent of San Diego region households in the first quarter of 2009.

The affordability rate was closer to 20 percent as recently as three years ago.

Jerry Nickelsburg, a UCLA Anderson senior economist, said the decline does seem to be leveling off.  He added however, that it might be a while before housing construction picks up again.

A UCLA Anderson Forecast document projects permits for a total of 56,000 housing units of all types will be pulled between this year and 2013 in San Diego County.  The Construction Industry Research Board reported permits for only 5,155 housing units were pulled in 2008. This was the lowest figure in at least a decade.

Nickelsburg said while there could be some modest rebound in residential construction by early next year, he doesn’t expect the building activity to build up a full head of steam before 2011.

“There are a lot of lost construction jobs. You might have a plumber who was working for a homebuilder who got laid off, tried going out on his own, but was unable to make it and is now among the unemployed. It has been difficult out there,” Nickelsburg said. “Home prices have fallen way back and they have remained soft.”

Mark Schniepp, a Santa Barbara-based consulting economist to UCLA Anderson, added that following a 45 percent drop within the past two years or so, he believes prices have bottomed out.

Nickelsburg did say that with few homes being constructed and population continuing to grow, a “huge pent-up demand for housing” is in the process of developing. Schniepp sees this as well.

“Unsold housing is starting to diminish. The existing inventory is getting depleted and it may already be too late to get the best deal,” Schniepp said.

Schniepp, who believes that housing is poised to recover now, nevertheless expressed some concerns about a recent spike in notices of default.

Both Schniepp and Nickelsburg said they believe the defaults shouldn’t return in waves the way they did during the past year, however.  “We’re starting to get these defaults behind us,” Nickelsburg said.

Schniepp said the good news for San Diego County is the housing meltdown started earlier here than it did in most other parts of the country and should thus rebound sooner.

“Housing is poised to recover pretty early,” Schniepp said.

Schniepp said we are far from out of the woods yet noting that while home resales increased by 134 percent between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, most of these were bank owned sales or short sales of properties that were in trouble.

“Homeowner distress was moderating, but it recently rebounded in February and March of this year,” said a UCLA Anderson Forecast document. “Defaults are rising but foreclosures have not followed. The recent (federal) Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, which is targeted to prevent foreclosures by modifying loans or postponing mortgage payments for delinquent homeowners is now just gaining traction. It may help to prevent a sizable portion of defaults from evolving into foreclosure.”

The report said if the number of foreclosures does decline, housing values will stabilize and bank-owned transactions at fire sale prices will no longer impact the market.

“We need to turn these into non-distressed sales so we can turn things around,” Schniepp said.

If that happens, Schniepp said the San Diego region could see the beginning of a housing recovery by mid-summer.

from sddt.com:

Notices of default fell 13.8 percent while trustee’s deeds increased 17.1 percent from March to April, according to statistics from the San Diego County Assessor.  Although trustee deeds increased from a two-year low of 844 to 988, the number is still well below the 2008 average.  Conversely, the 3,673 notices of default, or NODs, filed in April were the third highest total to date, coming off two months of consecutive highs.

Foreclosure moratoriums toward the end of 2008 are the likely cause of both trends. The moratoriums led to a slowdown in notices of default from September to November 2008. Many NODs filed during that time period have worked their way through the typically 90-day foreclosure process, resulting in them becoming trustee’s deeds.

Trustee’s deeds are the last step in the process before a home becomes bank owned.

Year-to-date, the number of NODs filed in 2009 are outpacing 2008 by 10 percent. There have been 14,693 filed this year. 

There has been an 18 percent decline in trustee’s deeds year-to-date from 2009, however, with 4,522 filed since January. 

The lower number of trustee’s deeds resulted in one of the lowest inventory totals in months, said Alan Nevin, director of economic research with MarketPointe Realty Advisors. That, coupled with a recent surge of offers coming in for lower-priced homes, could cause an eventual spike in pricing.

“At some point, and I wish I could give you the date, but there is going to be a couple of major jumps in price,” he said. “It’s not going to be a matter of homes creeping up $5,000 or $10,000, there’s going to be a couple of $50,000 adjustments as soon as we officially run out of REOs (real-estate owned homes). And it doesn’t take long to do that.”

Nevin said he could not project when exactly the spike could occur, but said it is inevitable as the demand grows for a shrinking supply. 

However, the large number of NODs could lead to an increased number of foreclosures within a few months. But San Diego State University professor of Real Estate Leonard Baron said he hopes banks will be able to modify loans of distressed homeowners.

“The banks are going to try not to force people into foreclosure, which, again, completely wastes everyone’s money,” he said.

As predicted, the spin on recent sales activity is fast and furious.  This morning on sports-talk radio even Scott and BR were saying it’s a great time to buy a house!

Here’s an excerpt from today’s U-T’s story:

University of San Diego real estate economist Norm Miller estimated that top-end homes may have lost 10 percent to 15 percent in value in 2008 – enough to represent about half the drop-off in sales count as those homes sank below the million-dollar mark.

Miller said costly homes likely will hold more of their value this year than lower-priced homes because fewer owners are subject to default and foreclosure and thus are not forced to sell.   For other high-end owners, there is no urgency to sell, especially when bargain hunters offer far below the asking price.

“I think homeowners in these more stable neighborhoods are basically sitting on the sidelines – that’s the smartest thing to do,” Miller said.  

As a result, the supply of expensive homes remains low and helps maintain price levels.

Supply of expensive homes remains low?

There are 1,913 detached homes for sale in San Diego County over $1,000,000.

There were 39 that closed escrow last month (a 49-month supply), and 169 are pending.

I think we have plenty of supply, in fact, million-dollar homes for everyone!

There are a couple of other quotes, here’s the link:

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/feb/04/1b4million21147-million-dollar-homes-selling-weak-/?zIndex=47546

From sddt.com:

Smart growth, lending practices and economic conditions were the focus of North County’s real estate forum, Conversations ’09, which drew nearly 200 real estate professionals to California State University, San Marcos on Friday. The event was hosted by the North San Diego County Association of Realtors in partnership with CSUSM.

Economists discussed reasons behind the housing market crash while elected officials and industry members weighed in on North County’s shifting development patterns. North County’s housing market began its decline during the last quarter of 2007. Though sales are down, they are slightly greater than in the rest of the nation, said Robert Brown, professor of economics at CSUSM.

The median home price sold in North County fell from $632,000 in 2007 to $454,000 in 2008, Brown said. Such reduced prices have put homeownership in reach for more people; the current median home price of approximately $300,000 is affordable to 30 percent of the population, Brown said.

“Homeownership is still one piece of the American dream and I think it will continue to be,” said John Tuccillo, former chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. 

While lower home prices may be good news for first-time buyers, it is a bust to homeowners with reduced equity and those interested in selling their homes.

Both Brown and Tuccillo, cannot predict when home prices will begin to rebound. Federal aid to failing banks and tax credits for homebuyers have created a situation of unprecedented uncertainty.

While on the subject of falling home prices, real estate professionals sounded off about predatory lending practices that spurred the foreclosure crisis. John Murphey, vice president of mortgage and lending for San Diego National Bank agreed with Realtors that the overextension of lending practices was the impetus for the recession.

“It all comes down to greed,” Murphey said. “It was a wonderful, wonderful Ponzi scheme that was making everyone all kinds of money.”

While such lending practices resulted in widespread foreclosures, they also forced homebuilders such as Barratt-American into bankruptcy, said panelist Mick Pattinson, chief executive officer and principal of Barratt-American. The company was forced into foreclosure after its lender canceled a loan for homes under construction.

“They don’t practice what they preach,” Pattinson said of U.S. banks. “They insisted I be leveraged one-to-one. They (Bank of America) were leveraged 30-to-1, Lehman Brothers was leveraged 60-to-1.

Though many have lost a great deal, some insist there is no time like the present to invest in real estate.  “In times like these, great wealth is made,” said panelist and executive editor of The Daily Transcript, George Chamberlin.

The recession is likely to preserve North County’s landscape, staving off smart growth development until conditions improve. “Smart growth” is anti-sprawl, transportation-oriented development, said Ivan Holler, director of planning for the Rancho Santa Fe Association of Realtors. The term is likely to shape future housing development in California, accelerated by AB 375, which mandates cities draft strategies for creating sustainable communities and reduce miles driven on roads.

Vacant big-box stores left behind by now-defunct retailers must be sold before new shopping centers can be built, just as foreclosures must clear the market before homebuilding can begin, said Virginia Felker, chairwoman of the Encinitas Planning Commission. Such structures, which dot North County’s landscape are likely to remain at least through the coming decade.

While the city of Carlsbad is resistant to the higher density housing encouraged by the smart growth concept, looking forward, the city hopes to provide living space for its share of the “green” jobs President Obama talks of creating, said Councilman Matt Hall.

With policy issues such as these facing the industry, Conversations ‘09 served as an educational and consensus-building forum for members of the North County real estate industry.

“We need to alert people in real estate that their interests are much broader,” Tuccillo said. “If real estate is your business, politics is your business.”

Here’s a link to Zach’s take on it:

www.bizblogs.nctimes.com

It looks like PruCa has a new president and CEO.  He was featured in Sunday’s UT touting the benefits of value-range marketing:

From coast to coast, range pricing has changed the face of real estate.  The approach, an alternative to the traditional way homes are bought and sold, markets properties within price ranges, rather than at set prices.

One advantage of range pricing is that it allows interested buyers to focus their negotiations within a minimum and maximum price span, rather than trying to guess the price at which the owner will sell.

Another benefit of range pricing is that the seller promises to entertain any offer within the set price range.  That assurance opens the door to negotiations and, most likely, a transaction.  With a fixed-price listing, the seller is free to refuse any offer, and negotiations may not even begin.

Range pricing gives sellers the privilege of determining their home’s market value.  It also enables them to obtain the maximum price possible while keeping their property competitive in the market.

Homes listed with range pricing routinely sell in a fraction of the time it normally takes to sell traditionally priced homes. 

For real estate professionals, range pricing eliminates the listing agent’s two greatest fears: underpricing, which results in the sellers leaving money on the table; and overpricing, which attracts the wrong buyers to the home.

Guys who are president and CEO of a big real estate firm aren’t on the street every day selling homes - they are administrative folks, running the corporation from the ivory tower.  So I won’t blame him for waxing on about their little niche without knowing exactly how the buyers feel about range-pricing.

But I can tell you that buyer view range-pricing with great skepticism, and if they do make an offer, they look at the lower price, and want to go down from there.

A review of the homes in Carlsbad and Encinitas:

Currently pending:

196 not using range-pricing, 77 days on market

32 on range-pricing, averaging 85 days on market

Closed since January 1:

120 not using range-pricing, averaging 73 days on market and 96% SP:LP

28 on range pricing, averaging 78 days on market and 93% SP:LP

Of the 28 that closed, ONLY SEVEN SOLD ABOVE the original low end of the range. 

While the range-pricing might have appeared to be beneficial to sellers in a hot, rising market, today it is one more hurdle thrown in the path.   Today buyers are looking for any reason NOT to buy, and range-pricing gives them another one. 

It should occur to those touting the range-pricing that if some buyers are turned off by range-pricing, that is bad for the sellers! 

Check the stats, it isn’t producing the benefit you think it is.

75% of recent solds closed below the original bottom of the range!

Range-pricing is the lazy man’s way to pricing a home.  Don’t risk alienating any buyers, hire an agent who can pinpoint the value.

Dear Fellow REALTOR®,

For nearly four months, NAR has been working to deliver to you and to our nation a comprehensive plan to stabilize the housing market.

This week, we saw countless hours of hard work pay off – in a MAJOR way – when the federal government implemented NAR’s recommendations to stimulate housing with the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

This bold and unprecedented move to help housing did not happen by chance. Just a few months ago, the auto industry had Congress’ ear. Yet, thanks to countless meetings, letters, phone calls, and public pressure that we – the REALTORS® of America – placed on lawmakers in Washington, D.C., housing emerged as the top priority in the new Administration and in Congress. While some of the items in the Act are controversial and are currently being debated, most of our top priorities were addressed.

Thanks to all of our hard work, America’s homebuyers and homeowners will soon have:

Lower interest rates for home mortgages;

A greater ability to get financing through FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in high-cost areas;

A true tax credit incentive to buy a home NOW; and

Foreclosure mitigation and short-sale standards.

As a direct result of NAR’s advocacy, we hope REALTORS® will see an increase in home sales this year. NAR also continues to make significant progress on our efforts to unclog the pipeline for foreclosures and to address administrative problems with short sales.

Such significant movement on these critical issues is rare. I personally thank and congratulate each and every member of the National Association of REALTORS® for helping to make NAR’s Housing Stimulus Plan a reality. For more information and details on these new laws and programs, visit the Unlock America’s Economy Page on Realtor.org:

http://www.realtor.org/government_affairs/gapublic/gses_conservatorship?LID=RONav0023

Make no mistake — we’re just getting started. NAR will continue to push for other important laws and policies that can help you in your business. From keeping banks out of real estate to providing you with affordable health coverage, you can count on the “Voice for Real Estate” to help you gain an advantage in every kind of market.

That’s the power of NAR, and it’s why I am proud to be a member and to serve as your 2009 President.

Once again, thank you all, and keep up the great work!

Sincerely,

Charles McMillan, CIPS, GRI
2009 NAR President