Diana is finally coming around to believe what we’ve been saying all along. Fromcnbc.com:
After months of declines, the foreclosure numbers are going up again. Foreclosure starts, the first phase of the process, rose 9 percent in May month-to-month, the first increase in over two years, according to a new report from RealtyTrac.
Bad news, right? Only if you are the one losing your home.
For the overall housing market, this is exactly what needs to happen to return to health. For hungry investors, it means more opportunity.
There are still millions of delinquent loans which will never “cure,” and the sooner they get processed and sold, the better for home prices and home buyer confidence.
As the so-called, “shadow inventory” of distressed properties (seriously delinquent loans and bank owned homes yet unlisted) drops, down to 1.5 million units in the first three months of this year from 1.8 million a year ago, according to a new report from CoreLogic, the real inventory of potential homes for sale can stabilize and become a more dependable reading for buyers.
How do you believe existing supply numbers if you know there is far more lurking in the pipeline, but you have no idea when it will hit the market?
“The decline in the shadow inventory is a positive development because it removes some of the downward pressure on house prices,” said CoreLogic’s chief economist Mark Fleming.
We’re seeing that in Phoenix and parts of California, where home prices are finally beginning to rise again. Much of the new strength is due to heavy investor demand and a lack of distressed supply for them to buy. Given that backdrop, seeing a rise in foreclosure starts now is not so dire.
You don’t have to worry about a pile of rotting meat, if there is a hungry pack of wolves waiting in the wings to gobble it up. That’s why lenders are trying not to repossess properties, but instead do short sales (where the home is sold for less than the value of the mortgage) or let the homes go at auction.
“The lenders are pushing those pre-foreclosure sales. They recognize the demand from the investors. I would expect the numbers to continue to increase from a year ago,” says Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac. “We do hear a lot about, not just in terms of the hedge funds, but individual buyers looking for foreclosures in their area are having to compete against many other buyers.”
Georgia, which last month gained the dubious distinction of holding the nation’s highest foreclosure rate, leapfrogging the usual suspects (CA, AZ, FL, NV), is a prime example. Investors who are running out of options in the sand states are turning their attention to the Georgia, where overall foreclosure activity and bank repossessions both jumped over 30 percent.
The faster the process, the faster these investors will eat up the inventory, and as in Arizona, the faster overall home prices will recover.
There are now new state laws, government bailouts and a $25 billion national mortgage servicing settlement designed to safeguard consumers and keep as many possible in their homes.
However, a sizeable portion of troubled loans will inevitably have to go to foreclosure, and the sooner the better, especially as investor demand to buy and rent these properties, often back to the original owner, is high.
SAN DIEGO — Caltrans officials sought public comment Wednesday on proposals designed to ease congestion along the interchange between the I-5 and State Route 56.
Currently, there is no direct freeway connector between the southbound 5 and eastbound 56, and between the westbound 56 and northbound 5.
“It’s like banging your head against the wall. It’s slow,” said commuter Greg Perez about making to the transition to the 5 north.
During peak travel times, Caltrans estimates it takes approximately 10 to 15 minutes to transition from one freeway to another, depending on the direction. Without construction to supplement the interchange, those travel times are expected to double by 2030.
“I think it’s important to say there is no perfect alternative,” said Allan Kosup, I-5 Corridor Director for Caltrans. Options include building direct connectors between the freeways, adding auxiliary lanes on I-5, doing a mix of both, or doing nothing.
The price tag to do something ranges from $95 million to $250 million.
WASHINGTON —Average rates on fixed mortgages rose this week, the first increase in seven weeks. But mortgage rates remain near historic lows, boosting prospects for home sales this year.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the 30-year loan increased to 3.71 percent. That’s up from 3.67 percent last week, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.
The average rate on the 15-year mortgage, a popular refinancing option, rose to 2.98 percent. That’s up from 2.94 percent last week, also a record low.
San Diego County finished the spring-homebuying season in positive territory in prices and sales among all types of housing, Wednesday’s DataQuick report showed. Single-family home resales, in particular, closed out a blockbuster month in May.
The overall median price in May rose 3.2 percent from a year ago to $335,000, matching the median 18 months ago. When compared to April, prices rose 1.7 percent.
The county recorded 3,750 total sales last month, rising 21.5 percent from a year ago and 5.4 percent month-to-month.
Sales saw the most strength in the single-family resale segment, where buyers closed on 2,488 homes. That’s the highest figure for this category since September 2005, when 2,671 were sold, according to DataQuick stats. All regions of the county showed positive sales changes when compared to a year ago.
The real estate tracker reported home sales picked up across Southern California, especially in coastal regions, “where move-up markets have picked up steam,” this month’s analysis said.
More than 22 percent of recorded Southern California sales in May were $500,000 and up. That share is up from 21 percent the previous month and a year ago, DataQuick analysts found.
“May’s share of sales above $500,000 was the highest since July 2010, when they also made up 22.4 percent of the market,” the report added. The percentage of homes sold in Southern California that surpassed the $500,000 market was at its lowest in January 2009, when it was 13.8 percent.
Threatening to destroy whatever vestigial rubble of innocence was left standing after Cash Cab decimated your faith in reality TV, the Hooked On Houses blog has posted a story revealing that HGTV’s House Hunters is, in fact, totally fake. Of course, it’s called the show fake before, beginning its exposé of the popular series with a 2010 post that delved into the producers’ own self-admitted revelation that, “for quicker turnaround,” they “sometimes” choose buyers who are already in escrow on their chosen property, rather than buyers who are actually hunting for houses, as one might expect from a show named House Hunters.
Instead, its participants only pretend to consider multiple options, faking a protracted deliberation of fake-weighing the pros and cons, all before fake-arriving at a final decision and making a fake offer that they already made long ago. For their performance—and much of it does involve acting over long hours of filming, until they provide the acceptable fake reaction to a house they’re not even interested in or are already partway to owning—they receive $500, and obviously, nothing in the way of actual help finding a house. One former subject went so far as to claim, “They won’t even consider you for the show unless you already have a purchase agreement signed, and have access to both your new home and your former home for the duration of the filming period.”
Anyway, as we said, this is all apparently old news (if not exactly common knowledge), but it all became a little more concrete with this firsthand testimony from one such participant, Bobi Jensen, who backed up those claims by describing how the show faked every single aspect of their story, drafting them to appear only after they’d already closed on a new house, forcing them through multiple takes of fake conversations, and—in one of the most revealing instances of how much the show can often be completely staged—taking them to houses that “weren’t even for sale…they were just our two friends’ houses who were nice enough to madly clean for days in preparation for the cameras.”
So basically, just assume that everything you see on reality TV, even in its most innocuous and straightforward forms, is totally and completely fake, in case you weren’t already doing that.
I hope this is old news to most of the bubbleinfo readers: that House Hunters is a staged event.
Combine these real-estate reality shows with the research available on the internet, and you have consumers who feel much more confident about how to buy and sell homes. People come in ready to direct their realtor on how to do their job, and expect their experience to be similar to what they see on television.
In most cases, it isn’t as easy as it looks.
Why? Because you have people on both sides of the table who are undergoing a life-changing event, with many different variables. An experienced agent knows how to manage those variables, and make your transition smoother.
After months of declines, the foreclosure numbers are going up again. Foreclosure starts, the first phase of the process, rose 9 percent in May month-to-month, the first increase in over two years, according to a new report from RealtyTrac.
