This is not a political endorsement – I hope all the politicians jump on board! FromHW:
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says the government should let the foreclosure process run its course, so the housing market can reach its bottom.
Romney made those statements in an interview recorded by the Las Vegas Review Journal this week.
The state of Nevada — Las Vegas in particular — has been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis. When asked how he’d fix housing, Romney told the Las Vegas paper, he would let the foreclosure process go forward to clean up the process.
“Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” he said. “Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix them up and turn them around.”
Romney took shots at the Obama administration, saying the president “has slow walked the foreclosure processes that have long existed and, as a result, we still have a foreclosure overhang.”
Romney also pushed back at the credit given to first-time homebuyers in the wake of the housing meltdown, calling it “insufficient and inadequate to turn around the housing market.” “It was like cash-for-clunkers,” he said. “Throwing money at something which is not market-oriented.”
Romney did say the idea of helping certain homeowners refinance their mortgages is worth further consideration. But he added, “I am not signing on until I find out who is going to pay and who is going to get bailed out.”
Fellow presidential candidate Ron Paul also announced a fiscal plan that included a housing reference this week. The congressman said he would end funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of an aggressive plan to tackle the nation’s deficit.
They keep nibbling around the edges, let’s just throw them on the market and see what happens! FromHW:
The federal government can get rid of the more than 280,000 foreclosed homes on its books without having to sell them at massive discounts, according to a coalition of companies proposing to manage the disposition process.
The key is to provide a form of insurance against home price declines, says the Coalition for Recovery of Real Estate, a consortium of firms that responded to a request for information issued by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development seeking ideas on how best to dispose of the federal inventory of real estate owned properties. The government owns roughly half of the REO inventory in the U.S. through HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
High-level executives at FHFA have expressed interest in the proposal, and recently requested clarification on some details of the plan, said Howard Blum, a spokesman for the group.
“It is clear that current housing market economics are severely impaired by buyer fear, which leaves sellers with no real options other than to drastically reduce prices, thereby creating economic loss for the seller,” says the coalition in its confidential RFI response, a copy of which was provided to HousingWire.
That buyer fear, along with a lack of creative tools to adequately re-market REO property, is one of the two biggest issues with the current state of the housing market, the document says.
“CORRE believes that home price protection is a solution to both of these issues and central to the CORRE strategy,” says the group, which includes two nationwide real estate brokerages, a mortgage lender, a mortgage insurer, a major servicer of distressed loans and a large law firm.
That’s in addition to investment bank Gleacher & Co. Securities Inc., which would handle property-level analysis and administration, plus securitization, and EquityLock Solutions, a Greenwood, Colo.-based company that would provide the home price protection plans. Blum requested that other partners remain unidentified.
EquityLock, which has been in business for about three years, launched the HPP products earlier this year. The risk it takes on those contracts is sold to Equity Assurance, a wholly owned insurance subsidiary.
The HPP plans essentially insure home buyers against price declines by guaranteeing REO purchasers a refund of up to 20% of their purchase price if an FHFA index of area home prices declines between the time of purchase and an eventual resale.
The guarantee applies to properties held for a minimum of two years and resold up to 15 years later, and would be included on properties that were pooled and/or securitized.
The CORRE group proposes analyzing the government’s REO inventory to determine the best possible exit strategy for each property — including sales to owner-occupants, sales to investors, securitization of the REO assets, and demolition of severely dilapidated property.
Rentals could also be part of the mix. In extremely weak markets, “some of the REO properties will have to be sold to investors to place into rental stock until those markets recover with time,” says the proposal. “As a very last resort, the CORRE process would place these REO properties into rental or rent-to-own portfolios with no further recourse to the enterprises post-sale.”
The coalition says by eliminating the need for drastic price cuts and encouraging homeownership, its plan would liquidate the government’s REO portfolios in a cost-effective manner, lessen the potential use of taxpayer funds in disposing of those REOs and provide a potential future revenue stream for the government.
We’ve wondered if NAR would provide some leadership for the real estate market, but they want someone else to give them the solutions. For those who are hoping that realtors at the state level might offer some helpful insight, take a chance on wasting almost three minutes of your life here (or at least make it to the technical analysis at the 0.27-second mark):
As I contemplate recommendations for the NAR president (your thoughts are encouraged!), it should be obvious to him that the real estate industry is advancing with, or without, the help of realtor organizations.
Here’s an interesting website that agents have been using lately: www.kazork.com – shouldn’t NAR be blazing this trail?
Mission Statement
Transparency, simplicity and freedom.
What is Kazork
Kazork is a Software as a Service (SaaS) used by real estate agents, home sellers and homebuyers to complete online real estate transactions. Users registered on Kazork complete transactions anywhere in the world. Kazork does not list or sell real estate. Kazork is simply a SaaS for users to conduct their own real estate transactions online.
Kazork Objective
To provide home sellers, homebuyers, real estate agents and other real estate professionals the ability to complete simple, efficient, paperless and transparent online real estate transactions.
Benefits
Kazork benefits everyone involved in a real estate transaction. If you are a real estate agent, Kazork streamlines and simplifies the offer submission process by greatly reducing paperwork, hassle and secrecy. If you are a buyer, Kazork allows you to view all other offers on the table, which creates more prudent decision making. If you are a seller, Kazork simply determines the highest and best offer for your property in the shortest amount of time. Kazork allows everyone to complete a transparent real estate transaction in a quick, easy and transparent method.
When was the last time you saw the NAR come out with anything innovative, if ever?
While you’ll deserve the three minutes of your life back after watching this NAR video, at least our president says he is looking for answers. The NAR Expo is in Anaheim next month, so I’m going to take him up on his offer when he is here and deliver recommendations to solve the housing crisis:
Hat tip to MDS for posting that Redfin has already shut down the agents’ scouting reports. Check their blog; the comments from competing agents were running hot:
Scouting Report Data No Longer Available
Dear Customers,
Redfin is suspending access to Scouting Report, the online tool that publishes deal histories and performance metrics for agents across the United States. We will continue to show this information for our own agents.
Our primary reason for excluding other agents is that the data we exposed has too many inaccuracies, mostly because agents work informally in teams, or don’t formally record who represented a buyer in a deal. You can read more about the decision on our blog.
We apologize to consumers and agents alike for discontinuing the service, and hope to restore it in the coming months.
Redfin is doing all the things that the association of realtors should be doing – if they start their own MLS they could take over the industry.
Hat tip to CM for sending this along, from thenytimes.com:
The real estate listing and brokerage site Redfin has added a tool that gives home sellers access to details about the performance of real estate agents in more than a dozen major markets.
The move continues the continuing Internet shake-up of the real estate world. Web sites like Trulia and Zillow, and local and regional players like streeteasy.com in the New York and New Jersey area, have empowered consumers by putting electronic information about sales and home values at their fingertips. Redfin says it is going a step further, by providing sales data linked to individual agents, to help sellers select a professional to market their home.
The tool can help sellers find agents who are active and who have had success in their specific neighborhood, said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. Using information from local multiple-listing services, where agents list the home they are representing for sale, the “Scouting Report” tool provides data on roughly one million agents, he said.
The tool isn’t comprehensive.
Various M.L.S. restrictions mean the data isn’t available in Redfin’s hometown of Seattle, for instance, nor in Palm Springs, Calif.; parts of Atlanta; California’s wine country; and Westchester County, in New York.
And because the data goes back three years at the most — a period when home sales have been slow — some agents may show no deals at all when you search by their name. But even so, Redfin is going beyond what has generally been available to consumers online, Mr. Kelman said. “Our goal in releasing this information is to help consumers make informed choices about which real estate agent to choose.”
In markets where the tool works, sellers can search for agents by name and see their current listings; how many homes the agent has sold in the last three years, or in the past year in some cases; where the homes are located on a map; photos of the homes; the median sales price; the average number of price cuts for each property; and other details.
Scouting information is available for the following markets served by Redfin: Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and the Bay Area; Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles; Chicago; Long Island, N.Y.; Austin and Dallas; parts of Atlanta; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Denver; and Las Vegas.
The tool provides information about all agents in many of the markets, Mr. Kelman said, not just those who work directly for Redfin or who partner with it. (Partner agents work for other firms, but agree to offer commission discounts to Redfin clients.) Some markets offer information on all agents, even if they have no affiliation with Redfin.
Mr. Kelman says M.L.S. data is generally accurate and up to date, but if an agent finds inaccuracies, the site outlines a procedure to have the information corrected.
“I think the best real estate agents are going to love this,” he said.
Hat tip to clearfund for sending this along – isn’t it just a matter of time before we’ll see these here being used for low-income and/or senior housing?
It seems difficult to overstate the versatility of the humble shipping container. Just recently we’ve seen it used to create a pop-up shopping mall and a touring kitchen; past sightings have included restaurants, pop-up health clinics, and hotel rooms.
The latest spotting? Citihub Mandaluyong, a dormitory in the Philippines that’s built from shipping containers and designed for low-income workers and students.
The brainchild of Manila’s Arcya Commercial Corporation, Citihub Mandaluyong is situated on a stretch of land in Mandaluyong along the Pasig River, according to a report on the Manila Bulletin. Four shipping containers make up the dorm, which includes separate air-conditioned housing and bathrooms for men and women. Pricing is just PHP 1,500 per month including water and electricity. (about $35US)
Besides fulfilling what’s clearly a pressing unmet need, Citihub Mandaluyong is also a perfect example of what our sister site would call a functionall offering — one that’s simple, inexpensive and designed primarily with low-income consumers in mind. It also seems ripe with global potential; one to emulate in your neck of the woods?
We need market clearing – bring on the foreclosures!FromCNNMoney.com:
If the Obama administration really wants to save the housing market, it should speed up the foreclosure process — not prolong the inevitable, experts say.
Four years into the housing crisis, the real estate market is still teetering on the edge. The Obama administration has tried one program after another to stem the tide of foreclosures with limited success. And it is continuing to look for ways “to ease the burden on struggling homeowners,” though no new initiative is imminent, the White House said this week.
But some housing experts argue that the administration should go in a different direction than it has in the past. Instead, they say it’s time to focus on pushing many of those delinquent borrowers through the foreclosure process and putting foreclosed properties back into use.
While some of the 2.2 million loans in foreclosure can still be saved, many are too far gone, they say. Some 37% have not made a payment in more than two years, while another 34% have not made a payment in 12 to 23 months, according to Lender Processing Services.
“Loans enter into foreclosure, but never come out,” said Thomas Lawler, founder of Lawler Economic & Housing Consulting. “If this keeps going on, you have a continual overhang that never goes away.”
Delaying foreclosure increases the percentage of homeowners who’ll likely never catch up, Lawler said. In 2009, only 6% of delinquent borrowers were more than two years behind. And it means vacant properties still in limbo could fall even further into disrepair, hurting the value of the surrounding housing market.
Lawler is not the first to warn about the consequences of slowing the foreclosure process. Since the housing crisis began, several experts cautioned that foreclosure prevention efforts may only prolong the pain.
Open houses are powerful tools when used within a specific marketing strategy.
Getting the price right is easier in the newer tract neighborhoods.
Demand is fine – buyers are ready, willing, and able – and will pay a fair price.
Most sellers are 5% to 10% too high on their initial list price, and then don’t adjust quickly.
The summer season will be over by mid-July (4 weeks away).
There is very little chatter in the media about specific market details – just vague numbers that always seem to sound bad. Does N.A.R., or other influential industry leaders, try to educate the participants – both clients and agents? Why doesn’t somebody roll out real facts, and solutions?
It’s because they are gripped with fear, and scared they might say the wrong thing – and at this point, they really don’t know what to say.
Anybody with a microphone is too far removed from the day-to-day action to really know what’s happening, and won’t investigate.
I’m going to keep laying out the basics, in hopes that somebody is listening:
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says the government should let the foreclosure process run its course, so the housing market can reach its bottom.
