Near Santaluz

by | May 8, 2012 | Market Conditions, REOs for sale | 4 comments

The last video we saw over here (in Santa Monica link) has not gone pending, so where is the market?

There are multiple reasons to blame for not selling:

1. It’s early in the season (it’s not).

2. The right buyer hasn’t come along (if they haven’t by now, they aren’t).

3. I’m not giving it away!!!

Sellers should recognize that even though it is a hot market, it is discriminating – and it’s almost always about price.  Lowering the price until you get offers is the best way to find what the market will bear!!

$150,000 Backyard

by | Apr 22, 2012 | Bubbleinfo TV, REOs for sale | 5 comments

The $726 per month in HOA and Mello-Roos fees may not have sounded like much in the peak era, but today it sounds like $140,000 in purchasing power, given the 4.5% jumbo 30-year fixed rate. Is the list price low enough, or backyard cool enough, to compensate?

Rich Get Richer

by | Mar 22, 2012 | Bailout, Real Estate Investing, REOs for sale | 8 comments

Hat tip to SM and jpinpb for sending this along….from Reuters:

Dan Magder recently gave up a top job with private equity firm Lone Star Funds to strike out on his own and become a landlord.

He’s joining a growing list of big and small investors who see fat profits to be made in renting out foreclosed homes, especially now the U.S. government is moving ahead with a trial project to sell big pools of single-family homes that Fannie Mae currently owns in some of the hardest-hit housing markets.

Investors seeking higher yields are drawn to foreclosures because the rental market is red hot. But the heated competition for foreclosed homes is reminiscent of the frothy expectations that seem to accompany each new Wall Street investing craze.

Even proponents of buying foreclosed homes are advising caution about the kind of returns that investors can expect to reap and the potential negative headlines that can come with being a landlord.

Critics, meanwhile, contend the federal government is fostering a transfer of wealth of sorts by selling big pools of foreclosed homes to big fund investors and high-net-worth individuals. There’s also concern that some of the players who helped create the housing crisis will now benefit by buying foreclosed homes at a steep discount.

Between them, Fannie and Freddie Mac own more than 200,000 foreclosed homes. The nation’s banks own more than 600,000 single-family homes, according to RealtyTrac, a housing tracking service.

(more…)

Foreclosure Economy

by | Mar 11, 2012 | REOs for sale, Thinking of Buying? | 27 comments

Thanks daytrip for the support! From npr.org:

Meet Willow Tufano, age 14: Lady Gaga fan, animal lover, landlord.

In 2005, when Willow was 7, the housing market was booming. Home prices in some Florida neighborhoods nearly doubled from one month to the next. Her family moved into a big house; her mom became a real estate agent.

But as Willow moved from childhood to adolescence, the market turned, and the neighborhood emptied out. “Everyone is getting foreclosed on here,” she says.

After the collapse, Willow’s mom started working with investors who wanted to bid on cheap, foreclosed homes. Sometimes Willow tagged along.

One day, she went to a house that an investor wanted to flip. “It was filled with all kinds of stuff!” Willow says. “I was like, ‘I can sell this stuff if he’d want to let me have it.’ “

That was fine with the investor. So Willow sold the furniture and appliances from the house on Craigslist. She did the same thing with a bunch more houses. After a while, she was clearing about $500 a month, and saving a lot of it.

One day, Willow’s mom, Shannon, saw a two-bedroom, concrete-block home on auction for $12,000 — down from $100,000 at the peak of the bubble. Shannon was telling her husband about the house, when Willow piped up.

“I was like, ‘What if I bought a house? That would be crazy,’ ” Willow says. Willow wound up splitting the house with her mom. Willow plans to buy her mom out in the next few years, and put her name on the title when she turns 18.

The place was a mess when they bought it — “like there was a riot or something,” Willow says.

They cleaned it up and rented it out to a young couple for $700 a month.

As I was working on this story, I kept thinking that when a 14-year-old kid can buy a house, the market must have hit bottom. I kept saying this to Willow, and she’d sort of vaguely nod.

But it’s hard for Willow to see herself as symbolic of anything. To a 14-year-old kid in Florida, the housing collapse is basically the only world she’s known. It’s the landscape. It’s a Craigslist hobby.

She’s thinking she may save up for a second home. (Willow and her tenants below)

Rat Pack-ish

by | Mar 10, 2012 | Bubbleinfo TV, REOs for sale | 10 comments

This looks like a run-out old 1970’s fixer in the San Marcos school district but it is on the best side of the golf course were you’ll get afternoon sun and no golf balls! At the peak there were sales of $1.775 and $1.8 million on this side of the street!

Regardless of how attractive the list price is, buyers look at houses like this and automatically want to deduct at least $100,000 for repairs and improvements – but banks aren’t going to budge during the first couple of weeks.

If you see houses like this blowing off the market early, you know that the frenzy is back:

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