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Friday, August 31, 2012

23% of Homes Sold in Q2 were Foreclosures

According to RealtyTrac's latest Foreclosure Sales Report for the second quarter of 2012, nearly a fourth of the homes sold in that period of time were foreclosures. This means that there is now a limited supply of foreclosed homes available for sale in some markets. However, the past three months have seen an increase in foreclosure starts which may help to ease the shortage in the coming months. Also, the average price for these foreclosure sales increased in Q2, bu they were sold at a price that is 32% lower than the average price of a non-foreclosed home. Some of these foreclosure starts are translating to short sales. The number of properties that are under short sale status are increasing because lenders are opting for that instead of entering the complicated foreclosure process. These are also known as pre-foreclosure homes. On average, these homes sold for an average price of $185,062 in Q2, which is up 5% from the prevous quarter's record low.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

FHFA's New Guidelines for Short Sales

The FHFA has announced that all existing short sale programs will now be consolidated into one standard program. This short sale program is being issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in hopes of providing clear guidelines for mortgage servicers that will allow them to quickly and easily qualify eligible borrowers for a short sale. These new guildlines are going into effect on November 1, 2012. Any homeowner who has a mortgage through one of the GSE's will be allowed to sell their home in a short sale if they experience an eligible hardship such as the death of a borrower, divorce or loss of job. These reasons will not require further approval from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac which helps to prove their commitment to streamlining these types of programs that help homeowners avoid foreclosure. It helps to stabilize communities and the economy.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Home Sales on Rise for 13 Straight Months!

According to the July RE/MAX National Housing Report, home sales have been on the rise for the past 13 consecutive months! The home sales in July 2012 were 10.3% higher than they were in July 2011. It shows that the housing market is finally improving. Median home prices are now higher than they were last year, and have been for 6 months in a row. The only challenge that this recovering market is seeing now has to do with housing inventory. The amount of homes that are available for sale has decreased by 26.8% compared to last year. In fact, if there was a greater inventory available to homebuyers, home sales would most definitely be higher. There is an increased demand but a shrinking inventory. The only things that are lacking now would be lower unemployment rates and better availability of mortgages.

Friday, August 17, 2012

4.5% Drop in Mortgage Applications

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association's Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending August 10, 2012, the number of mortgage applications has dropped by 4.5% just since the week before. Many lenders have been left puzzled over the sudden drop. According to the Market Composite Index which measures mortgage loan application volume, this decrease was based on seasonally adjusted figures. Had it been unadjusted, the decrease would have actually been closer to 4.7%. In this slowly re-stabilizing economy, we cannot afford to see statistical drops like this. Hopefully the number of loan applications submitted will rise again soon, which would indicate an improvement for the U.S. housing market.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Local Governments to Seize Underwater Mortgages?

If you consider the state of the housing market with all of the homes that are still underwater on their mortgages, you may come to the conclusion that the federal programs that promised to help homeowners have not been very successful. True, they have helped many, but overall their assistance is limited.

A new idea has come up that has struck a nerve with mortgage financers: eminent domain. Local governments could write down mortgages in the same way that a piece of land is condemned. The town or county would get the court's approval to pay a "fair market" price to the lendor or investor that is holding a homeowner's underwater mortgage. This would be similar to credit companies selling debt to collectors in that the amount would be substantially less than the unpaid balance. Once approved, the local government would sell the smaller mortgage back to the homeowner who would refinance that amount with a new loan and basically get a second chance on paying their mortgage.

This idea has drawn a lot of controversy. The FHFA has threatened unspecified action against local governments if they opt to seize underwater homes through eminent domain. The FHFA regulates the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae hold nearly half of the outstanding mortgages in the US.

In the past, eminent domain has been used in small cases to claim property for new roads for facilities that would somewhat benefit the community. Critics say that seizing individual properties would only benefit homeowners by giving them a break on their loan balance. It is argued that these seizures would serve the public by boosting local housing markets and helping to speed up economic recovery. Despite this, the FHFA is understandably opposed to the idea since they would lose money on every case.

Many opponents of the eminent domain idea claim that this would raise an issue of "moral hazard". If homeowners were given these second chances by having their underwater mortgages cut, they would be encouraged in the future to take on debts that cannot be paid back. It would bring about a whole slew of irresponsible homebuyers who think they can just get bailed out later.

What do you think? Is eminent domain a good idea or would it hurt the economy?


Tuesday, August 7, 2012

80 Metros Show Economic Improvement

According to the National Association of Home Builders and the First American Improving Markets Index (IMI) for August, there have been vast improvements in the housing markets of 80 metropolitan areas. Statistics are taken in these cities across 32 states plus the District of Columbia. The index identifies metropolitan areas that improved in areas such as housing permits, employment, and housing prices for at least six consecutive months. 75 of the metros remained in their respective places on the list from the previous report. There were five new ones that were added and nine that fell from the list because of changes in housing prices. Keep in mind that all of these different metro areas have different characteristics in terms of the condition of their economy and their employment situations. The one thing that most of the markets have in common, though, is the newly enforced strict lending practices that is slightly hindering both builders and buyers. The IMI tracks the markets by measuring employment growth, house price appreciation and housing permit growth. They use the latest available data and measure it on three different occasions to get an accurate overview. In order for a metropolitan area to show improvement, all three of those measurements must improve statistically for at least six months. The index has confirmed that metros are growing increasingly stronger and the economy is stabilizing.

Friday, August 3, 2012

BofA and GSE's Ongoing Battle

Bank of America has been in the news for quite some time now. They were accused of selling mortgages to people who did not actually qualify. The government sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, want BofA to buy back all of the mortgages. This has been a debate for a while and it hasn't made much progress. A settlement would be good news for shareholders as it would alleviate some of the pressure from BofA's stocks. The GSE's have been more strict regarding the bank's policies for mortgages now since the bank accounts for 58% of the GSE's total mortgage repurchase requests. Our sources say that the bank and the GSE's talks have become more productive in the past few weeks and are closing in on an agreement.

Earlier this week a proposal to reduce the mortgages of underwater homes in the U.S. was rejected. FHFA denied the request to allow the GSE's to lower the principal on mortgages where homeowners owe more than the house is actually worth.

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