low housing prices are not neccesarily a bad thing...
stop the ridiculous government interference that allows some of the worse perpetrators of mortgage fraud to live in their house forever without paying (taxpayers end up paying their bills in the long run)
Accountability is important, we need foreclosures and to have them re-sold at true market prices to new buyers who will start paying property taxes, insurance and spending money on all the other items and services that people need to maintain their home, this will help the economy.
Standard and Poors Rating Services are predicting it will take 49 months to clear out all the bank owned "Shadow Inventory" held by U.S. financial institutions at the end of the 4th Quarter of 2010. This is only 1 of the important factors that has to take place for home values to begin to rise, we also need unemployment levels to decrease and general consumer confidence to improve. If you are thinking of waiting to sell for prices to "come back" to what you think your property is worth based on 2005-2007 market peaks I advise preparing yourself for a significant waiting period.
Federal Housing Administration has extended the time they will allow sellers who have owned for less than 90 days to re-sale a property. I'm assuming the same restrictions as before will exist (i.e. 20% max appreciation, full home inspection by lender, 2 appraisals etc., etc.) If you are interested in finding out more info on this topic please call me at 310 874-1278
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-harney-20110116,0,6473194.story
This is good news for Real Estate Investors, First-Time Homebuyers and the Real Estate market in general. Which basically means this is good news for the overall economy.
Prices are stabilizing, Bank owned inventory is going down, Short Sales are increasing which means long wait times, the fiasco in Europe is causing interest rates to drop to ridiculous levels, this will be the last hurrah for low interest rates, I think they will go up to the mid to high 5's and everyone will complain because they are too high which will slow down sales volumes and potentially have a downward effect on prices. The buyers that think they are going to wait to buy because prices are about to collapse won't get what they want, prices will yo-yo but obviously nothing like the drop we saw from 2005-2009. If you can't afford a house for sale in the Los Angeles Real Estate market you want to be in…
The federal tax credit for home buyers is set to expire on April 30th 2010!!
Buyers and Sellers need to be in a purchase contract by this date and the transaction needs to close escrow by June 30th 2010 to qualify for this tax credit.
This a hard federal government deadline and it will _NOT_ be extended!!
Starts for escrows closed after May 1st, 2010 and before January 2011
Total amount of allocated tax credit for all taxpayers may not exceed $100 million for the New Home Credit and $100 million for the First-Time Buyer Credit
State will allocate money for the tax credits on a first-come, first-served basis
“Shadow inventory” is the term many Real Estate prognosticators have been using to describe homes that were foreclosed on which the bank held on to and did not try to resell right away, in hopes of selling them later on when the market is more favorable to the bank, at a higher price. By taking the number of foreclosures that banks have taken back and subtracting the number of foreclosures they have since resold, one can find the number of foreclosures the banks still have possession of, their “shadow inventory”. The numbers of such properties were on the rise until September of 2008, when banks began reselling foreclosure properties at a rate higher than the number of foreclosures they were receiving from trustee sales. Sales transactions have been…
Due to the success of the 2009 Homebuyer Tax Credit program lawmakers (on November 6, 2009) have extended and expanded eligibility for the $8000 Homebuyer Tax Credit into 2010. This popular rebate program proved to be an incentive to first time homebuyers and caused a direct increase in home sales at the end of 2009. The original program was due to expire on November 30, 2009. The Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009 extends this deadline for closing on the homes until April 30, 2010 or until June 30, 2010 for those buyers who have a binding contract in effect by the end of April 2010.
To qualify as a first time homebuyer the buyer must not have owned a primary residence in three years previous to the purchase date. Lawmakers…
With the introduction of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) many homeowners that are not currently behind on their mortgages are being faced with a situation where they are being offered potential relief.
Obviously their first reaction would be to accept this relief but the government had done something smart (yes, give credit where credit is due). They made it mandatory for loan servicers to report derogatory history to the credit bureaus for all borrowers who participate. The creators of HAMP did this to weed out the people that can afford their payments but want a modification of their loan terms on the taxpayer dollar.
Those in true financial need won't mind, they are most likely already behind on their payments and their credit…
