First off, let’s be clear about this so called recovery every talking head in the media keeps talking about – it’s not your parents or grandparents recovery. It might be your great-grandparents recovery though! No economic downturn has had such a damaging effect on American Home ownership since the 1930’s and that effect is not going to go away anytime soon. This has been different from the 1930’s in that in the 1930’s destruction of housing values was pretty much across the board from Rich to Poor; in the current event the damage was primarily at the bottom and middle with homes over $750,000 – $1,000,000 range actually increasing in price during the period of this downturn. Since the end of World War II housing downturns have been generally short lived, in the eighteen to twenty four month range, and primarily inventory adjustment events in this case which began in the third quarter of 2005, the downturn has been primarily a loss of confidence – a much harder basis to recover from in all cases.
Technology is likely to have a significant impact on the structure of the real estate industry in the coming recovery for a number of reasons. Real estate transactions have basically two related and separate parts: the seller side and the buyer side.
The Buyer Side will not be as greatly impacted by change as the seller side due to some factors which are basic to the process. The impact of technology on the buyer’s side will primarily be on the media not on agents and buyers. Most people who have been involved with the real estate industry over the last ten or fifteen years have known that print advertising has declined in efficacy dramatically. Virtually all buyers begin and continue their home searches on line. Brokers and real estate franchises that have been tracking the source of their business for many years have seen that buyer leads that came primarily from print advertising before the internet have seen the number of viable leads from print advertising drop to a very small number of viable buyer leads. The last and most effective use of print advertising has become open house events or very short term immediate demand sort of inventory like rentals. Buyers still however require the assistance of a licensed real estate agent to help them work their way through a real estate transaction and access and view properties as well as negotiate and consummate a real estate transaction. Fees for trained and competent Buyers Agents are likely to remain in the 2.5% to 3.5% of the transaction price that they have been in for many years due to the high time consumption and relatively high failure rate that Buyer Sides of transactions experience.
The Seller’s Side of real estate is likely to see the greatest changes. For a decade or more before the Great Recession large banks had been trying to repeal laws that barred them from providing real estate services such as listing and selling homes for their customers. Now as a result of the unprecedented number of foreclosures in the hands of banks they have become The Dominant Sellers of real estate in the United States. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac established 6% as the official normal commission that they would accept on both short sales and foreclosures and required that commissions be spit equally between buyer’s side and seller’s side in a real estate transaction. Every real estate agent in the United States has been trained that establishment of “Normal” or “Set Fees” has an anti Trust violation since the late 1970’s, however the big banks and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been seen as exempt from these laws. This has resulted in a situation where the majority of listings that sell are listed by Bank/Lenders that own them at a nominal rate of 6% with local real estate agents and agencies but using a conduit of third party companies, that collect hefty referral fees on their listings, leave the selling agencies to work with 1.5% to 2% of the actual sales price rather than the 3% to 4% that they have historically have had to work with since the end of World War II. These agents and agencies have been able to do this because of the downward changes in their cost structure do to the changes in technology.
It is unlikely that as non-institutional home sellers are able to re-enter the home selling market as prices stabilize, and even rise in the foreseeable future, that the advantage to both consumers and Realtors of lower fees on the listings side of real estate transactions will be lost, which have been made possible by the reduced operating costs possible for Realtors due to the changes in technology.
By Dick Thackston CRB, ABR, ABRM, Broker NH, MA & VT
banks, commission, economic downturn, economic recovery, Fannie Mae, fees, foreclosure, Freddie Mac, operating costs, real estate, REALTORs, REO, short sale, technology
According to several industry sources the average value of bank owned, REO Properties, has actually increased in the last years while the value of non-bank owned real estate has dropped on average! There are several reasons in the realm of conventional wisdom as to why this is happening; the most common reason given is that REO properties are being bought up by investment groups and turned into rentals thus driving up the price of REO’s on average. While this certainly is a factor there are other factors that are probably more important to the change in real estate values that I see happening as a “boots on the ground REALTOR”.
Here’s how I see it. The initial wave of foreclosures was for the most part badly maintained and marginal properties: no real surprise that the most marginal home owners were the least able to maintain and upgrade their homes and least able to hang on through tough, tougher and tougher economic times. These homes languished off the market as so called “shadow inventory” for months and in many cases years due to a hostile regulatory and legal environment in which mortgage holders found themselves, thus slowing up the process of foreclosure, resale and return of these residential assets to productive use. No news there really. What the facts recently made public noted about rising REO prices and declining price on non-bank owned real estate indicates is not that we are “moving toward the middle” but in-fact indicate that we are continuing to crater the housing market in slow motion.
This pattern of rising REO value reflects exactly what many experienced REO REALTORS have noted over the last six to nine months: we are getting better quality inventory. The better quality inventory is the result of the economic damage moving up the food chain from the economic bottom into the middle and above. The middle class buyer that bought his house at a fair market price in 2009 is likely to find that when he goes to sell his home today it’s worth the same or a little less and that any improvements he made have added little or no value. So, if they can’t hang on and they can’t sell they let it go. Thus leading to a better class REO property and putting further and continuing pressure on the middle of the market.
What does it all mean? It means that there is no foreseeable improvement coming for non-REO properties and that REO properties will continue to dominate the residential real estate market. Warren Buffet is right: single family homes are likely to continue to be an excellent investment for those who can“buy and hold” but only for those who can buy and hold either as owner occupants or as investors looking at increasingly higher and higher rents over the foreseeable future.
By Dick Thackston CRB, ABR, ABRM
Broker NH, MA & VT
bank owned, economic, economy., foreclosure, home owner, home value, home values, housing market, investment, investor, middle class, News, real estate, real estate value, realtor, rental, REO, resale, residential property, short sale, single family
CORONA, Calif., March 12, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — PartnerFirst is pleased to announce the renewal of its contract with ServiceLink as its nationwide short sale agent network. Through this alliance, now entering its third year, thousands of distressed homeowners can use PartnerFirst agents to resolve their mortgage problems.
PartnerFirst powers the ServiceLink Short Sale Agent Network which connects distressed homeowners with qualified real estate professionals. Through its education platform, including the Pre-foreclosure Specialist Certification (PSC), PartnerFirst educates agents to help distressed homeowners.
Regarding the ongoing alliance with PartnerFirst, Leo Esposito, ServiceLink’s Senior Vice President of Loss Mitigation and Asset Disposition, said, “ServiceLink is pleased with the agent education services and the quality of agents provided by PartnerFirst to power the ServiceLink Short Sale Agent Network. This marks the third year that the two firms will be working together to achieve solutions for the nation’s housing crisis.”
ServiceLink, the national lender platform of Fidelity National Financial, has managed over $10 billion in short sale transactions, working with five of the nation’s top ten lenders. With its experience in working with lenders, investors, mortgage insurers, and junior lien holders, ServiceLink has the flexibility to provide efficient solutions and expeditious closings.
The short sale alternative preserves neighborhood values, minimizes loan loss severities for investors, and provides a dignified resolution for distressed borrowers.
For more information, or to sign up as a ServiceLink short sale agent, visit: http://www.servicelinkfnf.com/downloads/ShortSaleAgentPackage.pdf .
SOURCE PartnerFirst
asset disposition, distressed home owners, Financial, foreclosure, home sales, housing market, Lost Mitigation, Market, Mortgage, PartnerFirst, preforeclosure, real estate, realtor, REALTORs, recession, REO, ServiceLink, short sale
By Dick Thackston
2012 is likely to be defined, in the real estate world, by three “E’s”: Expectations, Employment and Europe/Economy. No matter what your political belief system is, no matter how much or how little money you have, these three factors will permeate American life and the economy more than any others in the next eleven and a half months.
Expectations: In the world of sales there is an old truism, “To live with the classes sell to the masses!” those will be the watch words for real estate this year. 2012’s real estate will almost certainly only be about first time buyers and large volumes of REO properties being sold to investors. Both first time buyers and investors have some striking similarities: both groups feel they are buying at the bottom of the market and both groups have an expectation of housing prices increasing over the next three to five years and both groups have an expectation of rents remaining and going higher. (Personally, I agree with both groups.) First time buyers not only have the family formation/nesting instinct driving them into purchasing, but they have the ever increasing cost of renting versus home ownership. Most first time home buyers are renters now and are looking at homes that will have monthly mortgage payments 15-20% below their current rent. Landlords/Investors are looking at the exact same equation from the other side and seeing that almost anything they buy now will have positive cash flow of at least 10% and often up to 20%. The group that is melting away at this time is the investors looking to buy, fix and flip, the risks are too great of carrying a vacant property or over improving and taking a hit in what is in fact a flat market, and of course move-up buyer’s remain effectively locked out of the market for the foreseeable future. Until move up buyers can sell and move there is likely to be no updraft in the real estate market, but when it does begin it will be huge.
Employment: In New Hampshirefor sure, the Northeast in general and for the nation probably, employment getting better.New Hampshire has experienced job creation. Not dramatic but some. GivenNew Hampshire’s favorable tax and business environment it’s not really surprising that it would be one of the first parts of the country to recover. New England more generally seems to be getting better although not at the same rate as New Hampshireand the nation, well let’s face it would be hard to screw things up much more – which is a perverse kind of improvement actually. So as workers become more secure in their outlook on employment, they become more confident that they can cope with a mortgage payment and the other cost associated with home ownership, and are feeling much better about leaving their apartments and Mom’s basement. This is having a very noticeable effect on stabilizing the market at the bottom.
Economy: The macro-economic environment remains dicey. I almost headed this section “Europe” as my third “E” but really it’s bigger than all that. The United Sates is no longer insulated from the rest of the world economically. I doubt that this was ever really true, but we felt it was true and we certainly acted as if it was true. The United States remains the world’s largest economy however it remains subject to outside shocks: Tsunami & nuclear disaster in Japan, economic slowdown in China and most dramatically European debit crisis – country by country bad news out of Europe send shocks through our financial system and impacts our banking sector. The largest of these in public perception is Europe which is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon and will continue to drag on the world economy. China seems to have better managed its financial affairs – easier in a totalitarian state – and seems likely to have a softer economic landing than Europe.
What’s the take away from all this? Housing is stabilizing now; sales volume is likely to increase significantly; good deals from a buyer’s perspective are likely to remain the norm for the next eight to twelve months; no real appreciation in real estate as an asset class is likely and value added efforts for renovations will remain high risk till after the end of 2012.
buyer, buying, China, debt crisis, economy., Employment, Europe, Expectations, Financial, financing, First Home Buyers, first time buyer, first time buyers, first time home buyers, foreclosure, housing market, housing market recovery, housing recovery, investors, Japan, Keene, landlord, Landlords, Massachusetts, monadnock region, move up buyer, New Hampshire, northeast, Peterborough, political belief system, positive cash flow, real estate, realtor, REALTORs, recovery, REO, Sales volume, seller, selling, short sale, time home buyers, totalitarian, Tsunami, Unemployment, Vermont
By Dick Thackston
I continue to read about mortgage credit terms such as Credit Scores, Down Payment Requirements, and so forth being eased on home purchases. Federal Reserve Senior Loan Officer Survey still reports historically tight standards. Part of the problem from what I’ve seen, is values coming in low on appraisals after the buyer and seller have come to terms, which in my opinion, reflects tightened appraisal standards. (Appraisers don’t want to be held responsible for over valuing properties – as they have been in the past – even though local market conditions support values.) It’s odd because in my experience appraisers who “know local areas” almost always have a clear sense of what is going on in a market; the biggest problem is large un-named government backed lenders that bring appraisers in from 200 miles away that often do not have a sense of the nuances for local markets that even underwriters can pick up from a desk 2000 miles away. Ultimately, sloppy work is sloppy work and it creates a drag on the entire process.
If home prices are stabilizing, as many people feel they are, this will actually be a bigger problem because house prices will no longer “always be lower than last month” and buyers will be bidding up prices which won’t be adequately reflected in comparable sales from a few months earlier. Low appraisals serve to drive prices down and create a self fulfilling cycle of ever lower prices. If appraisers are better able to justify the sellers price this may in fact be a key to breaking the cycle of pain in real estate we have seen.
Lenders have clearly been working to slow the pace of REO properties coming on the market; to be sure there are plenty of lender owned homes available and they still represent the majority of sales in all market despite everyone’s desire to deny the fact; this decline in the speed at which REO properties are coming on the market is likely to be a big part of stabilization. Once there is any perception of stabilization in the market it seems likely to me that many buyers will “pile into the market” and then be confronted with the challenges of getting a new loan – back to the appraisal and underwriting issues. The entire process is likely to be painful but rewarding for those with the constitution to push through: sellers and buyers both.
Re-financing has gone nuts by all reports from our friends in the lending business with home mortgage rates at historical, probably lifetime lows, loan officers actually have trouble keeping up with the volume of business they are processing. The good news here too is that a much lower percentage of these home mortgage re-finances are taking cash out unlike the past re-financing booms, this time the home mortgage re-finances seem to be more focused on actually reducing cash flow burdens on households, where as in the last fifteen years the home mortgage re-finance booms have been more focused on stripping homes of their equity to finance current consumption.
Mortgage lending in 2012 is probably less consumer friendly than in most of the last twenty years in the sense of underwriting standards and appraisal issues, however loans are being made and the process is sufficiently painful so that borrowers seem to really be paying attention to their reasons for going through the process and is getting done in a way that will lead to a healthier housing market in the foreseeable future.
appraisal, appraisal standards, appraiser, asset management, asset manager, borrower, buyer, consumption, credit score, down payment, equity, federal reserve, financing, foreclosure, government backed loans, interest rates, lender owned homes, lenders, local market conditions, Market, Mortgage, mortgage credit, mortgage lending, mortgage rates, real estate, real estate market, realtor, refinance, refinances, REO, reo properties, seller, short sale, sloppy work, stabilization, Thackston, underwriter, underwriting
By Dick Thackston CRB, ABRM, ABR
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has begun sending out letters to borrowers who have faced foreclosure since 2009. It is estimated that approximately four million borrowers foreclosures may have been mishandled between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010. Federal regulators and most of the nation’s largest home mortgage servicers announced earlier this week.
Cases will be reviewed by Federal Regulators as a result of an agreement established in April of this year in which the nation’s fourteen top mortgage servicers agreed with regulators to hire independent consultants to evaluate foreclosure processes and determine if borrowers had experienced financial injury as a result of errors or abuses by servicers. It will be up to the independent consultants to evaluate cases and determine compensation if any due to borrowers.
The Comptroller of the Currency as well as the Federal Reserve will be sending mails between now and the end of the year to notify potential victims of their rights. A mass media campaign is planned as well to direct borrowers to the website www.IndependentForeclosureReview.com or the toll free number 888.952.9105. All requests for review must be submitted by April 30, 2012.
The mortgage servicers and the government agreed that the servicers would pay all the expenses associated of setting up the program. Under government supervision they have hired eight independent consultants that have designed the program to be at no cost to the borrowers. The consultants have set up the website and call center noted above. The program is designed to encourage borrowers from all lenders to use one portal and there is uniform branding and product design to be clearer in the public mind than a number of different sites would be to the public.
There are several basic patterns that the consultants will be looking at to determine wrongdoing and these include miscalculation of fees, a foreclosure that happened while a borrower was under bankruptcy court protection and the most common one in my experience a foreclosure that was done while a borrower was waiting for a response on a loan modification.
This program is a direct result of last year’s robo signing scandal and the investigations that followed. About a year ago it came to public light that many mortgage servicers were cutting corners on due process when foreclosing on properties and either not properly executing documents or simply faking documents to expedite the large number of foreclosures they had on their hands.
This program is a good solution to an unfortunate situation. Objectively, most of these borrowers were in fact behind and many if not most were ready and willingly left their properties to begin over, however that does justify short cutting the legal protection of property rights built into our system of property ownership over the last thousand years from Common Law to Current Law.
bankruptcy, Bellows Falls, borrowers, comptroller, consultants, currency, default, default servicing, Dick Thackston, federal regulators, federal reserve, foreclosure, government, home sales, Housing, housing market, Keene, lender, loan modification, loan servicers, Massachusetts, Mortgage, New Hampshire, News, Peterborough, REALTORs, recession, REO, scandal, short sale, Thackston, Vermont, Winchester
By Dick Thackston CRB, ABRM, ABR
The actual answer to the question in our title is very little.
From the street level- were you and I both are as buyers, sellers and REALTORS – mostly what it tells us is it’s not our imagination the people who make up these statistics only give a portion of the story or leave large parts of the story out.
I have absolutely no doubt that Home Sales Dropped 3%! In fact I’m sure of it!
But here’s what I think happened. The majority of sales at this point are in fact bank owned properties and Short Sales. For the last several months a large percentage of REO’s have been tied up either with Title Problems and/or litigation. The stream of buyers in the market while not as large as it once was seems constant at this point. Since early this summer there has been a decline in available REO inventory for these two reasons. Value Conscious Home Buyers have been out looking but have not been able to find satisfactory properties or the properties they have found have been snarled up with Title Problems.
Why, you may ask, did these buyers just not buy regular retail properties on the market from non-REO sources? The simple answer is they are waiting. They are waiting for REO inventory to become available, they know it’s coming and they are VERY PRICE CONCIOUS. The majority of retail home sellers and their agents still have an unrealistic expectation about pricing and many have had their properties on and off the market at the same or very nearly the same price for several years. It’s just not going to happen. Home Buyers in this market have lots of information, most of it good, some of it bad, but it’s more information than any other group of Home Buyers has had in history before making a decision to purchase, and Home Buyers are not betting the market changes anytime soon.
The good news is that as the litigation and Title Problems now seem to be clearing more inventory is coming on the market and lenders have started to embrace the short sale process rather than fight it so Short Sales are becoming more far more viable then they were even a year or so ago. To be sure lenders are not going to leave money on the table or sell for less than current fair market value but the approach they are taking now seems like a good thing for everybody and that doesn’t get picked up in the statistics.
Bottom line is the viability of the inventory is improving and buyers are responding even though we are likely years out from an actual fix in the housing market.
Bellows Falls, buyers, demand, Dick Thackston, foreclosure, home buyers, home sales, home sales dropped, house sales, housing market, housing sales, Keene, market decline, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Peterborough, realtor, REALTORs, recession, REO, retail properties, sellers, short sale, statistics, supply, Thackston, title, title problems, Vermont, Winchester
By Dick Thackston CRB, ABRM, ABR
Since the down turn started in the third quarter of 2005, (yes that’s right it’s actually been over six years if your benchmark is real estate brokerage), and the economic seizures started happening almost daily after November 2008, I’ve actually had some excellent experiences helping sellers and lenders work out a short sale.
Initially mortgage lenders were less likely to work out a short sale for a number of reasons: they didn’t believe the property was upside down, mortgage insurance would cover their losses if it went to foreclosure and/or they were simply too overwhelmed with the volume of business collapse that they couldn’t function efficiently and make decisions.
In 2007 I began the process of helping people work out a Short Sales on their homes if they were over mortgaged. One of the most successful short sales I’ve done was a house inKeene,New Hampshire. The owner had purchased the home about twenty years before he called me. He had tried selling the home himself and tried a Virtual Real Estate brokerage from outside the area with no local support. All the time he tried this, his home was sinking in value.
Why, one might wonder, if he had owned this home for over twenty years would he owe more than he paid? Well, actually what he had done was borrow money incrementally over the years to put his children through collage and purchase each of them cars when they graduated. He literally used his home as a savings account.
The biggest hurdle in the transaction was the owner, he just couldn’t believe that his home would be worth the loan balances plus and additional ten thousand dollars so that he could start his life over again someplace else. Once I was able to get him to understand that the value just wasn’t there, and he agreed to price the house to the market comparable prices in his neighborhood at the time, we got some OK sales traffic and ultimately an offer. I presented the offer to both the owner and his lender. I obtained the owners detailed financial information and the bank agreed to accept the short sale. Little or no emotion, very rational, and very efficient successful transaction.
The entire transaction from day of listing to day of closing the short sale, including negotiating with lender, was about five months or one hundred fifty days to closing.
Bellows Falls, buyer, Dick Thackston, Financial, First Home Buyers, first time buyer, foreclosure, Keene, lender, Massachusetts, Mortgage, negotiation, New Hampshire, over mortgaged, Peterborough, real estate transaction, realtor, seller, selling, short sale, transaction., Vermont, Winchester
By Dick Thackston CRB, ABRM, ABR
Short Sale Success Story:
Short sales have become a major part of my companys business.
In 2007 I realized that more and more of the owners I interviewed during listing appointments were helplessly under water on the loan on their home.
During the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 80s and early 90s I first experienced short sales. Back then, it was mostly small business owners who had second business loans against their home and as the economy slowed, their businesses slowed or failed, and the bank came after their houses. This is where I learned to do short sales. Up until then, personally, I had never even imagined not being able to sell a house and not clear the loan balances and I had been in the business over ten years at that point.
So I learned to negotiate with lenders to help them understand Fair Market Value and accept the reality of the situation – not the ideal for anyone, but half a loaf is better than none.
So when I started to see homeowners under water again four years ago I felt it would be important to start trying to negotiate short sales – again. Unfortunately both home owners and lenders were still stubbornly unrealistic about the situation at that time. Many of the homeowners I initially advised to consider a short sale ultimately lost the property singing the “I need, I own, I won’t” chorus regardless of market realities, or they spent valuable months and years following the market down. Needlessly doing needless damage to their credit by loosing their home to foreclosure, most had they followed my initial advice would have in fact walked away from a sales with some money, less than they had expected but some money – far better than a short sale or total loss through foreclosure.
Some of the short sales I initially proposed to banks wound up going to foreclosure as well. Costing the lender $50,000 to $100,000 in equity that could have preserved for their company, however banks had a problem too because many had just done refinances or made new loans they would say something like “we have an appraisal that is only six months old” not recognizing how quickly the market was changing in those days. What a tragedy! What a tragedy for all parties!
So now Short Sales are commonly accepted as better than foreclosure and few, if any, lenders are waiting for the market to recover. The biggest issue with Short Sales remains sellers that are too slow to take action. I got a call today from a seller that is schedule for foreclosure sale in ten days. He turned down a short sale about a year and a half ago and now he wants to try and find a buyer and complete a short sale negotiation in ten days? Not going to happen. I suggested that he simply needs to plan on the foreclosure and arrange to move out of the house. Banks at this point are far more realistic than sellers and far more prone to look realistically upon a short sale and work on it realistically. Bank of America and Citibank have made tremendous improvements in their systems for handling short sales. In both cases they have gotten to be the best in the business to deal with, when a few years ago I really don’t think they allocated any serious resources to the Short Sale process.
Bellows Falls, buyer, buying, Dick Thackston, Financial, First Home Buyers, foreclosure, home sales, housing market, Keene, Massachusetts, Mortgage, New Hampshire, News, Peterborough, real estate, REALTORs, REO, savings & loan crisis, seller, short sale, Thackston, Vermont, Winchester
By Dick Thackston
Whether the US Economy is entering or has entered a double dip is a hard call and seems less than clear to most of us. Remember as President Nixon famously said over forty years ago: “Unemployment’s a matter of perspective which mostly depends on whether you’re working or not.”
Happily, New Hampshire and Vermont are among the most economically successful states in the country at this time. New Hampshire gained approximately 12,000 jobs from the peak of unemployment and Vermont has gained 5,700 in the same time frame. To be sure both states still have a net loss since 2008 however both states show that they are making the long crawl back from the bottom. New Hampshire’s economy is outperforming the US economy overall by adding jobs faster which has lead to increasing income and spending and our lower unemployment and is likely to do so in the foreseeable future according to most Economists.
So where’s housing?
Why aren’t prices stable and buyer’s buying at such low interest rates?
House prices have fallen about 20% overall in New Hampshire: more in the poorer areas and on poor quality properties and less in the wealthier areas and better quality properties. The number of homes available for sale in New Hampshirehas ranged from twelve to sixteen months worth of inventory over the last three years and seems to remain in that range.
Why is that?
If homes are selling at some pace why can’t we get ahead and drive the amount of inventory down to a more manageable backlog and generate some appreciation and good news? There are several critical factors: consumer age, nature of inventory, consumer confidence and banking regulation.
Since the year 2000 the populations of New HampshireandVermonthave seen their highest growth rate in the categories ages 55-64 and 65+. This seems to be driven by two major dynamics. The low rate of economic growth means younger families are not as attracted to the region as they might be to other more dynamic regions and the tax climate is very favorable to wealthier households that tend to be older. Older consumers tend to not spend as much in general and tend to not be as mobile in housing. They tend to stay put reducing the velocity of sales in the region.
The inventory of available homes in our region tends to be of poor quality over all – to be sure there are many fine homes in excellent condition available – which generate little or no interest in housing consumers of any demographic. During the housing bubble these homes sold at unreasonable high prices because they might be the only property available to many consumers most of whom might have been better off without the property. Many of these properties have no future and this is the range where we see sales in the region in the < $50,000 range. The prices often reflect lot cost minus the price of removing existing structures. Even at that low price level there is very limited demand and these properties are likely to remain a glut on the market statistically for years not months.
Consumer confidence remains weak. If economic uncertainty is to remain the ruling dynamic for the foreseeable future is it any wonder that household savings is likely to continue increase dynamically? Is it any wonder that large corporations are mimicking households as a rule and holding on to large amounts of cash at a time when lending is not guaranteed to be available to even the most qualified of borrowers?
Banks have positive economic incentives to hold up foreclosures and release them onto the market slowly. The longer banks hold delinquent properties off the market the longer they can put off recognizing losses so they look better to both regulators and investors but more significantly they aren’t forced to compete with themselves and there is an increasing trend among lenders to work out short sales with their delinquent accounts. Most industry analysts in the mortgage banking industry expect a surge in short sales in the next twelve to eighteen months. Shortsales reduce lender losses by so estimates as much as $50,000 per property and is far better from a public relations point of view with the consumer that has is over mortgaged.
So what’s the best plan for the average consumer at this time? For seller’s it’s simple: be realistic about your price; if you’re over mortgaged select a REALTOR with success handling short sales and begin working with your lender early in the process. This is likely to allow you to obtain the best terms from both your lender and the home buying public. For buyer’s it’s more complicated: understand what you really want and can afford; get pre-approved by a lender early in the process – bank owned properties and shortsales won’t normally consider any offer from a buyer that can’t produce a pre-approval from a lender with a contract; and most importantly understand that the really inexpensive properties are mostly trash and will not be financeable – there are no free lunches in housing!
Bellows Falls, buyer, consumer, consumer confidence, Dick Thackston, economist, economy., financing, First Home Buyers, first time buyer, foreclosure, housing market, Keene, lender, Massachusetts, Mortgage, New Hampshire, Peterborough, real estate, realtor, REALTORs, REO, short sale, Unemployment, Vermont, Winchester
