Types of Real Estate Sales - Coffee Time with the Realty Goddess

https://youtu.be/swxL643JKYw  

When you are purchasing a home you will come across many different "types" of sales. Short-Sales, Stand, HUD, Trust, REO...it can be confusing. This broadcast will look into the terms and untangle the mystery.

If you are in the Los Angeles area, I would love the opportunity to earn your business.

Laura Key, REALTOR Cal BRE 01908085 Laura.A.Key@gmail.com www.KeyCaliforniaHomes.com

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Distressed Housing Market Shrinks Dramatically in Last 5 Years

Distressed housing market shrinks dramatically since housing downturn of Great Recession

LOS ANGELES (March 10) – Vastly improved home prices over the past five years have changed the landscape of California’s distressed housing market, which is now just a fraction of what it was during the Great Recession, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (C.A.R.) said today.

In January 2009, 69.5 percent of all homes sold in California were distressed, which includes short sales and real estate-owned (REOs) properties. Five years later, that figure has shrunk to 15.6 percent.  More specifically, REOs comprised 60 percent of all sales in January 2009, while short sales made up 9.1 percent of all sales but rose to as high as 25.6 percent in January 2012. Short sales currently make up 9.2 percent of all sales.

During the same time period, California’s median home price has soared more than 64 percent from $249,960 in January 2009 to $410,990 in January 2014.

“The dramatic drop in the share of distressed sales throughout the state reflects a market that is fully transitioning from the housing downturn,” said C.A.R. President Kevin Brown.  “Significant home price appreciation over the past five years has lifted the market value of many underwater homes, and as a result, many homeowners have gained significant equity in their homes, resulting in fewer short sales and foreclosures.”

The statewide share of equity sales hit a high of 86.4 percent in November 2013 and has been above 80 percent for the past seven months.

In some of the hardest hit California counties, the distressed market in January 2009 was 93.6 percent in Stanislaus County, 93 percent in San Joaquin County, 89.5 percent in San Benito County, 86.1 percent in Kern County, 85.6 percent in Sacramento County, 84.2 percent in Fresno County, and 83.6 percent in Monterey County.  The distressed market now has shrunk to 24.8 percent in Stanislaus, 25.1 percent in San Joaquin, 17.5 percent in San Benito, 18.4 percent in Kern, 19.9 percent in Sacramento, 26.3 percent in Fresno, and 16.9 percent in Monterey counties.

Of the reporting counties, San Luis Obispo, Orange, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties held the lowest share of distressed sales in January 2014 at 10.2 percent, 9.5 percent, 7.7 percent, and 6.8 percent, respectively.

Leading the way...® in California real estate for more than 100 years, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (www.car.org) is one of the largest state trade organizations in the United States with 165,000 members dedicated to the advancement of professionalism in real estate. C.A.R. is headquartered in Los Angeles.

Single-family Distressed Home Sales by Select Counties

Distressed Sales by County	Jan. 2014	Jan. 2009
CA	15.6%	69.5%
El Dorado	20.1%	63.0%
Fresno	26.3%	84.2%
Kern	18.4%	86.1%
Los Angeles	15.8%	62.4%
Monterey	16.9%	83.6%
Orange	9.5%	60.3%
Placer	15.1%	68.1%
Riverside	15.6%	79.4%
Sacramento	19.9%	85.6%
San Benito	17.5%	89.5%
San Bernardino	21.7%	81.9%
San Joaquin	25.1%	93.0%
San Luis Obispo	10.2%	52.2%
San Mateo	6.8%	48.2%
Santa Clara	7.7%	68.0%
Santa Cruz	11.6%	56.6%
Stanislaus	24.8%	93.6%
Tulare	20.0%	45.8%
Yolo	13.3%	74.5%

More Sellers Jump Into Favorable Market

More sellers are ready to put their homes on the market for the awaiting buyers.  They are getting top dollar! If you have been thinking of selling, give me a call for a FREE Comparative Market Analysis and let's begin the process! Laura Key 310.866.8422

Inventories of for-sale homes are increasing as more owners see rising home prices and faster sales as a reason to try to sell now, according to industry reports.

In April, the number of listings was higher than the level of homes that were under contract in that month, according to a study by the real estate brokerage ZipRealty, which measured listings in 24 major metro markets.

“It’s less of an indication of buyer momentum flagging and more of seller momentum picking up, finally,” says Lanny Baker, the company’s chief executive.

The reports find that homes are selling faster—on average, within 32 days of being listed. In April 2012, that average stood at 48 days for homes to sell. 

“A market in which the sale prices are happening very close to the list prices, a market in which the list prices seem to be moving sequentially higher, and a market in which any of those houses are selling speedily is one that is bringing sellers back,” Baker says. “That makes it feel to a seller that this isn’t going to be a long passive despair that I tried three years ago.”

Source: “Why More Sellers Could Test the Market,” The Wall Street Journal (June 10, 2013)

Want an estimate of what your California home is worth? Fill out the form below!  All info is confidential and will not be sold!

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Despite Improvement in Loan-Mod Defaults, Report Raises Alarms

Sadly, loan modifications have not been very successful. Have you had your modification denied? Call me - Laura Key 310.866.8422

There are few defenders of the Obama administration’s signature loan-modification initiative, the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP. But a new report released on Wednesday raised an interesting criticism of HAMP—that borrowers aren’t staying current on modified payments even though HAMP has reduced, on average, borrowers’ monthly payments by more than $400.

The report, from the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or Sigtarp, said there was an “alarming rate” of homeowners who were defaulting after receiving a permanent mortgage modification.

The report says data show that the longer a homeowner remains in HAMP, the more likely he or she is to redefault out of the program. This is true of almost any mortgage-modification program.

But the report raises broader questions about whether mortgage modifications have been worth the costs, and against what yard stick success in any such program should be measured.

There are plenty of faults to find with HAMP. Officials struggled to ensure taxpayer money wasn’t wasted, so they required lots of documentation. That created new headaches: banks rejected borrowers that they said provided incomplete forms, while borrowers routinely complained that banks lost their paperwork. In an interview last year, Shaun Donovan, the housing secretary, said it was a “fair criticism that programs initially were too complicated and had too many restrictions.”

Mortgage servicers were also overwhelmed. During tense meetings at the Treasury Department throughout 2009 and 2010, officials laid into the banks for not staffing up. Executives groused that HAMP rules changed so often that they couldn’t keep up and that new headline-grabbing initiatives were announced before they could be rolled out to be offered to borrowers.

Others said HAMP didn’t do enough to deal with negative equity, which prompted the administration to launch a belated effort two years ago to encourage principal reduction. The Treasury never made it mandatory because they feared it would both be too expensive and that it would lead banks to opt out of HAMP.

Under HAMP, banks received modest incentive payments to reduce borrowers’ monthly payments to around 31% of their current income, often by extending the loan term and dropping the interest rate. Modifications have resulted in an average monthly payment reduction of $545 or $400, depending on which type of modification lenders provide under the program.

So far, around 860,000 borrowers have active HAMP modifications, and around 290,000 have fallen out of the program. The Sigtarp report said it was “alarming” that 46% of a few thousand permanent modifications made in the third quarter of 2009 had redefaulted, as well as 39% of those made in the last quarter of 2009.

But some industry executives have said that, for all its faults, HAMP succeeded in giving the industry a template for a more sustainable loan modification. Before 2009, many modifications didn’t result in lower monthly payments, and mortgage modifications in the post-HAMP world have performed drastically better than those that came before. Around 25% of borrowers who received a modification in 2011 had fallen behind on payments within one year, down from 57% in 2008, according to banking regulators.

Moreover, more recent HAMP modifications are performing significantly better than earlier HAMP “mods,” something that may be owed to an improving economy as much as any program improvements. Around 11% of HAMP modifications made in late 2011 had defaulted after one year, compared with more than 20% for those made when the program launched in mid-2009.

Data also show that HAMP modifications, which typically offer the most generous payment relief, perform better than privately issued modifications.

Among the bigger questions raised by the report: If mortgage modification redefault rates under HAMP are too high, what’s an acceptable level? And can any mortgage modification program hit those targets?

Source: Wall Street Journal

‘Boomerang Buyers’ Making a Comeback in California

People who went through foreclosures or short sales during the housing crisis have been gradually returning to the Orange County, Calif., market for at least a year, according to real estate industry observers.

Buyers generally must wait at least three years to qualify for a government-backed Federal Housing Administration mortgage, and it can take seven years to get a conventional loan backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Real estate professional Andreea Stucker, who lost a condo due to a bad loan she could not afford, is among the emerging ranks of “boomerang buyers.” She believes that experience has made her a better practitioner.

More than three-fourths of those who lost their homes will try to become homeowners again, says Paul Scheper, division manager for Greenlight Financial in Irvine, Calif. Nationwide, more than 3.4 million households have completed the minimum waiting period.

Source: "Boomerang Buyers Making a Comeback," Orange County (Calif.) Register (Feb. 15, 2013)

Have you had a foreclosure or a short sale in your past? Has enough time passed so you can own again? Call Laura Key at 310.866.8422 to see if you could be eligible for homeownership again! www.KeyCaliforniaHomes.com

Avoiding Loan Modification Hoaxes

Please make sure you speak to someone who can really help you!

Homeowners wary of being taken in by bogus “loan modification specialists” should not assume that a law office is the most reliable way to work with their lender.  Consumer advocates say a growing number of fraudulent modification services involve lawyers, or people who say they are lawyers.

Making sense of the story

• Increasingly, lawyers are lending “their names, their offices, their credentials” to fraudulent operations that vaunt superior skills in obtaining loan modifications, according to a senior counselor at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington.

• While Federal Trade Commission rules generally prohibit demanding upfront fees for mortgage relief services, there is a narrow exception for lawyers.

• Under the rules, a lawyer may charge clients in advance for assistance if the service is part of their general practice of law, and not outside of that practice.

• Certainly, many lawyers provide legitimate foreclosure-avoidance services, but borrowers should know that when going to a lawyer whose sole business is loan modifications, that is a red flag.

• As more homeowners become aware of these tactics, some operations are changing their practices.  Instead of selling loan modification services, they are advertising so-called loan workouts and forensic loan audits. Some are even posing as nonprofit groups.

• The Homeownership Preservation Foundation and the Lawyers’ Committee both belong to a coalition of public and private agencies that maintain a national database of loan-modification complaints.  Since March 2010, some 28,000 homeowners have reported potential fraud.  Their reported monetary losses total around $66 million.
• (source: New York Times)

The Joys of Life! Om Shanti

I really enjoy sharing all the wonders of real estate with you. I know you just can't wait to read my blogs about foreclosures and short sales.  It's such an exciting world and I know you hang on every word like a soap opera, (SMILE) but what I love the most about blogging is I can share my own personal world with you.  I am more than a Real Estate Agent, more than a wife, more than a mother....I am a being with dreams, hopes aspirations and goals.  We all are and although we all have important roles in our life they all fall apart if we don't take care of "self"!

Since moving to Los Angeles, I have been blessed with the opportunity to attend new things.  I have always been interested in meditation and on Wednesday evenings I have been attending classes at the Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga center.  What a blessing and it is also FREE.  

In this busy world, I feel its important to have some time of calm and peace in your day and meditation has so many benefits! So as I learn and grow in this adventure I will share it with you along the way.  If you are interested in mediation the Brahma Kumaris Yoga  Meditation centers have locations across the world!  You can check out their official website at: www.bkwsu.org 

Even though I have started with the Braham Kumaris Yoga, there are so many other types of meditation, so if one does not fit your personality you have many to chose from.  Check out these types of meditation: Mindfulness Meditation, Spiritual Meditation, Focused Meditation, Movement Meditation and Mantra Meditation.  Here is a great beginners website: www.fitsugar.com/5-Types-Meditation-18949375

My beginning goal is just to be able to quiet my mind and block out outside distractions.  Sounds easy right....well, I'll let you know how that works out for me.  

I am enjoying my journey and I hope you share in my adventures, it seems I have become a California girl quite quickly!

Om Shanti (I am a peaceful soul)...and I hope  you are too!

Follow me on twitter, facebook, yelp, google+ and foursquare! Maybe we can share some laughs and smiles along the way.