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Aloha!

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Webster’s online dictionary defines a vacation as a “scheduled period during which activity is suspended.” Well I’ve just gone through a very busy season so I’m taking a little vacation for a few days with my friends in Maui. This is our week for a suspension of activity before we jump back into the fray, and now that we’re here it’s a clear reminder of how necessary rest and recuperation truly is.

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Folsom’s Most Walkable Neighborhoods

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

NATOMA STATION, FOLSOM

Residents of this suburban neighborhood on Folsom’s west side find it easy to get out in nature. There are plenty of sidewalks, ponds teeming with birds and wildlife, and easy access to the American River Bike Trail, which winds for miles through some of the region’s most beautiful terrain. Built about 20 years ago on the hill behind the Folsom Premium Outlets, it’s a model of the well-planned community. There’s an elementary school and several parks; a light rail station enables residents who work downtown to avoid clogged Highway 50 at rush hour. On nice days, the neighborhood is filled with kids on skateboards, teens WWT (Walking While Texting) and people strolling with their dogs. A group called the Folsom Dam Runners meets Saturdays and Sundays for runs around nearby Lake Natoma.
• Real estate: One- and two-story single-family homes sell from the low $400,000s to the high $500,000s.
• Hip hangout: Folsom Premium Outlets
• Good to know: The developer commissioned original art for the parks and main entrances to the neighborhood.

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How is this for a financial solution for the country?

Monday, July 27th, 2009

This is from an article in the  St. Petersburg Times Newspaper on Sunday.   The Business Section asked readers for ideas on  “How Would You Fix the Economy?”    I think this guy nailed it!

  Dear Mr.. President,

 Please find below my suggestion for fixing America ’s economy..  Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

   There are about 40 million people over 50 in the workforce. 

  Pay them $1 million a piece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:  

 1) They MUST retire.  Forty million job openings -  Unemployment fixed.

  2) They MUST buy a new American CAR.  Forty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.

 3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -   Housing Crisis fixed.

 It can’t get any easier than that!

 P.S. If more money is needed, have all members in Congress and their  constituents pay their taxes…   

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Defaults starting to tag wealthier Sacramento-area ZIP Codes

Monday, July 27th, 2009

In the wake of last week’s MDA DataQuick stats showing 4,448 Second Quarter foreclosures and 10,682 mortgage defaults in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties we got statistics for both at the regional ZIP Code level.

What you’ll see here is that foreclosures and defaults are reaching into more affluent areas such as Roseville, Auburn and Granite Bay that were once immune to a problem largely confined to risky subprime lending. It’s not that the numbers have skyrocketed – it’s that they are up pretty significantly from the same time last year. The theory is that rising unemployment and loss of incomes is banging on the door of wealthier neighborhoods now.

On the contrary, some of the hardest-hit ZIP Codes since the market began imploding in early 2007 are showing signs of declining or leveling off of defaults and foreclosures.

There’s lots to learn about your neighborhood in the MDA DataQuick stats that follow here.

Here are defaults and foreclosures by ZIP Code. It’s an EXCEL chart. You can click between the tabs for defaults and foreclosures, which are called here trustees deeds.

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June production up for region’s home builders

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Sacramento-area home builders ramped up their summer production in June, receiving permits to start 374 new single-family homes, apartments and condominiums, the California Building Industry Association reported Friday.

Capital-area builders accounted for 10.8 percent of the 3,446 permits issued statewide.

Home builders in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties started 374 single-family detached homes and attached multifamily homes or apartments, the CBIA reported.

That was up from 252 in May.

Despite the uptick, the region’s homebuilders have cut production in half from last year.

Their 1,650 permits from January through June compare with 3,285 the same months in 2008.

The same pattern statewide means builders are on track for their fewest permits since the state started keeping records in 1954.

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Sacramento-area foreclosure total nears 42,000

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Two and a half years into the foreclosure crisis still engulfing the Sacramento region, the number of households surrendering keys to lenders has blown past the 40,000 mark – hitting a new housing bust high of 41,903.

It’s the newest count in a growing tally of foreclosures that claimed 4,448 more area homes in April, May and June, researcher MDA DataQuick reported Wednesday.

Statewide, lenders have taken back 410,744 homes since the start of 2007, including 45,667 in the second quarter, when they also sent default notices to 124,562 more homes. DataQuick said 10,682 of those defaults were in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.

Lenders issue the formal foreclosure warnings when homeowners fall three months or more behind on payments.

Analysts on Wednesday called the numbers a sign that the foreclosure crisis remains grim as the economy stumbles and unemployment has risen to 11.6 percent in the capital region and statewide. Widespread state government furloughs amounting to 14 percent wage cuts in thousands of area households – and the resulting economic contraction for other businesses – are also tightening the vise.

At area loan counseling centers like ClearPoint Financial Solutions, unemployment and lost income are now the new face of the loan crisis, said spokesman Bruce McClary.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of mortgage they have. It’s the change in income and financial circumstances,” he said.

The firm recently merged with By Design Financial Solutions, a nonprofit counselor with offices in North Highlands.

DataQuick’s quarterly report shows that many borrowers getting into trouble with mortgages aren’t escaping.

“It’s proof that there hasn’t been this huge shift toward workouts, whether that’s been a short sale or a loan modification,” analyst Andrew LePage said.

Santa Ana-based First American CoreLogic reported recently that 9 percent of home loans in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo counties were delinquent in May. DataQuick said that June counts of foreclosures and notices of default were up sharply from those in April and May, suggesting worse numbers in the third quarter.

In Roseville, Penny Krainz fears she will be one of those statistics. This week she got a 90-day notice that she would be losing her job at an area high-tech company.

“That ought to be right around the time they foreclose on my house,” she said Wednesday.

Krainz stopped making payments months ago, she said, on a house she bought in 2002 for $210,000.

A bigger house next door – a bank repo once valued at $379,000 – recently sold for $114,000, she said. That drove her into a category of borrowers who simply give up because they have high payments and owe so much more than the house is worth.

“This is so out of the realm of my upbringing,” Krainz said. “I would never in a million years not paid my mortgage.”

DataQuick reported that half the loans that defaulted in the second quarter were made before July 2006 and half were made afterward. Lenders that originated the majority of the troubled loans were Washington Mutual, a failed thrift taken over late last year by JPMorgan Chase; Wells Fargo; and Countrywide, the failed lender taken over by Bank of America in mid-2008.

Second-quarter foreclosures and defaults in area counties:

• Amador County: 29 foreclosures and 85 defaults.

• El Dorado County: 202 foreclosures and 632 defaults.

• Nevada County: 98 foreclosures and 286 defaults.

• Placer County: 515 foreclosures and 1,570 defaults.

• Sacramento County: 3,019 foreclosures and 6,862 defaults.

• Sutter County: 154 foreclosures and 355 notices of default.

• Yolo County: 216 foreclosures, 541 defaults.

• Yuba County: 215 foreclosures and 351 defaults.

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Mortgage Defaults fall slightly in second quarter

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

MDA DataQuick just minutes ago posted its news release on Q2 foreclosure activity in California and many area counties – showing a statewide decline in notices of default and a slight rise in foreclosures over the first quarter of 2009.

 

 

 

 

 

Regionally: 10,682 notices of default in the second quarter in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. That is down from 11,049 last quarter and up only slightly from 10,457 in the second quarter of 2008.

Foreclosures are up again, to 4,505 in the eight-county region. Last quarter: 3,881

I think we will be seeing alot of homes come on the market by the end of the year, keep your eyes open!!

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Sales dip below last year with fewer repos on market

Monday, July 20th, 2009

After 14 months of year-over-year sales gains in the Sacramento region, June’s home sales fell below those of June 2008. Market watchers say the frenzy ignited last year by an abundance of bank repos in the market has waned some. But short sales are starting to pick up.

Here is today’s story with the region’s June statistics from MDA DataQuick.

Here is a more detailed sales and price chart by ZIP Code.

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California foreclosure deals are bittersweet for novice investors

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Many Californians saw their dreams go up in smoke when the housing market burned up as a result of heavy job losses, bankruptcies and balloon mortgage payments, but others are rising from the ashes and forging new investment endeavors.

All the bathroom mirrors are missing, there’s dog urine in the air-conditioning unit and holes in the walls, but the foreclosed house Sacramento resident Sherie Coelho purchased for $115,000 just a few doors down from her own home is “a blessing and a gift,” she said.

It was originally listed for $319,000, but because of its status as a former marijuana grow house, real estate agents couldn’t get rid of it, Coelho said.

So, backed with $30,000 she received from her late mother, Coelho just secured her first rental property and hopes she will be able to save for her retirement.

“Almost overnight I’ve become an investor, and it wasn’t necessarily intentional,” she said.

Coelho isn’t the only one who bought a foreclosed home on her south Sacramento block – a neighbor did so earlier this month. But there’s something that makes Coelho different from most rental property investors in today’s market – she lost her home in 1997.

The foreclosure was one of the most painful periods in Coelho’s life, and it took three years to build back her credit.

“I felt like, ‘Am I stupid? I’m an English teacher, I should know how to read these documents,’ ” she said. “It was like I should have understood.”

Coelho, who teaches at Cosumnes River College, said going through a foreclosure has made her “more conscious of the human factor of the rise and fall of the housing market.”

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Sacramento-area home sales fall for 1st time since April 2008

Friday, July 17th, 2009

The 14-month streak is over.

Sacramento-area home sales reached their highest monthly count yet this year in June. But with fewer bank repos on the market, they failed to beat the numbers from June 2008, according to new statistics released Thursday from researcher MDA DataQuick.

It was the first time since April 2008 – when year-over-year figures turned positive after three years of declines – that sales failed to beat the previous year. That’s the clearest indicator yet, said area market watchers, of the waning influence of repos – which last year ignited an explosion of sales among first-time buyers and investors.

“It’s tough to beat (last year) when you don’t have so many foreclosures out there to attract buyers,” said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage.

As banks hold repossessed properties off the market and contend with government foreclosure moratoriums, the market’s lower end has shifted from abundance to scarcity, agents and buyers say.

The competition for increasingly hard-to-find deals in the repo market is leaving some potential buyers frustrated.

“It’s impossible for us to get a foreclosure,” said Karin DeFoe of Rocklin. “Since March we’ve lost three houses.”

DeFoe described a scene now familiar to many buyers: initially low repo prices that stir a frenzy of multiple bids. Buyers are asked to bid higher; then the best offers are often rejected in favor of investor buyers with cash.

“They’re bidding lower than I am, but they’ve got cash,” said DeFoe, who is trying to buy a house for her college-age son to rent.

Sacramento researcher TrendGraphix reported 6,705 real estate listings in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties as June ended. That’s the lowest number of homes for sale in the region in four years. Repos accounted for just 14.2 percent of the for-sale signs, compared with almost 28 percent late last year.

“The inventory isn’t hitting the market soon enough. I don’t think there’s enough for the demand out there,” said Erin Attardi, a Sacramento agent with Lyon Real Estate.

DataQuick counted 3,758 closed escrows in June for new and existing homes in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties. Repos accounted for 53.3 percent of Sacramento County’s 2,284 sales, the firm said. New homes were just 9.3 percent of sales.

Median prices, meanwhile, remained stable at $175,000 in Sacramento County, the largest sector of the region’s real estate market. That’s the same as last month. But it’s up from a low of $160,000 in February, when 25.3 percent of homes were priced below $100,000.

In June, just 18.2 percent of sales prices dipped below $100,000, DataQuick reported. The firm has credited rising median prices across much of metropolitan California to a rising share of higher-priced homes in the sales mix.

Attardi agreed, saying, “I think it’s a combination of short sales penetrating that higher market where they weren’t prevalent before.”

Short sales – in which lenders accept less than owed to avoid higher costs of foreclosing and reselling in a falling market – are, indeed, rising as repos lose market share. The Sacramento Association of Realtors said this week that short sales accounted for 16.6 percent of transactions in Sacramento County and the city of West Sacramento in June, up from 14.5 percent in May.

“It’s a complete shift,” said Mike Toste, a Roseville real estate agent who has built a new team to ride the wave. Toste, of Coldwell Banker Sun Ridge, said many lenders, especially the Wells Fargo subsidiary Wachovia, are finally making short sales easier. Lender response times that formerly frustrated agents with 90-day waits have been halved, he said.

“Wachovia is responding in seven to 10 days,” he said. Toste, Attardi and others say more than half the for-sale signs in the region now are short sales.

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