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Archive for January, 2010

New 3.5% Seller Credit For Some Solano Buyers…But You Have To Close By April 30

January 29th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Loans / Financing, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

If you’re planning to buy a home in Benicia, Vallejo or any other Solano or Contra Costa County city we serve, you might want to focusClock-Money on a Scale your eyes on Fannie Mae-owned homes for the next month or two.

For yesterday, Fannie announced a new incentive program which will provide up to a 3.5% credit to cover closing costs or a combination of credits & new appliances for qualified buyers who purchase a Fannie Mae-owned home between now and the end of April.

The details:

  • The offer must be accepted on or after Jan. 28, 2010
  • Escrow must close by April 30, 2010.
  • Buyers must be owner-occupants (no investors)
  • Qualified buyers get an incentive worth up to 3.5% of the cost of the home
  • The incentive can be used to cover closings costs, new Whirlpool appliances or a combination of the two

So, on a $250,000 home, for example, if you qualify for the full 3.5% credit, you could Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

Fraud & Deceit — It’s Just Business As Normal For Some Short Sale Lenders

January 26th, 2010 categories: Foreclosures / Short Sales, Loans / Financing, Viewpoint

Thankfully, Someone’s Finally Blowing The Whistle


We’ve all heard the banks moan and complain about how they were duped into making bad loans to unscrupulous borrowers in the subprime era.

Pull Quote

Or how homes were appraised at values clearly tens of thousands more than the property was really worth.

Well, these banks certainly had a right to be angry.

But now, it seems, the shoe’s on the other foot.

For, these same banks who have positioned themselves as the innocent victims in the mortgage meltdown are now aggressively and openly trying to defraud each other with short sale side-deals in a manner that essentially holds the down-and-out homeowner — who’s trying to make the best of a bad situation — hostage.

Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

How Much Did That Benicia or Vallejo Home Sell For In December?

January 25th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Market Update, Vallejo

Dec 09 Ben Home Sales2They say that curiosity killed the cat. But when it comes to finding out how much that home down the street sold for, I think almost everyone has a little curiosity in them.

It’s just human nature to want to get the ‘inside scoop.’

So to satisfy that curiosity, every month I post a list of every home sale in both Benicia and Vallejo.

Wonder how much a particular home sold for? Or how long it was on the market?

Curious how much a particular seller had to drop his price before getting a sale? Care to know whether a certain home sale was an REO, short sale or regular sale?

Answers to all those questions and more are just a click away, in the December Benicia Home Sale Report and Vallejo Home Sale Report.

As the graphic above illustrates, you’ll find the following information for EVERY home that closed escrow in December in Benicia and Vallejo: Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

December 2009 Monthly Home Sale Statistics For Solano County

January 24th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

I’ll preface the December 2009 Solano County Home Sale Report with the same disclaimer that I use every month:  the smaller the sample size, the greater the chance for the numbers to be skewed.

That’s why quarterly statistics usually are a better gauge of just where the market is really heading.

Nevertheless, if you look at the housing numbers month by month, you can see developing trends much sooner than if you only look at things every 3 months.

So I always track Solano’s home sale statistics on a monthly and quarterly basis.

December is always a busy month when it comes to housing statistics, since it’s also the end of the 4th quarter as well as the end of the year. So it usually takes a little longer to compile all the data. (How’s that for a shameless excuse as to why it took until the 24th of January to get these figures on-line!)2009 Solano County Median Sales Graph

Okay, so onto December’s numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

Quarterly Solano Housing Statistics — 4th Qtr Numbers For Each City In Our Market Area

January 24th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

If  you’ve been sitting by your computer wondering when the final housing numbers for the 4th Quarter of 2009 would be released, today’s your lucky day. 2009 Solano County Median Sales Price By Qtr

To see how each city in our Solano County market area fared last quarter and also how those numbers compare with a year ago, be sure to download the full Solano County Quarterly Housing Report.

Some highlights from that report:

  • The median sales price was $205,450 county-wide. In Q4 of 2008, it was $221,500. So that’s a one-year drop of 7 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

Big Changes On The Horizon For FHA Borrowers In Benicia & Vallejo

January 21st, 2010 categories: Loans / Financing

FHA ChangesIf you’re planning to buy a home soon and will be using an FHA loan to finance that purchase, you may want to pay very close attention to this post.

Either that or make sure you get into contract in the next few months.

That’s because the Dept. of Housing & Urban Development (HUD),  announced a series of proposed policy changes yesterday (one of which was made official today) that are all designed to help strengthen FHA’s reserves and limit its future losses.

As a result, there will be higher up-front mortgage insurance premiums, lower allowable seller concessions, and even 10% minimum down payments for some borrowers. Plus, HUD is expected to petition Congress to allow it to also increase the monthly mortgage premium.

So if  you’re planning to buy a home in Benicia, Vallejo or Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

Housing Inventory Up Again In Vallejo Last Week; Benicia, Fairfield & Vaca, Too

January 19th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo

Graph UPAll trends have to start somewhere, don’t they?

Last week, Vallejo’s inventory jumped 16%. And this week, it was up another 6%. That’s a 23% increase in just two weeks — from 242 to 299.

Benicia was up 7.3% this past week, boosting its supply to 88 active listings.

Elsewhere in the county, Fairfield was up 5.4% and Vacaville was up 4.8%. Suisun was the only city in our Solano County market area where the inventory dropped — although that decrease was only by a single home.

Download This Week’s Solano Real Estate Report

But the biggest news is still Vallejo — where the inventory hasn’t been this high since mid-June of last year.

You have to go all the way back to June 15, when there were 322 Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

Benicia-Vallejo First-Time Buyers Just Might ‘Flip’ Over New FHA Rules

January 19th, 2010 categories: Buying, Loans / Financing, Selling

Flip GraphicIn a remarkable turnabout that could open new doors for first-time home buyers using an FHA loan in Benicia, Vallejo and other parts of Solano County, the Dept. of Housing & Urban Development just announced that beginning Feb. 1, it will allow FHA buyers to purchase “Flip” properties.

Up until now, FHA has frowned on investors who have tried to profit on this down market by buying homes at a discount and then putting them back on the market right away at a far higher price.

So in order to discourage this practice, HUD banned FHA buyers from entering into a contract Pull Quoteon any home that had previously sold within the past 90 days.

To their dismay, many FHA buyers would come upon what they thought was the ideal home — which in many cases had new cabinets, counters, flooring, fresh paint and new landscaping — only to find that it was owned by an investor who purchased the home 30-40 days earlier and had spent the better part of the past month doing all these improvements. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

Gallows Humor? There’s Actually A Street In Vallejo Called “REO ALLEY”

January 18th, 2010 categories: Foreclosures / Short Sales, Vallejo

Talk about irony.REO Alley, Vallejo

I’ll bet you didn’t know there’s a street in Vallejo Called “REO Alley“?

If you’ve ever driven around Vallejo in the vicinity of Sonoma Blvd. or Broadway St., you’ve probably passed by this tiny little alley just north of Tennessee St. many times without ever knowing the name (or perhaps without knowing it even had a name).

But in a city that’s seen its property values nosedive over the past few years due to a preponderance of REO (foreclosure) sales, it seems eerily ironic that it would have a street called REO Alley.

REO Alley 2, Vallejo

I actually happened upon this tiny little alley accidentally, while doing an MLS search in the vicinity. When I pulled up the street map, I saw that just a few blocks away from the property I was searching for was a street that appeared to be called “REO Alley.” Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

Did Somebody Change The Water In Vallejo? Check Out This Week’s Real Estate Report

January 11th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville

Water FaucetThe new year is barely a week and a half old and already we’ve come upon our first head-turning moment.

If you’ve been following our blog on a regular basis, you know that the inventory throughout Solano County dropped steadily last year — as Vallejo and Suisun City each shed over 70% of its inventory between January and December…with Fairfield and Vacaville not far behind that pace.

Well so far this year, Benicia, Fairfield, Suisun and Vacaville have all seen their inventories of available homes for sale remain pretty close to where they were when 2009 ended.

But Vallejo was a completely different story last week, as its inventory soared — yes that’s Soared with a capital “S”. With a gain of 39 active listings between Jan. 4 and Jan. 11, the increase was almost twice the highest single weekly gain (21) for all of last year.

So when I downloaded the data and saw such a huge one-week increase, Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Rod Herman | Discussion: No Comments »

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