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Archive for 'Foreclosures / Short Sales'
Any Light At The End Of The End Of Solano’s Foreclosure Tunnel?
February 17th, 2010 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
Everyone agrees that the real key to restoring the economy and home values lies in working through that huge backlog of distressed properties.
For, the sooner we get to a point where the lion’s share of active listings are being sold by regular sellers with equity rather than banks or upside-down borrowers, the sooner this ugly market will be behind us.
About six months ago, I downloaded the foreclosure statistics for all five cities in our Solano County market area and back then almost 60% of what had already been foreclosed upon had not yet come on the market. Most banks were keeping what has become known as their “shadow inventory” off the market.
Since that time, the banks have started to release more inventory, but rather than a flood, the release of new bank-owned listings has been more of a trickle. So a few days ago, I decided to download the raw foreclosure data and see if anything had changed.
In a nutshell, as the numbers above and below illustrate, it looks like we still have quite a way to go before the local Read the rest of this entry »
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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 focus
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 »
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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.
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.
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Gallows Humor? There’s Actually A Street In Vallejo Called “REO ALLEY”
January 18th, 2010 categories: Foreclosures / Short Sales, Vallejo
Talk about irony.
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.
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 »
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Solano Monthly Home Sales Report For Oct. ‘09
November 9th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
I just finished downloading and compiling October’s 2009’s final home sales totals for Solano County.
In a nutshell, the numbers ended up right about where I expected.
No big surprises, but rather more of what we’ve been seeing for the past few months: stabilizing prices and smaller inventories, with overall totals similar to where they’ve been in recent months but lower than they were at the same time a year ago.
Median Sales Price
As the graph below illustrates, the median sales price was up slightly in several cities and down slightly in a few others — but overall, the numbers aren’t that far off from where they were in August and September.
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Attaboy Arnie! Maybe This New Emergency Law Will Burst A Few REO Sellers’ Balloons
October 15th, 2009 categories: Buying, Foreclosures / Short Sales
If you’ve been keeping score, the REO asset managers have been calling most if not all of the shots over the past eight or nine months.
But thanks to Arnie and his band of Sacramento lawmakers, REO departments for the banks doing business here in California may have just lost one of their hammers.
That’s because earlier this week, Gov. Schwarzenegger
signed an emergency bill (AB 957 – Galgiani) that immediately prevents lenders who are selling a foreclosed property from requiring the buyer to use a particular title or escrow company.
Even though federal law already prohibits sellers of federally related loans from directing title business, most REO sellers continue to require the buyer to use a title and escrow company of their choosing.
Buyers Really Haven’t Had A Choice Before Now
As a result, many buyers find themselves “forced” to use a title and escrow company located far away from the county they’re buying and with no local offices to serve them.
So when it comes time to sign closing papers, that often means a huge logistical nightmare, with an escrow company in Southern California trying to find a mobile notary who knows little more about the papers the buyer is signing than the buyer himself. Read the rest of this entry »
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Are Short Sales Really Selling In Benicia, Vallejo And The Rest Of Solano County?
August 30th, 2009 categories: Buying, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Selling, Solano
As the inventory of homes has decreased in recent months, short sale listings have become an increasingly larger percentage of the available homes for Solano County home buyers.
And that’s caused more and more buyers to ask the obvious question: Are short sale listings really selling?
That’s a question not only on the minds of buyers, but also something prospective short sale sellers want to know, too. Read the rest of this entry »
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Have The Banks Created An Artificial Market?
August 20th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, The Economy, Vacaville, Vallejo, Viewpoint
This is the second and final part of this post. To read Part 1, click here.
In yesterday’s article, I talked about our expectations earlier this spring that hundreds of new bank-owned properties would come on the market shortly after the foreclosure moratoriums were lifted in early spring.
To date, those expectations haven’t come to fruition, which is bewildering, especially when most bank-owned homes continue to attract multiple-offers — sometimes with as many as 30+ offers on one house.
So the obvious question: have the banks really foreclosed on as many homes as we all suspect or have they Read the rest of this entry »
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Are We In An Artificial Boom Market?
August 19th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo, Viewpoint
With Hundreds Of REOs Being Held Off The Market, Is The Current Market Boom Just A Temporary Thing?
For months now, the local real estate market here in Solano County as well as throughout the entire Bay Area has been getting stronger and hotter.
But nowhere has it been stronger than in places like Vallejo, Fairfield and Suisun, which rank among THE most affordable cities in the entire Bay Area.
It’s a classic supply and demand situation.
On the supply side, if you follow my Weekly Real Estate Report, you know that the inventory has plummeted by about 75% throughout these cities since the first of the year.
And on the demand side, as prices became incredibly affordable, homes in these areas became instantly attractive to an eager Read the rest of this entry »
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Are Distress-Sales Listings Dominating The Market In Your Town?
May 3rd, 2009 categories: Benicia, Contra Costa, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Investors, Market Update, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo
New Distress Sale Listing Report Shows Similar Percentages, But Far Fewer Actual Distress-Sale Listings
Like the old song says, the more things change, the more they stay the same. At least that’s the case when it comes to comparing our latest Distressed Property Update Report to the one I prepared back in late February.
That’s because the same five cities that led our market area in the percentage of distress-sale listings in Feburary again top the list in the current report. Those ‘honors’ again go to Pittsburg, Antioch, Vallejo, Oakley and Suisun City. Read the rest of this entry »
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