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Any Light At The End Of The End Of Solano’s Foreclosure Tunnel?

Rod Herman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:38:09 +0000

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 housing market in Benicia, Vallejo, Fairfield, Suisun and Vacaville finally returns to normal.

Here are a few statistics that will give you a sense of what lies ahead:

As of Feb. 15, there were 2,055 already-foreclosed homes in those five Solano cities. Yet, a startling 69% of those (1,425) have yet to come on the market. So that shadow inventory has actually grown by 11% since my August report.

2,186 more homes are now in the final stages of foreclosure and could turn into new REOs within a matter of days or weeks.

And another 2,422 homes have had a notice of default recorded against them, which means that they’re between 1-4 months of being foreclosed upon, too.

Add in the 240 REOs that were actually on the market as of Feb. 15 and that means there are now almost 6,300 homes in Benicia, Vallejo, Fairfield, Suisun and Vacaville that are either unsold foreclosures or heading that way.

To put that number in perspective, consider how long it would take to work through 6,300 listings, based on the average weekly sales activity for those five cities.

I track those numbers in my Solano Weekly Housing Report and based on this year’s average weekly pending sales figures, it would take anywhere from 13.5 months to 16.6 months just to exhaust what’s presently on the market or in the foreclosure pipeline in those five Solano cities right now.

And that doesn’t include all those people who are behind on their payments but haven’t yet had a notice of default recorded. Nor those who are upside-down on their mortgage and might soon find themselves forced to sell due to one of life’s many unavoidable circumstances.

It also doesn’t include those “regular” traditional sellers who aren’t selling out of necessity (remember them?).

If you’re looking for some positive news or perhaps a ray of light, as the above chart shows, the number of properties where a notice of default (NOD) had been recorded actually went down since August. Meanwhile, the number of trustee’s sales went up.

Since the foreclosure process starts when an NOD is recorded and finishes when a trustee’s sale is completed, it’s always far better to see fewer homes at the beginning of the process than at the end, which is what the above numbers show.

So maybe those numbers are the first signs that we’re indeed starting to work our way through the foreclosure doldrums. But then again, a few months from now we might find that things have reversed themselves again.

In any event, as these numbers clearly illustrate, though the market itself seems to have stabilized, we’re by no means out of the woods just yet.

From here, it looks like we still have quite a ways to go before that pipeline really starts to dry up.

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Jan. 2010 Vallejo-Benicia Recap: Details On Every Home That Sold Last Month

Rod Herman — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:44:44 +0000

One of the regular features of this blog is my monthly Benicia and Vallejo Home Sales Reports, with full details on every home that sold in Benicia and Vallejo the previous month – a “tale of the tape” of sorts.

If you want to see how much every home sold for last month, the Jan 2010 Benicia-Vallejo Home Sale reports show not only the address, closing date and sales price, but also the square footage, bedroom/bath count, how long it was on the market, and whether it was a regular sale, short sale or REO (foreclosure). I also calculate the net price change between the original list price and eventual selling price.

Every month, there are always a few eye openers. For example, last month, two homes in Vallejo sold for less than half of their original asking price, including a home on Georgia St. that started out at $349,900 and eventually sold for $159,000 — a whopping $199,000 price drop.

To see the full report, with home-by-home totals for January, 2010, click on either of the two buttons below.

Here are some highlights from those reports:

The lowest sales price in Benicia last month was $104,800 for a Bay View Villas condo on Southampton Rd. The highest was $744,000 for a single family home on West C St.

Vallejo’s low was $42,000 (a condo on North Camino Alto) and it’s high was a home on Landmark St. in Hiddenbrooke that sold for $460,000 ($55k above its asking price).

Out of Vallejo’s 139 closed sales, 83 were REOs and another 28 were short sales. So 4 out of every 5 Vallejo sales was a distress sale.

In Benicia, exactly half of last month’s 24 sales were distress sales.

The biggest net price drop in Benicia in January was on a home on Townsend Dr., which sold for $126,900 less than its original asking price.

The longest sales period between the two cities was for a home on Valle Vista in Vallejo that took almost a full year (361 days) to sell.

35 of Vallejo’s 139 sales (25%) sold in 10 days or less. In Benicia 20% (5 out of 24 sales) sold that quickly.

Be sure to download both the Jan 2010 Benicia Home Sales Report and the Jan 2010 Vallejo Home Sales Report for full details on every home that sold last month. To see the same report for previous months, click on the links below.

If you have questions on any of these properties or would like information on what’s currently available, please contact us or visit our Home Search page to search our multiple listing service. We’re always happy to set up customized automated MLS searches for our clients and prospective clients.

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Is The Party Over For Local FHA Borrowers?

Rod Herman — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:59:49 +0000

Big Change For Benicia-Vallejo FHA Buyers Starting Monday

The party may not necessarily be over FHA borrowers just yet, but starting Monday, one of the big advantages that FHA borrowers have enjoyed for the past 9 months goes away.

I’m talking about the ability for a lender to send out their favorite appraiser in hopes of making sure nothing goes awry in the buyer’s attempt to buy the home of their dreams.

Come Monday, all FHA appraisers will have to follow many of the same rules that appraisers on conventional (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) loans have been following since last May.

New Appraisal Policy Starts Feb. 15

The new FHA policy is supposed to help ensure that lenders provide financing based on the true market value of the home rather than on a potentially trumped-up/inflated appraisal.

If you look at FHA’s appraisal policy for the past 16 years, you’d have to agree that it wasn’t the most cleverly designed system. For, the person with the most motivation for the loan to go through — the loan officer — was also the one who selected the appraiser.

So you had a system that put appraisers between a rock and a hard place.

Do Your Job Or Help Your Business?

They could be truly objective and run the risk of not getting any more appraisal business if they continually came in low and killed the loan officer’s deals.

Or, they could make sure every appraisal came in just where the loan officer wanted it and ensure a steady stream of repeat business from that lender.

Now, not every loan officer nor every appraiser took liberties like those I just suggested. In fact, the vast majority did a reputable, honest job and avoided the temptation to put self-gain above professionalism.

But neverthless, there was a very small minority who clearly put their own interests above those of the company lending the money.

They Finally Realized What Was Happening

But it wasn’t until the mortgage market collapsed that lenders fully realized how some lenders and appraisers took full advantage of the system by working in cahoots with one another in transactions that were out-and-out fraud.

The Home Valuation Code Of Conduct (HVCC) was adopted in May and it made radical changes to the way appraisals were done on conventional (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) loans.

And the new FHA appraisal policy is another attempt to take away the opportunity for unscrupulous loan officers, mortgage brokers and real estate agents to push through deals where the home isn’t worth anywhere close to what the trumped-up appraisal says it is.

The Pendulum Swings To The Other Side

By adopting this new policy, FHA has swung the pendulum from one side of the room all the way over to the other. For, while it takes the selection of the appraiser out of the loan producer’s hands, which is probably a good thing, it also eliminates the opportunity for a buyer to get an idea of whether or not the house might have an appraisal problem before making an offer.

Up until now, a buyer could ask their lender to call the appraiser ahead of time to get a read on how much he could legitimately offer without creating an appraisal problem.

So if you looked at the comps and felt that $265,000 seemed like a fair price, your lender could usually run that price by the appraiser before you wrote your offer just to make sure he or she agreed. You could make your officer with confidence and also provide the sellers with the peace of mind that if they accepted your offer, the loan should sail through without any appraisal surprises.

Now Nothing You Can Do Now But Wait

Now, though, FHA buyers can look at the comps inside and out and make an offer that they feel shouldn’t pose any appraisal problems. But you won’t really know for sure until the appraisal comes back, since your loan office can’t select the appraiser nor have any contact with him or her.

When Fannie & Freddie adopted their HVCC, they unknowingly created a system whereby many lenders went to outside appraisal management companies who raised appraisal fees and then often sent out appraisers who were either inexperienced, unfamiliar with the areas they were being sent to or had limited access to local comps and other market data.

FHA has attempted to prevent many of the problems that has plagued the HVCC by requiring appraisers to certify that they know the area and have full access to the area’s relevant market data.

Ever since the HVCC came out, there have been all sorts of horror stories about appraisal injustices that have caused some buyers to lose the home of their dreams.

Whether FHA’s new policy will simply make sure that appraisals are legitimate and accurate or instead create problems similar to what’s occurred in the months following adoption of the HVCC remains to be seen.

FHA Learned From The HVCC’s Mistakes

I think the FHA policy-makers are starting out with a program that is vastly better than what conventional loan borrowers encountered last May when the HVCC went into effect.

It will probably take a few months before we see just how much the new FHA policy affects the real estate purchase market. Hopefully it will do just what it was designed to do and nothing else.

But we shall see.

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January Monthly Home Sale Report: Solano Sales Activity Hits 20-Month Low

Rod Herman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:35:42 +0000

But The Median Price Is 7% Higher Than Last January

I just compiled January’s Solano County Home Sales Report and while prices were down slightly, the big news, as the headline indicates, was that Solano’s overall sales totals dropped dramatically last month, to their lowest level in well over a year.

County-wide, Solano totaled 389 home sales last month, compared to 520 in December — a 25% drop. The last time there were that few monthly sales in Solano was May, 2008, when there were 384 sales. That was 20 months ago.So the big question, of course, is whether this decline is due to

a) the still-low inventory;
b) the traditionally softer holiday period (most contracts accepted during the holidays usually close in January); or,
c) an actual drop in demand due to a market-shift.

As I’ve cautioned before, statistics for a single month aren’t usually as reliable as a quarterly report. So subtle differences from one month to another aren’t always a true indicator of what’s really happening in the marketplace.

But when you see a drop-off as large as we saw in January, it certainly causes you to stand up and take notice.

Accordingly, I’ll be very interested in seeing what happens in February and March, for if the number of sales remains as low as it was in January, we could look back at January as the beginning of yet another market shift — particularly if the inventory continues to increase as it has in recent weeks.

Though, my guess is that January’s low sales numbers aren’t really the result of a market shift, but rather due to several different factors:

1) The first-time buyer tax credit was originally going to expire at the end of November, which likely caused some people to buy early enough so they could close by the end of November. Some of those buyers would have otherwise still been in the market and ready to buy in December.

2) Many of the REOs and short sale lenders likely had strong incentives to close as many sales as they could by the end of the year so they could report those losses in 2009. So some end-of-December closings probably would have normally closed in early January.

3) Many buyers typically put their home shopping activities on hold during the holidays, which traditionally means fewer closed sales in January.

4) With low inventories and fewer new listings that month, buyers who were still actively looking had fewer housing choices in December.

Along with the drop in total sales, the median sales price for Solano County was down, too. The January median sales price was $205,000, which is 5% lower than it was in December ($215,000).

Yet, 3 of the 5 cities in our market area actually saw their median prices increase from December to January.

Benicia was the big winner in that category, with a 24% rise ($420,000 in January, $340,000 in December). The other cities on the plus side were Vacaville (+4%) and Vallejo (+1%).

But before you get too giddy over Benicia’s $80,000 rise in its median price in one month, remember that there were only 24 total sales there last month. So it’s possible the numbers may have been skewed by just a few random sales.

To see the data for each city in our Solano market area, download the full Solano County Home Sales Report for January, 2010.

A few other highlights from that report:

The highest sales price in January was $927,000 (Vacaville). The lowest was $36,000 (Fairfield).

Solano County’s median price was 7% higher this January than in Jan. 2009. ($205,000 this year vs. $192,000 a year ago).

The median price compared to Jan. ‘09 was up in Fairfield (+25%) and Vallejo (+12%) but down in Vacaville (-11%), Benicia (-7%) and Suisun (-2%).

The percentage of distress sales was fairly similar to what it was in December for most cities in the county. Benicia, which had soared from a lower-than-normal 37% in November to a higher-than-normal 73% in December, was back down to 54% last month — close to what it’s been for most of the past six months.

Please contact us for more information or details on these statistics, To see every home that’s presently available on our MLS (in any city in Solano County), visit our Home Search page.

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Suisun Helping First-Time Home Buyers With Zero Interest Loans

Rod Herman — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:55:26 +0000

Up To 25% When You Buy A Suisun Foreclosure

If you’re a first-time buyer looking to buy a foreclosed property, Suisun City has a program that might increase your buying power by opening the door to homes you might otherwise never have been able to afford.

I’m talking about their First Time Home Buyer program, which not only helps those looking to get into their first home, but also helps prevent neighborhood blight at the same time.

The basic details:

It’s a “silent second” mortgage, with deferred payments and no interest.

You can borrow up to 25% of the value of the home.

You must purchase a foreclosure (or a short sale that’s already in foreclosure).

When you sell, you repay the loan PLUS the equivalent percentage of the home’s accrued appreciation.

To qualify, your household earnings must not exceed 120% of the area’s median income.

Homes must be located within Suisun’s Redevelopment District.

Here are the current income limits, which are based on the number of people in your household.

Right now, the city still has $3.4 million of the $4.4 million that was allocated to the program. Based on Suisun’s current median sales price for December ($195,000), that’s enough to fund approximately 70 first-time home buyer purchases.

And even though Suisun Economic Development Director Jason Garben anticipates that there should be enough money to last several years, he says that there is also a source of replacement money through the city’s Redevelopment Agency.

How It Works

In a nutshell, here’s how the program works. First, you get pre-approved for a first mortgage with a traditional lender. Then, the city bridges the gap between your minimum down payment and the total cash needed to get into the home, up to a maximum of 25% of the purchase price.

As you saw above, the city shares in a portion of the appreciation when you sell. So if you borrow 25% and make $100,000 on the home by the time you sell, then you keep $75,000 and give $25,000 to the city.

More Home For Your Money

But the real beauty of this program is that it enables eligible buyers to increase their buying power by up to 25% and thereby afford a home they otherwise never would have been able to buy.

And what’s in it for the city? Well, they get to provide an immediate new owner-occupant for a home that might have otherwise fallen into disrepair or become a neighborhood eyesore. So it’s, as they say, a “Win-Win” situation.

Right now, there are 18 homes on the market in Suisun which are eligible for the city’s First-Time-Home-Buyer financing program, ranging in price from $121,900 to $475,000.

Most, But Not All Homes Qualify

To qualify, homes must be located within the city’s redevelopment district, which includes just about every residence in town except for Peterson Ranch (off Walters Rd.).

Contact us for more details or for a current list of homes that qualify for the city’s FTHB program. Also, check out the city’s brochure and Suisun’s web site, both of which have further information, including details on Suisun’s neighborhood revitalization grants, which are also available to eligible first-time buyers.

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Weekly Solano Real Estate Report For Feb. 1: Vallejo, Benicia Inventory Way Up In January

Rod Herman — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:13:20 +0000

More Like A Normal January; A Sign Of Things To Come?

The first month of 2010 is now behind us and judging by the week-to-week performance over the first 30 days of the new year, we may be seeing further signs that a more normal real estate market could be on the horizon.

Last year, of course, was anything but normal. Instead of starting low and building up over the first four months of the year, the local Solano County housing supply started out the year sky-high and then diminished dramatically as the spring evolved.

Inventory Up Everywhere But Suisun

This year, however, things have started out more like a typical year — at least if you go by what we’ve seen over the first month. Four of the five cities in our Solano County market area all saw their inventories grow in January — and by a rather healthy margin, too.

And that’s a good sign, for it’s an early indication that 2010 may at last follow a more typical housing activity pattern.

The housing supply in both Benicia and Vallejo grew by more than 20%. Fairfield was up 11% and Vacaville up 8.5%. The only city that saw its supply drop was Suisun, which inexplicably experienced a 12% decline.

Vallejo’s Inventory Finally Tops 300

Vallejo was the big story, though, where the inventory of active listings topped the 300 mark this week for the first time since last June. Just four weeks earlier, there were 242 homes on the market in Vallejo. Today there are 303. That’s a 25% increase!

Benicia’s overall inventory went from 80 to 96 over that same period — a 20% rise. That’s only the second time its been that high since last June. The previous time was in mid-September.

Sales Activity Remains Strong, Too

Even though the inventory grew last month, sales activity remained high, too. For the year, Vallejo is averaging 38 new pending sales a week, followed in order, by Fairfield (27/wk), Vacaville (17), Suisun (9) and Benicia (3).

Now, I’ll couch all of this with a reminder that we’re only talking about a single month. So 4-6 weeks from now, we could be singing an entirely different tune. But if sales remain strong and the inventory continues to climb as spring approaches, then we might really find that we’re back in a typical real estate pattern after all.

To see the full city-by-city statistics, with week-by-week and monthly breakdowns of the local housing inventory, plus weekly sales activity for each city, be sure to download our full Solano County Weekly Real Estate Report.

We track these statistics every week and publish this report several times each month. So be sure to check back regularly — or subscribe by email or Feed reader and receive these updates automatically.

If you’d like further details on any of these Solano real estate statistics or are interested in buying or selling in this area, please contact us and we’ll be glad to assist you. To see the current inventory of homes in any city in our Solano market area, be sure to visit our Home Search page.

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

Rod Herman — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:05:48 +0000

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 apply the entire $8,750 towards closing costs or intstead use $5,000 towards closing costs and the remaining $3,750 towards a new refrigerator, washer, dryer, microwave & stove.

Notice, though, that I said the credit was “up to” 3.5%. In order to get that full amount, you have to make sure you’re using a loan program that allows a credit that high.

If you’re using an FHA loan, the current guidelines allow a maxiumum 6% seller credit (but that, too is changing soon). On some conventional loans, however, the max is 3%, which means that you’d could be forced to walk away from that last half-percent.

The new Fannie Mae incentive program is only good on homes that Fannie Mae has taken back as foreclosures. Currently, there are almost 50,000 Fannie Mae-owned homes nationwide.

I just searched Fannie’s local inventory and there are currently 67 Fannie Mae owned homes on the market or coming soon in Solano County, including 6 in Benicia, 22 in Vallejo, 11 in Fairfield, 5 in Suisun City, and 17 in Vacaville — in various price ranges.

And this 3.5% credit can be used in addition to the $8,000 first-time buyer federal tax credit or $6,500 move-up buyer tax credit (both of which also expire at the end of April).

If you’re in the market to buy and want to take advantage of this new Fannie Mae incentive, time is certainly of the essence, since you must be CLOSED by the end of April.

So realistically, if you anticipate 45 days to close escrow from the date your offer is accepted, that means you probably need to be in contract by mid-March.

It’s often possible to close escrow in 30 days if all your ducks are in a row when you write your offer (and if things beyond your control go smoothly during the escrow).

But if, by chance, you get into contract on Mar. 25 and somehow don’t end up closing until May 3, that 3.5% credit is out the window.

If you’d like to see how this program might help you get into a home in the coming months, please contact us and we’ll be happy to get the ball rolling for you.

You can get a quick preview of Fannie Mae’s current inventory on their HomePath web site. Keep in mind that their information may not be as current as what’s in our MLS system, so some homes that appear to be available on HomePath may really already be under contract.

If you’ve signed up to search for homes on our web site, you can also perform your own cross-check to see the current MLS status for the same property. Or, better yet, if you’re a client or prospective client, just give us a call or send us an email and we’ll be happy to do all that legwork for you.

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

Rod Herman — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:32:17 +0000

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s A Short Sale?

For those who don’t know how or what a short sale is, it’s usually the only way a borrower who owes more money than the home is currently worth can sell their home.

They sell the home at market value and ask the lender to agree to a reduced loan payoff so they can do so. It saves both the lender and the borrower from what otherwise would be a costly and more damaging foreclosure.

Before escrow can close, the title company requires a copy of the short sale approval letter, which includes a minimum payoff amount as well any other conditions the lender wants to impose (things like “escrow must close by such-and-such date” or “seller to receive no funds at close of escrow”).

Some borrowers have only one loan on their property. But many have both a first and a second mortgage.

And it’s on those 2-loan properties where many banks are now openly demanding that the seller and their real estate agent deceive the other bank and close escrow, even if it means defrauding the other lender.

When There Are 2 Loans

When there are two lenders, the first mortgage holder often will often agree to reduce its payoff marginally so that the bank holding the second mortgage can have a few thousand dollars in exchange for releasing its lien.

The premise is that the holder of the second will be wiped out entirely if the home forecloses, so they should be happy with a token $3,000.

But in agreeing to leave that $3,000 for the 2nd, the “1st” also usually will insist that that’s all the 2nd gets and that any contributions from any other party (seller, buyer, real estate agent, whoever) are to be remitted to the 1st.

To make sure that all monies that come in and out of the escrow are fully disclosed, the title company is required by law to prepare a form created by the Dept. Of Housing & Urban Development. The form is known as a HUD-1 or more commonly, simply a “HUD.”

But what’s frequently happening with many short sales is the lender on the 2nd is asking the seller (or anyone else the seller can convince to pay) to come up with an amount over and above what the 1st has offered them.

That part is okay. But here’s where it goes from legal to illegal.

Cutting A Side Deal

Instead of going back to the 1st and saying Bank B needs another $5,000 or it won’t release its lien, the bank with the 2nd is simply instructing agents and their sellers to give it them on the side — in a manner where the holder of the 1st will never know about it.

So you have Lender A, the holder of the 1st, which has instructed all parties — seller, agent, title company — to pay Lender B (the 2nd) not a dime more than $3,000 with explicit instructions that any overage goes directly to the 1st.

But Lender B tells the seller and the agent to send them another $5,000 in a cashier’s check outside of the escrow. That way they get their money and when the 1st gets their HUD at close of escrow, it looks like all the 2nd got was the $3,000 that the 1st had authorized.

That’s Fraud with a BIG Capital F.

The Banks Don’t Care

So what happens when the agent or the seller says “no can do, that’s illegal?” The 2nd simply says, do it or we won’t release the lien and you can let the 1st foreclose.

Yes, these same people who chastised the American public for duping them into loaning out so much money to so many under-qualified borrowers are now openly trying to coerce agents and sellers to defraud another lender.

And worse yet, Lender B does it to Lender A without any hesitation, but when the roles are reversed and Lender B is now the 1st and Lender A is 2nd, guess who cries foul? You got it — the same lender who was willing to stab the other lender in the back on the previous short sale.

Yes, that’s the seedy under-belly of our nation’s banking system. At least that’s what seems to be happening more and more with many of our country’s largest institutions.

I’ve never directly had a lender on a 2nd ask me to do this. If they did, I’d try like heck to get the lender to see why what it was asking us to do was fraud. But in the end, if I couldn’t convince them to remove their lien without forcing my client to break the law, I’d walk away from the deal. And I’d encourage my client to do so, too.

And then I’d blow the whistle loud and clear.

Someone FINALLY Blew The Whistle

And that’s just what several real estate agents in other parts of the country recently did — and loudly enough, that it caught the attention of CNBC and even HUD itself.

Jeremy Brandt, the CEO of a real estate lead-generation company, put CNBC reporter Diana Olick in touch with several agents who talked openly about the blatant coercion they had experienced from various well-known national lenders.

Brandt’s web site has a transcript and actual recording of a conversation between a lender a real estate agent, where the lender repeatedly instructs the agent to break the law, going as far as telling her that if she’s not comfortable doing it, she should just assign it to a colleague who will.

And, CNBC reporter Olick’s original story and her follow-up a few days later tells more of the gory details. In her initial report, she says that HUD was not aware of this practice when she first contacted them.

Will The Banks Keep Doing This Anyway?

So hopefully this recent whistle-blowing will make its way to Capital Hill and we’ll see some major crackdowns on lenders who advocate fraud and deceit.

Going through a short sale can be emotionally and physically exhausting for the borrower, not to mention very humbling.

Those who opt to try for a short sale rather than taking the easy way out and simply walking away from the home are for the most part trying to make the best of a very unfortunate situation — both for themselves and for the lender.

In most cases, the lender will usually come out far ahead by agreeing to a short sale instead of foreclosing and re-selling the home.

Yet, instead of working with the borrower in a cooperative spirit, they instead kick these unfortunate buyers at their weakest moment…and then try to coerce them into doing something they know is against the law.

And the banks wonder why their image has become so tarnished with the American public…

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

Rod Herman — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:14:29 +0000

They 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:

Address
Bedrooms, Bathrooms, Square footage
Days On The Market
Original List Price
Final List Price
Final Sales Price
Net Price Change From Start To Finish
Close Of Escrow
Sale Type (REO, Short Sale, Regular Sale)

To see the full report, with home-by-home totals for December, 2009, click on either of the two buttons below.

Here are some highlights from those reports:

Benicia

The lowest sales price was a condominium on Southampton Rd., which sold for $79,000. The highest sales price was a home on Kearney Dr. that closed at $638,000.

The longest time on the market was for a short sale on a condominium on Cambridge Dr. in Southampton. It took 440 days to sell. The quickest sale was for a condo on Shirley Dr. in Bridgeview Hts., which sold in 4 days.

15 of Benicia’s 26 sales closed for less than their original asking price. The biggest cumulative price drop was for a condominium on Sunset Circle which started at $272,900 and sold for $155,000 — a $117,000 price reduction.

Vallejo

The least expensive home in Vallejo last month was a condo on No. Camino Alto, that closed at $35,900, while the highest sales price was for a home on Sealion Pl in Glen Cove, which sold for an even $500,000.

Five of the 151 Vallejo home sales sold in 2 days or less, including a home on Rosewood Ave., which went into contract the same day it came on the market. The longest sales period was 405 days, for a home on Bennington Dr. in Hiddenbrooke.

53 homes sold for less than their starting price, but 83 sold for more than their original list price, which is another sign that the worst may finally be over for Vallejo.

The biggest price increase was for a home on Landmark Dr. in Hiddenbrooke, which sold for $51,000 more than its starting price. At the other end of the spectrum is the same Bennington Dr. home from the previous paragraph. It sold for $145,000 less than its original asking price.

To see this month’s complete Solano County statistical breakdown, be sure to also read the December 2009 Solano Home Sales Report. To see previous monthly reports for Benicia or Vallejo, click on the links at the bottom of this page.

And, if you’re in the market for a home or thinking of selling, we’d love to assist you. Just click the contact form and we’ll be happy to get in touch with you right away. Also, be sure to visit our Home Search page for current home prices…right from our MLS system.

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December 2009 Monthly Home Sale Statistics For Solano County

Rod Herman — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:42:16 +0000

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!)

Okay, so onto December’s numbers. Be sure to download the full 3-page Solano December Home Sales Report for full details on how every city in our Solano market area fared last month.

Median Price

In a nutshell, the median price for Solano County in December ($215,000) dropped 2% from what it was in November ($219,000). But the median price was higher than November’s median in both Fairfield and Suisun.

Vallejo’s median price took the biggest drop — from $178,175 in November to $155,000 in December. But that December figure was still the second highest of the entire year.

So it’s not that Vallejo really lost much ground in December; rather, November’s total was probably just abnormally high (hence my disclaimer at the top of this post).

Distress Sales

The percentage of distress sales to regular sales in most of the cities in our Solano market area remained fairly similar in December to what they had been in the previous 3 or 4 months.

Benicia though was a noteworthy exception, though, with 75% of its December closings either REOs (bank-owned) or short sales. That’s twice what it was in November and is its highest percentage since March.

But since Benicia only had 26 total closed sales, the numbers could have been skewed — especially since many short sale lenders or REO asset managers may have been motivated to close their sales before 2009 expired.

Nevertheless, since Benicia had been reporting the lowest percentage of distress sales in the county month-in and month-out, this sudden turnabout will be something to keep an eye on in the coming months.

December ‘09 vs. December ‘08

One statistic that gives you a good perspective on whether anything’s really changed in recent months is a comparison with the same period a year ago.

Countywide, the median sales price for December ($215,000) is actually 8% higher than it was in Dec. 2008. But much of that increase can be attributed to Fairfield/Green Valley — which reported a median price 22% higher than a year ago.

The other cities in our market area all had a median price lower than in Dec. ‘08: Benicia -11%, Suisun -3%, Vacaville -16%, Vallejo -1%.

But even though its median price was down, Vacaville led the way with the biggest increase in the number of sales with a 22% increase over Dec. ‘08.

Benicia also reported more sales this year than the previous December, while Fairfield, Suisun & Vallejo all had fewer sales than a year earlier. Vallejo’s total was down 32% and Fairfield was down 23%.

The full 3-page Solano Monthly Home Sale Report for December has all sorts of charts and comparisons — enough numbers to satisfy even the most avid number cruncher.

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