By Dennis Norman, on October 31st, 2009 Gerry Loesch, PE
In part one, part two and part three of this series I gave you some background on Gerry Loesch as well as his informative E-View TM. Now we’ll pick up where we left off.
Gerry’s closing remarks show his passion for his profession: “I still love what I do. It is the only job where I get to give my opinion, no one has to agree with it, and I still get paid.” Well said Gerry! Where do I sign up???
Now we’ll continue with the E-View TM:
Q-Many cities and municipalities throughout the country have some sort of occupancy inspection. Since a building inspector from the local city or county is going to be inspecting the property to assure it’s compliance with local property maintenance codes, is it really necessary in this case for a buyer to still obtain an private building inspection? If so, why? Continue reading “What should a home buyer know about home inspections? Part four of a series“
By Dennis Norman, on October 30th, 2009 Dennis Norman
In yesterday’s update I had some rather encouraging news about the possible extension of the first-time home buyer tax credit of $8,000 that has stimulated some home buying but is set to expire on November 30th. The good news was that there is an agreement amongst the powers that be with regard to extending the home buyer tax credit, which in itself is a HUGE step toward getting the credit extended, but as I said yesterday, “the fat lady hasn’t sang yet”.
Based upon the latest news I just received in an email update from the National Association of REALTORS(R) I would say the lady has not quite taken the stage yet. The Dodd-Lieberman-Isakson Amendment (the agreement I was referring to above by the “powers that be”) ended up being added to the Unemployment Insurance bill. As I mentioned yesterday they were deciding whether to add it as an amendment to this bill or make it a stand-alone bill. Obviously they made the decision. Apparently the Senate needs to reach an agreement on procedure in order to schedule a vote on the Unemployment Insurnace extension and they were not able to do that yet. NAR is reporting that the next action is expected to be: Continue reading “Home buyer tax credit update-October 30, 2009“
By Dennis Norman, on October 29th, 2009 Dennis Norman
I have been talking a lot lately about the first-time home buyer tax credit of $8,000 that has stimulated some home buying but is set to expire on November 30th. I have also shared the efforts by organizations such as the National Association of REALTORS, The Mortgage Bankers Associaiton, The National Association of Home Builders and Fix Housing First to urge Congress to extend the home buyer tax credit as well as expand it to include more than just first-time home buyers.
Unfortunately there are some inaccurate reports I’m seeing this morning that indicating the Senate has passed a bill to extend the home-buyer taxcredits, which is not true, yet. However, I am happy to report that progress is being made though! According to an email I just released by the National Association of REALTORS: Continue reading “Home buyer tax credit update“
By Dennis Norman, on October 29th, 2009 Gerry Loesch, PE
In part one and part two of this series I gave you some background on Gerry Loesch as well as his informative E-View TM. Now we’ll pick up where we left off.
Gerry graduated from the University of Missouri at Rolla with a Bachelors and Master degree in Civil Engineering. He has been performing home inspections and engineering consultations for 32 years and during that period has inspected almost 15,000 homes.
Now we’ll continue with the E-View TM: Continue reading “What should a home buyer know about home inspections? Part three of a series“
By Dennis Norman, on October 28th, 2009 Gerry Loesch, PE
In part one of this series I gave you some background on Gerry Loesch as well as the beginning of his informative E-View TM. Now we’ll pick up where we left off.
Gerry served as the National President of ASHI (American Society of Home Inspectors) in 1984-1986 and has served as well in various positions of numerous other local and national industry related organizations over the years.
Now we’ll continue with the E-View TM: Continue reading “What should a home buyer know about home inspections? Part two of a series“
By Dennis Norman, on October 27th, 2009 By: Dennis Norman
St. Louis mortgage rates inched up a little this week according to St. Louis-based Paramount Mortgage Company.
Between these low rates and the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit that is available until Nov 30th, I would think there is a lot of incentive for a first-time buyer to buy a home now if they are in a position to do so.
St. Louis Mortgage Rates – October 27, 2009 * Continue reading “St. Louis Real Estate News – St Louis mortgage rates inch up this week“
By Dennis Norman, on October 27th, 2009 Gerry Loesch, PE
To answer this question I called upon Gerry Loesch, a 30 year veteran home inspector with an impressive resume. Gerry was kind enough to do an in-depth E-View TM with me on the subject of home inspections. Gerry’s experience and knowledge shows in the depth and detail of his answers.
Since this is a rather long E-View TM I’ll do it in a series. In each post I will begin with a some background on Gerry. Continue reading “St. Louis Real Estate News – What should a home buyer know about home inspections?“
By Dennis Norman, on October 26th, 2009 Dennis Norman
Last week I did a post after reading an article on StlToday.com about the change in property values being made by St Louis area assessors from 2007 to 2009. As I pointed out in my article I assumed the values shown by the assessors including ALL types of property and not just homes, however my analysis was based only upon the sale prices of homes.
Prior to doing the post I had requested just the residential data from the assessor’s office for the area counties but had not been able to obtain that data. Subsequently I did receive the information from the St. Charles County assessor and am happy to say I can now do comparison between the assessors values and home prices that is more “apples to apples”. Continue reading “St. Louis Real Estate – St. Charles County home price declines vs assessors property values; Update“
By Dennis Norman, on October 24th, 2009 A new Web site provides Missouri voters with information about a proposed state constitutional amendment barring politicians from imposing double taxation on sales of homes and other real estate.
I would encourage Missouri residents to visit www.YesToSaveHomes.com to learn more about the proposal.
Continue reading “Web Site Launch Promoting “Vote YES to Stop Double Taxation”“
By Dennis Norman, on October 23rd, 2009
- Dennis Norman
Due to the overwhelming demand for up to date information on the St. Louis housing market, as well as the positive response to our prior reports we have published, at St. Louis Real Estate News we will now be publishing “St Louis Real Estate Market Update Reports on a regular basis. We hope that you enjoy the information and we certainly hope the reports start having more positive news in them soon. If there is any data we are not including that you would like to see please let us know in a comment. Continue reading “St. Louis Real Estate Market Update – 3rd Quarter Report“
By Dennis Norman, on October 22nd, 2009
By Dennis Norman, on October 21st, 2009 By: Dennis Norman
Many seniors find themselves in a situation where there are struggling to keep up with rising costs of gasoline, utilities, property taxes and insurance but yet they own a home that is either paid for or has a significant amount of equity. Since, in many cases, they have been in their homes for years, raised families and have a lifetime of memories in their home selling it to realize the equity out of it is usually not something they would consider.
A “reverse mortgage” may be a “best of both worlds” alternative: A chance to get some of the equity out of your home in order to help with your living expenses or to meet an emergency or unexpected expense, without giving up the ownership of your home and without the risk of losing your home. Continue reading “St Louis Real Estate – Reverse mortgages pave the way to financial freedom for many St Louis seniors“
By Dennis Norman, on October 20th, 2009 By: Dennis Norman
Mortgage interest rates are already low, but dropped a little further this week, according to Paramount Mortgage Company.
Between these low rates and the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit that is available until Nov 30th, I would think there is a lot of incentive for a first-time buyer to buy a home now if they are in a position to do so.
St. Louis Mortgage Rates – October 20, 2009 * Continue reading “St. Louis mortgage rate drop to 5 percent this week for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage“
By Dennis Norman, on October 20th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
Yesterday the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s trial mortgage loan modifications under the Obama Administrations Home Affordable Modification Plan (HAMP) were up more than 40 percent in September 2009 from the previous month. According to the report, mortgage loans that are 60-plus-days delinquent increased to 1,401,000 borrowers in July, up a whopping 147 percent from July, 2008 when there were 566,000 borrowers 60 plus days delinquent.
Here are highlights from the report (all the data, unless noted otherwise is from July 31, 2009): Continue reading “HAMP loan modifications up 40 percent in September; Serious mortgage delinquencies up 147 percent in past year“
By Dennis Norman, on October 19th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
Veros Real Estate Solutions released their quarterly report projecting how the housing market is going to perform in the next 12 months in major metropolitan areas of the U.S. The bad news for St. Louis is, we didn’t make the list of top 5 metros in terms of expected housing price performance. The good news is we didn’t make the list of the 5 worst markets either.
The top-performing metros are projected to have housing prices appreciate 5 percent over the next 12 months and the worst peforming metro are expected to see housing prices decline 12 percent during the same period. The projection for St. Louis is for prices to decline 1 percent. Continue reading “St Louis housing prices projected to drop 1 percent in next 12 months“
By Dennis Norman, on October 15th, 2009 Dennis Norman
Last week I did a post on another blog about a report that had just been released by Trulia indicating that over 25 percent of the homes listed for sale in the U.S. had experienced a price reduction in the 5-month period from June 1 through October 1st and that the average price reduction was about 10 percent.
In an effort to see how things here in St. Louis were stacking up to the national numbers from Trulia, I wanted to assemble the same data, for the same period that Trulia did and see how we compare. I was able to do this with the help of my friends at Mid-American Regional Information Systems (MARIS), the MLS provider for the St. Louis region. Continue reading “Over 30 percent of St. Louis homes for sale have had price cut“
By Dennis Norman, on October 14th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
In the past I have been doing weekly posts with updated current mortgage rates based upon national data from either Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or the Mortgage Bankers Association. However, just like real estate, mortgage rates are “local” to some extent and do vary in different markets.
In an effort to help people in the St. Louis metro area get a more accurate picture of what mortgage interest rates are doing here, not to mention data that is accurate up to the minute I publish rather than delayed several days or a week as the national data is, I wanted to find a local source for timely, accurate rate information and have done just that. Continue reading “New! Local St. Louis Mortgage Rates“
By Dennis Norman, on October 14th, 2009 Dennis Norman
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly mortgage applications survey for the week ending October 9, 2009. The report showed an increase of 1.8 percent in mortgage loan applications from the week as interest rates inched back above 5 percent for the first time in four weeks.
Refi’s continue to dominate the mortgage application activity with 67.4 percent of all mortgage loan applications being refinances. Continue reading “Mortgage rates increase; loan applications decrease“
By Dennis Norman, on October 13th, 2009 Dennis Norman
Statistics and reports are flying at us from every direction about the real estate market nowadays. Some reports say we have hit bottom, some even say the housing market has started a recovery others say worse times are ahead. Since I don’t think anyone can really tell us what the future has in store for the housing market I thought now may be a good time to look at history…at least short term history, to see where things stand at this point. Along the way we may see a trend or perhaps even feel like we can hazard a guess as to where things are headed in the short term, at least in the St. Louis housing market.
Since many analysts, including those at the National Association of REALTORS(R) use 2001 as a “base” year frequently for the housing market, I guess because it was a market that proceed the “boom” (or bubble, your pick) and was sort of a “normal” year in terms of market conditions. I figured if it’s good enough for real analysts it’s good enough for me so I have used date for the St Louis real estate and housing market from 2001 in my comparison with where we stand now. Continue reading “The St. Louis Real Estate Market Bubble and Burst; St. Louis County hurt the worst in the area“
By Dennis Norman, on October 9th, 2009
By Dennis Norman, on October 8th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By Dennis Norman
Foreclosure rates in St. Louis increased for the month of August over the same period last year according to a report released today by First American CoreLogic. The report showed the St. Louis metro area to have a foreclosure rate of 1.24 percent in August, up just slightly from July’s rate of 1.20 percent, but up over 63 percent from a year ago when the rate was 0.76 percent.
As bad as the foreclosure rate for St. Louis sounds we are still doing better than the national rate of 2.86 percent for August. The state of Missouri had a foreclosure rate of 1.16 percent for August, up a whopping 84 percent from a year ago.
By Dennis Norman, on October 8th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
The best available tool for sustaining the still-fragile housing market is the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit, (expires November 30) and it is essential that Congress extend the credit into 2010, the National Association of Realtors® testified at a hearing of the U.S. House Small Business Committee yesterday.
NAR Regional Vice President Joseph L. Canfora said “the credit is working,” pointing out that the 355,000 to 400,000 transactions directly attributable to the credit made a significant dent in the housing inventory and will help to stabilize home prices. Further, the credit has provided a huge indirect benefit to local governments, shoring up property tax bases in particularly hard-hit areas. Continue reading “Homebuyer Tax Credit Best Tool for Sustaining Housing Recovery, Says NAR“
By Dennis Norman, on October 7th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
Today, testifying before The US House of Representatives Small Business Committee, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) told the committee that the current credit cycle and recession began in the U.S. housing market, and recovery will not be complete until the current oversupply of house on the market has dramatically decreased.
The MBA then cited the recent report by the IRS that over 1.4 million taxpayers have benefited from the tax credit. “Although (the) MBA is seeing some improvement in the housing market, it is essential that the favorable impact of the first-time homebuyer credit be allowed to continue beyond the upcoming expiration date of November30, 2009.” Continue reading “MBA urges US House Small Business Committee to Extend and Expand Homebuyer Tax Credit“
By Dennis Norman, on October 7th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly mortgage applications survey for the week ending October 2, 2009. The report showed an increase of 16.4 percent in mortgage loan applications from the week before fueled by interest rates remaing below 5 percent.
Unfortunately interest rates seem to be doing more for existing homeowners and the mortgage industry than investors and the real estate market at refi’s for the week made up 66.3 percent of the mortgage loan application activity. Over the past four weeks shows homeowners refinancing existing loans is up 6.7 percent while borrowers financing the purchase of a home is only up a scant 0.2 percent. Continue reading “Mortgage interest rates on 30 year loan stay below 5 percent for third consecutive week“
By Dennis Norman, on October 7th, 2009 To alleviate some suffering by homeowners, the Obama Administration introduced the “Making Homes Affordable” plan last March. Unfortunately, the plan has not yet had the intended effect.
Article by the Grand Law Firm
Economists debate whether or not the country is actually currently in a recession. Some say that there are positive signs that we have reached the bottom and the economy is turning around. Others, however, suggest that the country still has a long way to go and it may be years yet before we truly reach financial recovery. Regardless of who is right though, one thing is clear: many people are facing significant financial hardships and need help now. Continue reading “Mortgage Programs Fall Short in Keeping Homeowners out of Foreclosure“
By Dennis Norman, on October 6th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
According to a report prepared by the Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA) in 2006, thirty-five states plus the District of Columbia impose a real estate transfer tax. What a transfer tax amounts to is when you sell or transfer a house (or other real property) you pay a tax to the state on the sale ranging from a low of 0.01 percent in Colorado to a high of 2.2 percent in the District of Columbia.
In addition, in some states (Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, New Hersey, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia) some of the localities impose a tax in addition to the State transfer tax. In California, Louisiana and Ohio real estate transfer taxes are imposed only at the local level. Continue reading “Missouri Association of REALTORS working to prevent double taxation“
By Dennis Norman, on October 5th, 2009 Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
Results have just been released of a study conducted by Rosen Consulting Group as to the effectiveness of the 2009 first-time-homebuyer tax credit and the potential need for an extension of the credits.
The Rosen Consulting Group was retained by Fix Housing First, a coalition that was originally working to convince Congress for a housing stimulus package that they feel would have a more significant then what was ultimately passed, and since has been working to get the tax credit extended beyond its current expiration date of November 30, 2009.
The study noted that “facing the most significant economic crisis since World War II, Congress and the White House passed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 in an effort to provide support to the contracting economy and beleaguered housing market.” Continue reading “Homebuyer tax credit has been primary cause of recent return of buyers to market according to study“
By Dennis Norman, on October 2nd, 2009
- Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
The Homeowners Assistance Program (HAP)was established back in 1966 to give some monetary relief to eligible service members and federal employees who suffer financial loss on the sale of their primary residence when a base closure or realignment announcement cause a decline in the residential real estate market and they are not able to sell their homes under reasonable terms or conditions.
By Dennis Norman, on October 1st, 2009
By: Dennis Norman
Back in July I did a post about Freddie Macs “Smartbuy” sales promotion for owner-occupants buying Freddie Mac Homesteps(R) Homes. The special offer began July 17, 2009 and ends October 30, 2009 so there is less than a month to take advantage of it.
Under this promotion people buying a Freddie Mac home for their personal residence will receive at no cost:
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