St Louis Real Estate NewsDaily St. Louis real estate news, market analysis, home prices, and mortgage rate updates from local industry professionals. |
Dennis Norman
Today the Federal Housing Finance Agency announce proposed guidance that would prohibit Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks from investing in mortgages with private transfer fee covenants. Considering that covers the lenders that originate, invest in or, or insure over 90 percent of the homes in the U.S. that pretty much puts the kibosh on financing a home with such a transfer fee.
Ever wonder why one home will sell for more than a similar home in the same neighborhood? You’ll hear all sorts of reasons. One house has this feature or that feature while the other one doesn’t. That’s part of it but certainly not all.
In the next few days, look for FHA to implement further changes to strengthen its financial situation. An audit in late 2009 showed that the capital ratio of its Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund (MMIF) had fallen below its statutorily mandated threshold. Over the past few months, FHA has raised premiums on its FHA insurance, prohibited seller-financed down payment assistance, stepped up enforcement of its regulations, tightened appraisal rules, banned several lenders from writing FHA guaranteed loans and brought suit against others.
Dennis Norman
A report just released by CoreLogic estimate the financial impact of short-sale fraud to be $310 million annually. It is estimated there is fraud in one in every 53 short sale transactions resulting in an unnecessary loss to the lender of $41,000 per transaction on average.
Dennis Norman
A report just issued by Zillow shows that home values in the United States continued to decline in the second quarter of 2010, with the Zillow Home Value Index falling 3.2 percent year-over-year and 0.6 percent from the first quarter to $182,500. The national rate of decline decelerated from the first quarter, marking the second consecutive quarter of slowing declines.
Dennis Norman
Fannie Mae, after losing $59.8 Billion in 2008 and then $74.4 Billion in 2009, reported yesterday that things are looking up and they lost only $1.2 Billion in the 2nd quarter of this year. This “good” news comes on the heels of documents being released two weeks ago showing that Countrywide made, what appears to be, some “below-market” mortgages to employees of Fannie Mae under a VIP loan program. There have been allegations that perhaps this was done in exchange for favors.
Ted Gayer, Co-Director of Economic Studies, Brookings Institute
The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development released June data for the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). HAMP is the foreclosure prevention program targeted at borrowers who are delinquent in their mortgage payment or facing imminent risk of default on their mortgage.
It has always been an open question whether HAMP would prevent foreclosures or whether it would just delay inevitable foreclosures. While those who qualify for HAMP receive reduced mortgage
A home mortgage is the largest debt of most consumers and is nothing to take lightly or approach without diligence and care.
Here are some tips to help guide you and help you avoid the pitfalls that are out there:
Dennis Norman
Previously I have written about an effort supported by the Missouri Association of REALTORS (MAR) to protect Missouri homeowners from facing double taxation through a real estate transfer tax by backing an effort to amend the Missouri Constitution to prohibit such a tax. Unfortunately, after Missouri citizens supported this initiative in overwhelming numbers, the effort was dealt a blow today when effort by the Missouri Secretary of State’s office announced its conclusion that the Vote “YES” To Stop Double Taxation amendment did not receive enough signatures of registered voters to qualify for the ballot.
Dennis Norman
NAR Pending Home Sales Index at Lowest Level Since Index Began in 2001
At dropping 30 percent in May as a result of the rush to buy a home before the April 30th tax credit deadline, the National Association of REALTORS Pending Home Sales Index for June shows a further decline of 2.6 percent in the index in June (seasonally adjusted) which is 18.6 percent below June 2009. While the decrease in home sales was expected, I’m a little surprised we are running so far behind last year (which, might I remind you, wasn’t that great of Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Report looks at impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil spill on Florida Coastal home values
According to a report released this morning by CoreLogic the impact of the BP DeepWater Horizon oil spill on home values in the coastal area’s along the Gulf coast is expected to range from $648 million over one year to as much as $3 billion over five years. This estimate is for the communities that are already impacted by the spill, if the unlikely worst-case scenario occurs and the spill reaches down to the area of the Florida Keys Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, released their 2009 Mortgage Loan Fraud (MLF) study which found the number of mortgage fraud suspicious activity reports (SAR’s) filed in 2009 grew 4 percent compared to 2008.
Dennis Norman
A report published by Lender Processing Services (LPS) analyzing homeowner’s performance on their mortgages as of June 2010 shows some encouraging news; there are signs that the foreclosure and mortgage delinquency rates are stabilizing, albeit at very elevated levels.
Dennis Norman
This week I attended an event at the St. Louis Association of REALTORS® in which Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist for the National Association of REALTORS® was the featured speaker and gave his take on the housing market as well as his housing market outlook.
Dennis Norman
A report released by CoreLogic showed the St. Louis metro area to have a foreclosure rate in June of 1.48 percent up slightly from May’s rate of 1.46 percent and an increase of 28.7 percent from the year prior when the rate was 1.15 percent.
Fannie Mae Rolls out New Loan Quality Initiative (LQI) Program – Tightens underwriting requirements and aims to reduce borrower fraud.
These rules could derail some closings for buyers who rack up purchases or even take out new store credit cards before their home sales have closed.
Dennis Norman
This morning S&P/Case-Shiller Index report for May was released showing that the annual growth rates in 15 of the 20 Metro Area’s their reports cover improved in May compared to April 2010. The 10-city composite is up 5.4 percent from the year before and the 20-city composite is up 4.6 percent from the year before.
Dennis Norman
Asking this question now is about like asking a newly divorced person their thoughts on marriage….nonetheless in challenging times many of us reflect upon our past investment decisions, investment philosophy, etc and see what can be learned from our past to help us in the future.
Dennis Norman
Yes, the headline is correct….New home sales in June were up 23 percent from May, but unfortunately the revised May annual new home sales rate of 267,000 was the lowest rate of sale on record therefore even after a 23.6 percent increase it only brought June up to 330,000 new homes, a rate that is now the second lowest new home sales rate on record. June’s new home sales rate is 16.7 percent below a year ago.
There is some good news in the report; the inventory of new homes (seasonally adjusted) at the end of Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Multiple Offers and Homes Selling for prices ABOVE list price? Is this a reprint of a post from 2005?
Nope. Believe it or not, this is exactly what was in a report released this morning by Zip Realty. The report is based upon home sales activity in the second quarter of this year and says that, despite slowdowns in home sales across the country, California is still the nation’s hottest spot for home buying activity.
California was home to 91 out of the country’s 100 “hottest” zip codes in terms of home sales during the quarter. Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Home sales activity was up in May, but the mix of sales shifted toward less-expensive properties in many cities throughout the U.S. according to the May 2010 Radarlogic Housing Market Report. In addition, the report states that while their home price composite index for the 25 metro areas covered did increase in May by 2.1 percent on a year-over-year basis, the “gains were not large enough to be described as a recovery” and “there was more evidence of weakness in the market than strength.”
Highlights from the report include:
Home prices have remained stagnant since the Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Last month I said that I expected to see some elevated numbers in the existing home sales report for May and June since this report would reflect the actual closing of the home purchases from buyers that raced to buy before the April 30th home-buyer tax credit deadline. Even though Congress has extended the deadline to close on these purchases until August 31st, the majority of the tax-credit induced sales will have closed by June 30th and therefore be reflected in today’s report which I would say has happened.
Today’s existing home sales report from theNational Association Continue Reading →
WHAT IS A CREDIT SCORE?
Simply stated, credit scores area statistically-based tool to assess the future performance of a borrower.
Scores are derived from the history of a borrower as it is reported to the credit repositories from any creditor. Credit scores are a proven indicator of the likelihood to repay a loan or credit obligation. The lower the score; the more risk from a borrower to repay a loan, on time and in full. Scores range from 400 to 850. This process was started by Fair, Isaac and Co., which is why credit scores are also called Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Finally, some good news!
This morning Standard & Poor’s released their S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Index for June showing that first-mortgage default rates declined 5 percent from the month before and were down 45.2 percent from a year ago.
I have been saying for a while, we are not going to see any sort of sustainable recovery of the housing market until we see mortgage delinquency and default rates decline thereby bringing down the foreclosure rate and ultimately easing the downward pricing pressure on the housing market caused by foreclosures. Maybe, just maybe, this is the Continue Reading →
The U.S. Census Bureau and US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a their report on New Residential Construction for June 2010 showing a decrease in building permits and a decrease in new home starts from May.
The report shows the following:
Building permits issued for single-family residences in June were at an annual rate of 421,000 which is 3.4 percent below the revised May rate of 4216,000 and a decrease of 6.7 percent from a year ago when the rate was 451,000. Housing starts for single-family residences in June were at an annual rate of 454,000 Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Next month St. Louis County and St. Charles County will hold their annual collector’s real property tax sale. The City of St. Louis holds their property tax sale on five separate dates beginning in May and running through October.
The general perception among many people is that at these sales property is sold for back-taxes owed, which is not entirely accurate. Under tax sales the property owner may in fact lose ownership of their property to the purchaser at the tax sale but, in St. Charles and St. Louis County, not until after a “redemption” period Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
07/17/10-Correction – This past week Congress passed H.R. 4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which is the most comprehensive reform to the banking industry since the Great Depression. The bill now awaits President Obamas signature which is expected to happen in the coming week.
This is a very comprehensive bill and I’m not sure even the Congressmen that passed it know everything that is in it, so I’m certainly not going to even pretend to know that much about the bill, but the one thing I do know is the Home Valuation Code Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Missouri one of 32 States Identified as “Low” risk of mortgage fraud
According to the 2010 Mortgage Fraud Trends Report released by CoreLogic this week, fraud risk in the mortgage industry has declined by 25 percent since it peaked in the third quarter of 2007. Even though the trend is down it is still estimated that there were $14 billion in fraud losses experienced in 2009 alone.
CoreLogics’ fraud index can drill down to show states, cities and even streets that have the highest mortgage fraud risk. Highlights of the report:
Overall mortgage fraud risk has Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
According to a report released this morning by RealtyTrac there were 1,961,894 foreclosure filings in the first six months of 2010 on 1,654,634 housing units in the U.S. This reflects a 5 percent decrease from foreclosure activity for the prior 6 month period but is an 8 percent increase from the same period of 2009. What is just a sickening statistic in the report is that, during the first six months of 2010, 1.28 percent of all housing units in the U.S., or one in 78, received at least one foreclosure filing during that period.
The mortgage industry has underwent some dramatic changes in the past year as has the regulations and rules the industry must comply with. Lender’s are barely able to keep up with everything new so it’s not surprising home-buyers have many questions when it comes to obtaining a mortgage to buy a home. Therefore, I thought I would take this opportunity to provide a list of questions that a home-buyer should ask their lender that I think will be helpful. Oh, and since I am a loan officer in St. Louis, I did take the liberty of giving my Continue Reading →