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Gerry Loesch, PE In part one, part two, part three and part four of this series I gave you some background on Gerry Loesch as well as his informative E-View TM. Now we’ll finish with the final post of his E-View TM: Q-What should a consumer look for when choosing a building inspector? A-In my opinion, when selecting a building inspector the following things should be considered: 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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: 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: 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 * 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. 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 Continue Reading → 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. 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. Dennis Norman In an article this morning on StlToday.com I saw where property values, as determined by the St. Louis CountyAssessors office, declined 6.1 percent from 2007 to 2009. Hmm, I thought, that sounds pretty good actually, I think the St. Louis housing market would be doing great if that was close to reality. To see how the actual St. Louis housing market did during the same period I researched the sales prices of homes sold in the St. Louis metro area in 2007 and 2009 then computed the change in value during the period. Continue Reading → St Louis Real Estate – Reverse mortgages pave the way to financial freedom for many St Louis seniorsBy: 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 Continue Reading → 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 * 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): 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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. 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 Continue Reading → Dennis Norman By: Dennis Norman Earlier this week the Treasury Department released it’s eight “Tranche” report updating the status of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) which includes the Home Affordable Modification Programthat I have written about on several occasions. The report shows that progress is being made with regard to loan modifications with $27.07 billion, of the $50 billion available) committed to loan modifications through September 30, 2009 (see “HAMP” details on chart below). Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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: Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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 Continue Reading → 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. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) temporarily expands the HAP program to assist service members and Department of Defense employees who are wounded, injured or become ill when deployed, Continue Reading → 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: A comprehensive two-year HomeProtect(R) Home Warranty Up to 3.5% payment by Freddie Mac towards buyers closing costs Homeprotect(R) Appliance discount (up to 30% savings on name brand appliances) Continue Reading → |
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