During the third quarter of 2012, 3.71 percent of St Louis homeowners with a mortgage were 60+ days delinquent on their mortgage, a slight decline from the prior quarter when the rate was 3.88 percent and a decline of over 10 percent from a year ago when the St Louis mortgage delinquency rate was 4.13 percent, according to TransUnion. This marks the third consecutive quarter the St Louis mortgage delinquency rate has declined. Continue Reading →
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Charlie Cook, of the Cook Report, a well-known and respected political commentator, cautioned REALTORS at their annual national convention to be prepared for changes to the mortgage interest deduction. According to an article in REALTOR magazine, Cook said he did not expect the mortgage interest deduction (MID) to specifically come under attack but that, as Congress looks at cuts to address the deficit, the MID “unlikely to escape unscathed. Cook went on to say that he felt the change would most likely be in the form of a cap, whether it be a dollar amount or a percent allowed for itemized deductions, but one way or another, it was going to change Continue Reading → Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), while speaking at the NAR convention in Orlando gave a pretty optimistic outlook for the housing market. Yun said he expects to see home prices rise cumulatively 15 percent over the next three years, home sales increase over 20 percent during the same period and new home sales to increase over 90 percent from 2011 to the beginning of 2014. Yun did add a caveat to his optimism saying these things assumed there would be no further limitations on the availability of mortgage credit or a “fiscal cliff”. At this point I don’t know that I would be betting against a fiscal cliff, so I guess we will just have to wait and see. Continue Reading → As the St Louis real estate market continues to show signs of improvement in many areas, as I often talk about, real estate is very local, so markets within a metro area can behave quite different. Aware of this, many home buyers, particularly home buyers relocating to St Louis, often want to know what are the “hot” markets, or the markets that have definitely begin to come back? Seller’s want to what the hot markets are as well with the hope they will see their city or zip on the list. Continue Reading → Qualified first-time home buyers can receive a forgivable 3% cash assistance loan for down payment and closing costs on a home. The Missouri Housing Development Commission (MHDC) provides a competitive interest rate on a safe 30-year fixed rate 1st mortgage. Your 3% advance loan is treated as a 2nd mortgage completely forgivable after five years of continuous occupancy. New, Constant Funding means MHDC will have the monies available for the borrowers regardless of bond issuance. Continue Reading → Corelogic released a report today showing that U.S. home prices in September were 5 percent higher than a year ago and that St. Louis home prices were up 0.3 percent during the same period. Corelogic’s data is based upon their home price index and sold prices so I decided to take a look at some real-time data for the market based upon asking prices and found that, as the chart below shows, St Louis home prices increased 2.3 percent from September 2011 to September 2012. Continue Reading → For anyone that has been through the short sale process, or knows someone that has, they will attest to the fact that short sales are not “short” but, instead, are typically long, drawn out processes with many layers of approvals and much red tape. Good news! Beginning today, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took steps to shorten the short sale process as well as reduce the amount of red tape, by no longer requiring approved private mortgage insurance companies to come to them (Fannie and Freddie) for approvals on short sales or deeds in lieu of foreclosure. This is a significant change from the current policy and should definitely make the short sale process less drawn out going forward. Continue Reading → The A.P.R. is a tool for comparing different loans, which will include different interest rates but also different points and other terms. The A.P.R. is designed to represent the “true cost of a loan” to the borrower, expressed in the form of a yearly rate. This way, lenders can’t “hide” fees and upfront costs behind low advertised rates. Continue Reading → Over 10,000 St. Louis homeowners (10,101) lost their homes in foreclosure for the 12 month period ending September 2012, according to a report released by Corelogic. We should see fewer Saint Louis homeowners lose their homes to foreclosure in the coming year though as the St. Louis foreclosure inventory (those homes in some stage of the foreclosure process) is declining with 1.5 percent of all St Louis homes with a mortgage being in the foreclosure process in September, down 0.3 percent from the rate a year ago. Continue Reading → The St. Louis foreclosure rate fell to 1.55 percent in August, 2012, the lowest rate since August, 2010 when the rate was 1.54 percent, according to a report released by CoreLogic. Other encouraging news in the report was that the mortgage delinquency rate fell in August to 4.52 percent, the lowest it has been in well over two years! Continue Reading → The St. Louis area has seen a fairly dramatic change in the make-up of the housing occupants with a shift from home-owners to renters over the past six years. After the crash of the real estate market we have experienced, as well as massive unemployment and a weak economy, this is not surprising, but is something that I think needs to be recognized. The five-county St Louis core market (St Louis County, St. Louis City, St Charles County, Jefferson County and Franklin County) as a whole saw owner-occupied units drop almost 3.5 percent during the period while, at the same time, renter-occupied units increased almost 15 percent. Continue Reading → Over the past few years, ARM’s (adjustable rate mortgages) have received somewhat of a “bad name” however, there are truly benefits to utilizing an ARM, which include: Continue Reading → Today, RealtyTrac released “Election 2012 Housing Health Check” in which it looked at how the real estate market, as a whole, has done during the Obama administration, and then broke it down to the county level for over 900 U.S. counties. While the housing market has not been the topic of much discussion by President Obama nor Presidential hopeful Romney in the debates, they have both had their say. Obama recently drew attention to the fact that foreclosure activity dropped to a five-year low and has also recently said “housing has begun to rise”, ostensibly taking some credit for both and, last month, Romney released a white paper with his plan to “end the housing crisis” which he say, in part, is “Obama’s failure”.(click here for a copy of the Romney White Paper as well as the complete RealtyTrac Report) Continue Reading → If the last time you looked at your mortgage was when you closed on your loan, it’s time to take it out for an annual once over. New loan programs and opportunities to leverage your home equity can bring you lower mortgage payments and new investment opportunities. Continue Reading → The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) announced this morning that U.S. existing home sales, and prices, slipped slightly in September, falling 1.7 percent from the month before however were up 11 and 11.3 percent, respectively, from the year before. The St. Louis Real Estate market, as the charts below show, we see slightly different data, at least for the 5-county core St Louis Real Estate area I’m showing (the City of St Louis and the Counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin). In this core area, which makes up the bulk of the Saint Louis real estate market, home prices fell 7.6 percent in September, from the month before, to a median price of $121,884 and home sales slid over 20 percent to 2,428 homes sold in September, down from 3,045 in August. Continue Reading → According to a report released this week by Interest.com, St. Louis is the 5th most affordable metro area in the U.S. with a median-income household having 23 percent more income than needed to buy a median priced home. Continue Reading → St. Louis home prices are on the rise as all signs continue to point toward a recovery for the St. Louis real estate market! The table below shows the change in the median list prices from a year ago for the 25 St. Louis area zip codes with the highest increases. Now, before people that live in some of the top zip codes on the list get too excited, remember, this does not mean that the actual value of a home rose by the percentage indicated, it just means the median list price has which could be the result of higher priced homes hitting the market. Having said that, the trend of list prices, along with other related data on the St Louis real estate market I’m seeing, is still a positive sign and a strong indicator of better times ahead for the St Louis real estate market. Continue Reading → According to the “Residential Price IndexTM” from FNC, home prices in the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S. reached a 20 month high in August 2012. Even better, St. Louis ranked number 7 on the list for home price increases in the past year and number 8 for the increase in home prices in the past month. In terms of year to date increase in home prices, St. Louis home prices have increased 4.4 percent, according to the report, which makes St. Louis 19th in the nation in terms of YTD home price increases. Continue Reading → “The time needed to close a mortgage loan has increased by almost 25 percent over the last year, from an average of 40 days to 49,” reports Mortgage News Daily, “and it was refinances that drove the change.” Continue Reading → There were 1,560 foreclosure filings on St. Louis properties in September, which is a decrease of 22.62 percent in the St. Louis foreclosure rate from August, and a decrease of 11.86 percent from September 2011 when there were 1,770 foreclosure filings on St Louis homes, according to a report released this morning by RealtyTrac. Continue Reading → REALTORS® surveyed by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), say that low valuations on appraisals are causing their seller’s problems ranging from delaying the sale to renegotiating the price to even killing the deal. Of the REALTORS® that responded, 11 percent say a low valuation on an appraisal cost their seller a sale in the past 3 months, 9 percent said it caused a delay to a sale and 15 percent said a low appraisal resulted in the seller having to renegotiate and agree to a lower price. Shadow inventory, one of the “culprits” that eats away at the housing market and puts downward pressure on home prices, fell to 2.3 million homes in July 2012, down 10.2 percent from July 2011. This works out to a six month supply of shadow inventor and is roughly the same as things stood back in March 2009. Shadow inventory consists of properties with seriously delinquent mortgages (90+ days delinquent), in the foreclosure process or owned by a lender but not listed for sale in the MLS. In other words, shadow inventory is a glimpse of things to come in terms of distressed sales therefore when we see declines in the numbers like this, it is encouraging and yet another sign that a recovery of the housing market may be on the way. Continue Reading → The St. Louis Real Estate Market is showing signs of strengthening and even recovery in many of the neighborhoods throughout St. Louis. To get the latest St. Louis Real Estate Stats and the latest, best and most comprehensive St Louis Real Estate Data, check out our 5-minute video update below for October for the St Louis real estate market. The update includes charts with up to the date data on the St Louis housing market including St Louis home prices, average time to sell a home in the St Louis area as well as other data and charts to show Continue Reading → The inforgraphics below from BankForeclosuresSale.com do a great job of illustrating the boom and bust of the housing market as well as show the relationship, and impact, of home prices, inflation and income on the housing market. The good news is, it appears the worst is over and, according to Simon Campbell, a Senior Business Analyst with BankForeclosuresSale.com, “all signs point to increasing demand for housing.” (Can I have an Amen please?). Strategic defaults are something I’ve written about several times over the past few years and is something that there are very strong feelings within the industry at opposite ends of the spectrum on in terms of whether they are OK to do or not. A strategic default is essentially when someone that has the ability to pay their mortgage but, usually because they are “underwater” (meaning they owe more than the property is worth), choose to “walk away” and allow the home to go into foreclosure. Almost one-third (32 percent) of Americans think there is nothing wrong with doing a strategic default, according to survey results just released by ID Analytics. Continue Reading → The new legislation is titled: Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act (H.R. 1627) and has been signed into law on August 6, 2012. Congress expanded the scope of the legislation and specifically mandated improvements in VA home loan benefits through the VA Home Loan Guaranty Program. Realtors and lenders will now be able to help more veterans and their families become homeowners. A portion of the new law makes VA loans available to more surviving spouses, provides easier funding fee waivers for disabled vets and helps single and dual-duty parents with occupancy hurdles. Continue Reading → If you are considering buying your first home you may very well be asking yourself if now is the time, have prices bottomed out and trying to weigh the risks of buying a home versus the rewards. Well, if this is the case, allow me to give you some things to put on the “rewards” side of the equation…. For starters, with mortgage rates at historic lows, your monthly mortgage payment in most cases should be much lower than what you are currently paying in rent! Remember this…”Your Landlord says Hi…& Thanks You for Paying His Mortgage.” Also, we have seen flexibility from sellers on negotiations and most are helping in paying for the buyers closings costs…so that just leaves the down-payment! Continue Reading → Most people today know enough about mold to know that it is a potential health problem. You may envision it as a serious respiratory health concern. This mysterious enigma does not wear a skull and crossbones, but some see it as a “deal killer” just the same. Today we’ll share some facts about dealing with potential mold problems in the middle of a real estate transaction. Why is Mold a health concern? Continue Reading → If you’ve been waiting to buy a new home thinking that prices will continue to fall as builders get more desperate to sell homes, I think you may have missed the boat, er, house. The bruised new home market continues to show signs that the worst is over including numbers just released showing new home sales in the U.S. in August were up almost 28 percent from a year ago and new home prices were up 17 percent during the same period in the U.S. Here in St. Louis, the St. Louis HBA just reported that building permits for new homes in St. Louis are 15% through August compared with this time last year. Continue Reading → Yesterday, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed three separate lawsuits against individuals and their companies for misleading Missouri consumers in connection with mortgage-modification services. The lawsuits were filed against Colleen Kelly, a Missouri resident operating Heartland Loss Mitigation, LLC,; Eric Mader, a Florida attorney operating Mader Law Group, LLC, a Florida company; and Jim Caplan, a Florida attorney operating CAPLAW, P.A., a Florida company. Continue Reading → |
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