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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I continue to hear in the news about incredible low interest rates, but the catch is getting approved for a mortgage loan, either for a purchase or refinance. The process is getting harder and harder. In this tighter credit environment, FHA remains to be a great alternative for buyers with limited resources for a down payment and closing costs or past credit problems. Underwriting guidelines are more lenient than conventional guidelines. Continue Reading → Most banks and lenders use scores calculated by FICO (also known as Fair Isaac) and derived from your reports with the major national credit bureaus Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Be careful, the credit scores sold at popular credit report monitoring websites are NOT the same scores that lenders use! Continue Reading → Beyond Housing is hosting a housing resource fair tonight at the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus and there will be over 25 local lenders and agencies there to help potential home buyers be aware of programs and resources that are available to help them become homeowners. Included in the program will be information on the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) through St. Louis County, a program that Dave Schott has used to help many people become homeowners and had an opportunity to share information about on Fox 2 news this morning. Check out the video below for more information or contact Dave using the contact form. Continue Reading → In spite of warning from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), the St. Louis Association of REALTORS (SLAR) and other housing-related groups of the damage the “Mortgage Foreclosure Intervention Code” (Bill #174 introduced by Hazel Erby, District 1) could do to the already struggling St Louis housing market, including increasing the cost of home mortgages, last month the St. Louis County Council passed the bill, it was signed into law by County Executive Charlie Dooley and will go into effect on September 28, 2012. Then, just last week, Lewis Reed, President of the St. Louis Board of Alderman, introduced what is a basically the same bill in an attempt to get the same law enacted by the City of St. Louis. Continue Reading → There is some life coming back to the new home industry as we are seeing increases in new home construction activity. On the national level, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today that building permits for new homes were up over 19 percent in August from a year ago, new home starts were up over 26 percent from a year ago and new home completions up a little over 2 percent from a year ago. Here in the Midwest region, as the chart below which depicts new home starts in the Midwest from January 2006 through July 2012 shows, it definitely appears new home construction has hit bottom, has leveled off and is now trending upward slowly. It’s going to be a long, slow recovery for the new home industry, but at least, for now, it appears things are headed the right direction. Continue Reading → St. Louis home sales (the 5 county core market*) in August increased 2.4 percent from the month before and were up over 13 percent from a year ago, following the trend in U.S. home sales as reported today in the existing home sales report from the National Association of REALTORS®. According to the report, U.S. home sales in August increased 7.8 percent from July and were up 9.3 percent from the year before. St. Louis home prices rose 2.7 percent in August from the month before and were up 6.8 percent from the year before falling a little short of U.S. home prices which increased 9.5 percent in August from the year before but still showing positive signs of recovery for the St. Louis housing market. Continue Reading → Maybe you’re a seller that has found yourself faced with the reality that you can’t sell your house or condo for a price today that will yield enough to pay off your loan, and you are not a candidate for, or don’t want to do, a short-sale? Or, maybe you are a seller with a house or condo that, for one reason or another, there is very limited demand for and, in fact, it seems that perhaps no one wants to buy what you have to sell? If so, maybe someone suggested, or you have considered, using a lease/option or a lease purchase to sell your home? After-all, there is a large demand for lease-options and lease-purchases by buyers but, you are just not sure if it is right for you? Continue Reading → Should I rent or buy a home in St Louis? This is a question that I’ve been asked dozens of times over the past couple of years and one that given the fact that home affordability is at an all time high and mortgage interest rates at an all time low, is generally easy to answer with “buy if you can”. I guess I many not have realized just HOW much sense that made financially, until a report came out a few days ago that looked to answer this very question and found that home ownership was 45 percent cheaper Continue Reading → There were 2,016 foreclosure filings on St. Louis properties in August, which is an increase of 8.39 percent in the St. Louis foreclosure rate from the month before and an increase of 10.22 percent from August 2011 when there were 1,829 foreclosure filings on St Louis homes, according to a report released this morning by RealtyTrac. Continue Reading → It is important to understand the difference between a Mortgage Banker and a Mortgage Broker. The mortgage company I am with a mortgage banker with over 41 years of serving our community. What does that mean? Picture your community bank and take away everything but the mortgage department. We use our own money to close the loan and select a servicer to handle your monthly mortgage payments. In essence, a mortgage banker controls the loan process from application to closing. Continue Reading → As of the end of the second quarter of this year, there are 90,937 underwater St Louis homeowners, a slight increase from the prior quarter when there were 90,196 underwater St Louis homeowners and a decrease of almost 9 percent (8.8 percent) from the 2nd quarter of 2011 when St Louis underwater homeowners numbered almost 100,000 (99,792). One is said to be “underwater” on their mortgage when they owe more on their mortgage than their home is currently worth, which is also referred to as having “negative equity”. Continue Reading → St. Louis Home Prices are showing signs of stabilizing and the inventory of homes for sale in St. Louis has declined to the lowest period we’ve seen in a while, both of which are signs of good things to come for the St Louis real estate market. Find out more, and get the latest St Louis real estate stats and market data in my video update below for September on the St Louis real estate market. Continue Reading → This week the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) published a report which showed selling a home was taking less time with the median time a home for sale dropping in July to 69 days, down over 29 percent from a year ago when the median time on the market was 98 days. St. Louis homes are taking less time to sell as well and, as you can see from the tables below I prepared, many St Louis areas have a lower median time on the market for homes for sale than the national median. The inventory of St. Louis homes for sale is dropping as well…does this impact price? Read on.. Continue Reading → A report was just published by RadarLogic which said that, even though home prices in the 25 cities covered by their RPX composite index appeared to have increased in the past year, that this was the result of a large decline in the number of distressed sales at bargain prices and not an increase in home prices. Continue Reading → Since the appraised value of home is a key element when considering a purchase or refinance, the following are the top four most common questions about appraisals asked by sellers: Continue Reading → Over the past few months I have talked a lot about whether St Louis home prices have hit bottom yet and, in an article about 3 months ago said it appeared they bottomed out last year. When writing on the topic have stressed that, by the time we see solid proof of the bottom we will be past it and home prices will already be on the rise. Today’s pending home sales from the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) supports this notion and shows signs that increasing demand and decreasing supply is putting a damper on the rate of recovery of home sales and will also lead to higher home prices. Yesterday I wrote about home prices in the U.S. increasing 6.9 percent in the 2nd quarter (according to the Case-Shiller index) and increasing over 5 percent during the same period here in St. Louis. Continue Reading → The S&P/Case-Shiller report was published today showing that U.S. home prices increased 6.9 percent in the 2nd quarter of 2012 from the quarter before. That’s great, but St. Louis is not included in their 10 nor 20 city index so it doesn’t tell us how we are doing here in St. Louis. Fortunately we have the market data available to see how St. Louis stacks up and, I’m happy to say (as the chart below shows), St. Louis home prices, with a 5.2 percent increase from the 1st quarter of 2012 to the 2nd quarter, is only running a little behind the national average! Continue Reading → St. Louis building permits issued for new homes continues on track to out perform 2011 in the largest counties in the area, according to a report just released by the Home Builders Association of St. Louis & Eastern Missouri. According to the report, the counties of St Louis, St. Charles and Jefferson have all seen more single-family building permits issued YTD (through July) in 2012 than in 2011, and Franklin county is only 2 permits shy of where they were in 2011 at the same time. Continue Reading → I have good news for homeowners that are underwater on the mortgage and need to do a short sale, or for buyers looking to buy a short sale. The Federal Housing Financing Agency just issued new guidelines to lenders that service Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans that are intended to “offer a streamlined short sale approach” which will be music to the ears of anyone that has been through the process. I don’t always agree with the actions of the FHFA but I think this is a good move and will help the market. The new guidelines, which go into effect November 1, 2012, include: Continue Reading → What are sellers’ concessions? A seller concession can be any negotiation where the seller, builder, developer, salesperson or any interested party gives a credit to the borrower at closing. The seller concession can help lower or eliminate the amount of money a borrower is required to bring to the closing table. Continue Reading → I spend a lot of time talking about real estate with people. Some of the most common questions I hear is “how’s the market”, “where’s the best place to buy” and “what markets are hot”. Continue Reading → It’s been a rocky few months, however new home activity in the Midwest continued to show signs of improvement in July. According to the report on New Residential Construction for July 2012 just released by the Commerce Department, new building permits for single-family homes in the Midwest increased in July 2.5 percent from the month before 16.9 percent from a year ago. Housing starts, on the other hand, were down 5.6 percent for the month but was up 12.0 percent from a year ago. Continue Reading → FHA remains to be a great alternative for buyers with limited resources for a down payment and closing costs or past credit problems. Underwriting guidelines are more lenient than conventional guidelines. Continue Reading → Below is a video update on the St. Louis Real Estate Market that I prepare monthly. In this video I do a quick recap of the news in the St Louis real estate market for the month as well as an overview of the St Louis housing market itself. 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 where the St Louis real estate market is and where it is headed. (Check out all our market update videos on our YouTube Channel – click here. Continue Reading → St. Louis home prices, after falling about 2.4 percent from the 1st quarter of 2011 to the 1st quarter of 2012, are projected to remain flat from the beginning of this year through the 1st quarter of 2013, according to a report released this week by FISERV. Historically, home prices remaining flat would not be good, but after what we have been through, with St Louis home prices falling 16.7 percent from their peak at the beginning of 2007 to their current level, flat is good. Continue Reading → St. Louis home prices in the 2nd quarter were at $134,700 for a median priced home according to the latest data from the National Association of REALTORS® making St. Louis 46th in terms of the lowest home prices of the 161 metro areas covered by the NAR report. Another NAR report shows the typical income needed to buy a median priced home and, based upon St. Louis’ median home price, the report shows that, with a down payment of just 5 percent, an income of about $29,601 per year would be necessary to buy a typical home in St. Louis. Continue Reading →
The St Louis foreclosure rate in July increased 4.2 percent from the month before with 1,860 properties receiving foreclosure notices during the month which is an increase of 22.53 percent from a year ago. The increase for the month is in sharp contrast to the U.S. foreclosure rate which declined 7.79 percent in July from the month before and for the State of Missouri as a whole which saw a decline of 3.2 percent from the month before. ARE YOU PRE-QUALIFIED? Have you given much thought to how much of a mortgage payment would be for your dream home? Should you talk to you mortgage professional before house hunting? Absolutely! Even if you haven’t so much as selected a Realtor®, it’s important to talk with your mortgage professional first. Why? Continue Reading → St. Louis sellers and listing agents are showing some modest confidence in the St Louis real estate market as indicated by the increases in the asking prices of homes for sale in St. Louis. According to data from the St. Louis Home Team, asking prices in the St. Louis metro area rose just a tad (0.3 percent) in August from the month before and were up 2.4 percent from a year ago. Continue Reading → |
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