St Louis home sales in December increased 2.3 percent from the month before and were up 3.3 percent from a year ago. The increase in St Louis home sales follows suit with the trend in U.S. home sales as reported today by the National Association of REALTORS® which shows existing home sales in December were at at a seasonally adjusted-annual rate of 4.61 million units, an increase of 5.0 percent from the month before and an increase of 3.6 percent from a year ago. Continue Reading →
St. Louis foreclosure activity in 2011 declined 25.22 percent from the year before according to RealtyTrac’s foreclosure market report for 2011 that was just released.
As the chart below depicts, of the seventeen counties in the St. Louis metro area, all but five saw a decrease in foreclosure activity from the year before, and ten of the 17 saw a decrease from 2009.
To find foreclosures in your area click here.
Today’s metro area home sales report from the National Association of REALTORS® shows St. Louis metro area home sales in October increased 7.8 percent from a year ago while St. Louis home prices declined in October 0.8 percent from the year before. I took a little closer look at the St. Louis real estate market, focusing on what I call the five “core” counties; St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson, Franklin and the City of St Louis, and found that home sales increased in October 13.5 percent from a year ago, and home prices declined 2.1 percent from the year before. Continue Reading →
Not providing a current mailing address to the Assessors office can cost you your home
Mohammad Bhatti learned this the hard way. Bhatti, a resident of the City of St. Louis, purchased a property at 3243 Pennsylvania in 2005 to rehab and resell. From court records I reviewed it appears that the city had the property address as Mr. Bhatti’s mailing address rather than where he was actually living. This is something that would ultimately cost Mr. Bhatti to lose his property at 3243 Pennsylvania, which he claims to be worth $169,900, over $1,452.06 in delinquent property taxes.
Dennis Norman
Update: March 23, 2010: In spite of the concern of many organizations including the St. Louis Association of REALTORS, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Title Insurance folks, the Board of Alderman passed the vacant property ordinance on March 12th – Now that lenders and title companies are aware of potential title and lien issues with this bill I have no doubt investors, and even homeowners, are going to run into some roadblocks when trying to finance property in the City of St. Louis – 2/3 of the Alderman voted in favor of the bill:
Dennis Norman
What do sex offenders and owners of vacant property have in common?
UPDATE: March 8, 2010 – I found out today the bill that was actually perfected last Friday was a floor substitute…Unfortunately the changes made to the bill were minor- they changed the public data base so that you have to enter a property address in order to look up the owners personal information (including phone number and email address) and they changed the wording to no longer make real estate agents and property managers responsible for property they don’t own. So basically, just a little Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
Monroe and Jefferson County saw sharp increases however.
RealtyTrac® released its Foreclosure Market Reporttmfor October showing that foreclosure filings (default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions) were down 3.3 percent in October from the month before in the US and up 18.86 percent from the year before.
Here in St Louis, overall the picture is much better. For the 16 counties and 1 city included in the RealtyTrac® report for the St Louis metro area foreclosure filings in October were down 29.47 percent from the month before and down 30.39 percent from the year before. Included Continue Reading →
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
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 →
By: Dennis Norman
Lately the news on the real estate market has been a little more optimistic and almost encouraging at times. Most of the news and stats are national or regional and, as I and others have said many, many times, all real estate is local. So what’s going on in the St. Louis market and more specifically, what is selling here?
In putting together stats for this post I included data from the following areas:
St. Louis City St. Louis County St. Charles County Jefferson County Franklin County Continue Reading →
Freddie Mac announced that in the second quarter of 2009, refinancing borrowers overwhelmingly chose fixed-rate loans, regardless of whether their original loan was an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) or fixed. In fact, ninety-nine percent of prime borrowers who originally had a conforming ARM selected a new conforming fixed-rate mortgage when they refinanced.
While 30-year fixed-rate mortgages still tend to be the preferred loan, more borrowers are choosing 15-year fixed-rate loans than before. “When interest rates hit very low levels for fixed-rate mortgages, borrowers often take tis opportunity to lower their interest rate and shorten their loan term,” said Frank Nothaft, vice Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
According to a report issued by First American CoreLogicmore than 15.2 million U.S. mortgages, or 32.2 percent of all mortgaged properties, are in a negative equity position. In addition, according to the CoreLogic report, there are an additional 2.5 million mortgaged properties that are approaching negative equity. Negative equity and near negative equity mortgages combined account for nearly 38 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage. The numbers for St. Louis are a little better than the U.S. numbers. In St. Louis, 170,871, or 29.50 percent of all properties with a mortgage, are in negative equity. Continue Reading →
By: Dennis Norman
We’ll pick up where we left off after parts one and two of this series about selling a home in this market:
Question- Now for the $64 question, how should a seller properly price their home in this market?
Answer- In today’s market sellers are in fierce competition with one another for buyers. A seller can do everything right in presenting their home from maintenance and upkeep to staging, but if the price is not appropriate buyers will move on quickly. The simple truth is, there is another seller around the corner ready to set their Continue Reading →
By: Dennis Norman
We’ll pick up where we left off in part one of this series about selling a home in this market:
Question- How should a seller select an agent? What should they look for in an agent and what should a seller avoid?
Answer- Years of experience is not as important as it once was. Certainly, the seller needs an agent with market knowledge, but the fact is today’s market is new territory for all REALTORS(R). I believe a seller in today’s market needs to be certain their REALTOR(R) has a firm grasp of marketing a property to Continue Reading →
By: Dennis Norman
If you are a homeowner looking to sell your home today I don’t think I need to tell you it could be a challenge. In an effort to address some of the questions you may have about selling your home now as well as provide some useful tips and information
Now, lets find out what it takes to sell a home in this market: