Off topic a little but I have never understood why anyone likes south florida. Hot nasty weather, rude people, bugs, storms etc.
John
Housing Rolling Along 2
- Thread starter Covertibility
- Start date
Off topic a little but I have never understood why anyone likes south florida. Hot nasty weather, rude people, bugs, storms etc.
John
Add together two places you've recently lived in Atlanta and San Diego, and you equal SouthFlorida. The good and the bad of each.
Being that I'm a Chicagoan who grew up in a hi-rise condo, I find the vast urbanization of SoFla much to my nature. Plus I'm very into tropical foliage,i.e. palm trees ect. So I dig the whole cosmopolitan city in the tropics type of thing. The weather during the summer is horrid. It's not so much the heat. Along the ocean where I live temps are ok with good breezes. The rain/cloudiness of May-September though is like a long winter. I suppose Atlanta's slight elevation helps but obviously most everywhere in the South sux during summer. Winters though are SoCal type awesome. Nov-Apr is sunny, often days in a row of cloudlessness with temps from a max of the low 80's to a few nights in the 40's. Perfect. During those months you feel you're living in the most vibrant place in America. Every restaurant and bar is packed and there's a tangible vibe in the air.
The people are weird like the stereotypical Los Angeleno used to be. Eccentric. Nutty. Not self absorbed like O.C. or Scottsdale but just more goofy. SoFla is like 1/4 NY-NJ, 1/4 Hillbilly, 1/4 Latin, and a 1/4 Black. In Miami-Dade, native born whites are a solid minority. We have as many Latino's as San Diego AND as many blacks as Atlanta. All in the same place with none of the Crash like racial probs of L.A. The crime though is so over the top rampant that only someone from Bogota could really relate to the experience. Fortunately, crime RARELY strays into the area's east of I-95 much less east of Federal Hwy (U.S.1), both of which define Florida's Atlantic coast.
Like L.A. and N.Y. it's imperfect but it's also MUCH less expensive than either of those. If you like tropical living, sports as a player or spectator, no income tax and the advantage of Eastern time zones (I'd like to hear your view on time zones) it's a great place to live. Personally I could just as easy Live in S.D. or Atlanta. If I ever left Florida though the place that beckons is South Carolina. Keep it down.........
I think all in all eastern time is a big advantage simply because you can get plenty of sleep and still be up 2 hours before the market opens and have plenty of time to figure out the day.
One good thing about west coast time for me was that the market ended at 1:00 and I could go pick up my step daughter from school, take her and a friend or two of hers out for food, then go to the beach for an hour or so.
I really think west coast time is a big disadvantage for trading.
John
Miami RE trends ;includes miami beach, carol city,miami springs, miami lakes,olympus hiights,pinecrest,palm springs north,quail heights,sunset,surfside,south miami,west miami.......
median price home =$380,000 as of 9-7-2006
1 month trend -[minus] -1.3%
3 month trend-[minius] -2.6%
6 month trend-[minus] -4.8%
12 month trend -[minus] -10.4%
Tampa, Orlando average not much better, still minus/downtrend;
palm trees do however still look cool
median price home =$380,000 as of 9-7-2006
1 month trend -[minus] -1.3%
3 month trend-[minius] -2.6%
6 month trend-[minus] -4.8%
12 month trend -[minus] -10.4%
Tampa, Orlando average not much better, still minus/downtrend;
palm trees do however still look cool
Desperate sellers turning to auctions to unload properties.
Back in December 2004, when David Holland paid $315,700 for a new home in an east Venice Centex subdivision, the granite-and-tile beauty looked like an easy flip.
But as Centex's sales slowed down, his property turned into a flop.
Last week, Holland cut his losses. He put his house up for an "absolute auction," meaning no minimum and no reserve. Once the auction company advertised the house that way, Holland had no choice but to let the property go to the highest bidder.
He walked away with $255,000, a painful reminder that real properties, like stocks, do not always go up.
In a real estate market turned upside down, auction specialists find their phones ringing almost non-stop from would-be sellers desperate for some action.
As auctioneer Neal Van De Ree attempted to squeeze as much money as he could out of a tight-fisted crowd on Tuesday, six bargain hunters had to make moment-to-moment decisions on whether to raise their paddles again, or not.
In this case, the winner of Holland's house was an anonymous voice at the other end of a cell phone, willing to pay $255,000. Add to that a 10 percent buyer's premium ($25,500) and all closing costs including title insurance and document stamps, and the buyer ended up with a walk-away price of $285,000.
Van De Ree has sold roughly 4,000 lots and homes in the 20 years since he took the reins of the Van De Ree Auction Co. from his dad. The younger Van De Ree boasts on his Web site that he closed 92 percent of the auctions he held last year.
Nationally, residential real estate auctions are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. auction business, according to the National Auctioneers Association.
Last year, auctioneers sold $14.2 billion worth of homes in 2005, up 8.4 percent from a year earlier, the group reports. Full-year 2006 sales will show another strong increase.
"With the current state of the real estate market, sellers see the attractiveness of knowing they will sell it on a given day versus keeping it on the market for months and sometimes years and incurring costs such as taxes, insurance on the home, upkeep and marketing," said Erica Brown, a spokeswoman for the auctioneers' association.
This is not news to Brian Herron.
The founder of Bradenton-based All Florida Realty & Auction Co. has been having multiples of the number of auctions so far this year compared to last year.
Herron turns down more than half of the requests he gets, and still finds himself holding as many as four auctions on any given Saturday.
Auctioneer Daniel DeCaro found himself turning away so much real estate auction action this summer that he formed a new division to handle it. Based on Longboat Key, his Daniel DeCaro Real Estate Auctions Inc. has long specialized in properties of $2 million or more.
"We can only do so many. It is like selling a Rolls-Royce or selling a Chevette. Which pays you more?"
But now, partnering with former auction client Dudley Brown, DeCaro has formed "DeCaro South," a new division handling homes as low as $800,000.
"We are getting five to six calls a day to sell homes in that price range," DeCaro said. "It is just unbelievable. The market demand just mandated that we not let that business go."
'Show me your paddle'
In Venice on Tuesday, Van De Ree warmed up the crowd before getting to David Holland's Venice house with a "pretend" auction for a Lexus in the garage that had its trunk stuffed with gold coins.
He invited folks to bid with invisible money for the luxury car as a way to accustom them to his auction patter.
Then he turned to the businesses at hand, selling Holland's house.
After a couple of delays to take $15,000 deposit checks from last-minute arrivals, Van De Ree shifted into an upbeat recitation of the home's attributes, and then into an intelligible but rhythmic auctioneer's patter.
"I have $235,000 from No. 13. Show me your bidding paddle ... Do I hear $240,000?"
The bids were so slow in coming that Van De Ree stalled twice, turning the microphone over to an assistant while he walked around the room, coaxing reluctant bidders into holding up that paddle one more time.
Finally, after 15 or 20 minutes of this odd courting ritual, Van De Ree knew the time had come to bring the gavel down three times in a row: an announcement that the property had sold.
"I knew I would probably lose money," said Holland, the seller, after the festivities. "But I thought it would sell for at least $300,000. The problem is there aren't any buyers. I think the people coming to auctions today know that, and they are looking for just incredible deals."
That's exactly what they are looking for.
Steve and Sara Schwartz stopped bidding at $250,000, which left them in the No. 3 position at the gaveling. The couple is attempting to use the auction process to upgrade at a bargain price from their Sarasota condo.
They had planned to stop at $225,000 on Holland's Venetian Falls home.
"We got a little bit of auction fever," Sara Schwartz admitted. "That always happens. Even at $250,000 I think it would have been a good deal."
Stan Pincus, another bidder, had an even lower cutoff in his head because he was looking for a pure flip. His number was way below the $255,000 win, and here's why:
In his opinion, if Pincus were to take possession and then sell again, owning the home would cost him about $320,000. Under the auction's rules, the bidder would be paying for the county's tax on purchases, called doc stamps and other closing costs, including title insurance. Then, as a normal seller, he would be paying for the doc stamps all over again.
Pincus said he would have gone for $250,000 if he thought he could flip the property within 30 days. That would allow him to assign the title and skip the doc stamps.
"But chances are slim that you're going to sell a property over $300,000 in less than 30 days," Pincus said, acknowledging just how slow the region's real estate sales are right now.
Struggling in Bradenton
In some ways Holland was lucky because at least he found a bidder who would meet him more than halfway.
Others taking the auction route have not been so fortunate.
David Douthitt's canal-front home in east Bradenton near Interstate 75 -- stalled in the midst of renovation with a stop-work order -- drew one lonely bid of $100,000 on Saturday, far below the seller's reserve.
Douthitt had previously been successful in having Herron's firm unload his other waterfront investment home, in Ellenton.
With the north Manatee County home, "we had legitimate bidders all the way. It was a pretty substantial loss for me, but I needed to sell it," Douthitt said.
He could not believe the lack of interest in his Bradenton property. It needs a few more months of work to compete, but it is situated on a deep-water canal in the midst of $500,000-plus homes.
"Today's was absolutely stupid -- $100,000," Douthitt said Saturday. "You can't even buy a vacant lot for $100,000."
The lack of interest in the canal-front home shows clearly why absolute auctions are dangerous in today's market, Herron said.
It is a subject that he and Van De Ree disagree about.
"In the good markets, where we almost were in a lottery to buy a property, an absolute auction would be great, because you know you're going to get your price," Herron said. "But look at today's auction. The seller would have gotten killed."
A Sarasota condo bargain
For Herron, there is not much time to commiserate on this particular Saturday: He has to grab lunch and then set up shop at the downtown Sarasota condo that is scheduled for preview at 1 p.m. and a 2 p.m. auction.
As is the case with the Holland's Venetian Falls Centex home, the seller at the downtown Marquee never moved in, and now wants out.
The 29 units, each with their own elevators, were originally priced at $800,000 and up. As at Venetian Falls, the developer still has units to sell, making life tougher for those trying for a resale.
Unlike Van De Ree, Herron advises sellers against holding absolute auctions in today's gun-shy market. While bidders didn't know the reserve during the auction at the Marquee, Herron knew his seller had set the bar at $700,000.
"That auction there -- if somebody buys it at the bottom line, they are stealing it," Herron said on the phone the day before the sale. "The man is going to lose a tremendous amount of money."
While Van De Ree's absolute auction in Venice drew a crowd of about 40, Herron's reserve auction in downtown Sarasota drew far fewer onlookers. There was only one bidder actually standing there when Herron set up shop in the kitchen and dining room on the third floor.
The auctioneer was able to start the bidding with a written offer for $500,000.
The man in the room stopped bidding at $650,000, leaving the person on the phone with the final bid of $660,000.
That price didn't meet the seller's reserve, Herron announced.
But within an hour of the auction, the bidder came back with a slightly bigger offer and the seller accepted it.
The seller, Herron said, "wasn't happy about it but he signed it."
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060821/BUSINESS/608210570/-1/GOOGLE01
Back in December 2004, when David Holland paid $315,700 for a new home in an east Venice Centex subdivision, the granite-and-tile beauty looked like an easy flip.
But as Centex's sales slowed down, his property turned into a flop.
Last week, Holland cut his losses. He put his house up for an "absolute auction," meaning no minimum and no reserve. Once the auction company advertised the house that way, Holland had no choice but to let the property go to the highest bidder.
He walked away with $255,000, a painful reminder that real properties, like stocks, do not always go up.
In a real estate market turned upside down, auction specialists find their phones ringing almost non-stop from would-be sellers desperate for some action.
As auctioneer Neal Van De Ree attempted to squeeze as much money as he could out of a tight-fisted crowd on Tuesday, six bargain hunters had to make moment-to-moment decisions on whether to raise their paddles again, or not.
In this case, the winner of Holland's house was an anonymous voice at the other end of a cell phone, willing to pay $255,000. Add to that a 10 percent buyer's premium ($25,500) and all closing costs including title insurance and document stamps, and the buyer ended up with a walk-away price of $285,000.
Van De Ree has sold roughly 4,000 lots and homes in the 20 years since he took the reins of the Van De Ree Auction Co. from his dad. The younger Van De Ree boasts on his Web site that he closed 92 percent of the auctions he held last year.
Nationally, residential real estate auctions are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. auction business, according to the National Auctioneers Association.
Last year, auctioneers sold $14.2 billion worth of homes in 2005, up 8.4 percent from a year earlier, the group reports. Full-year 2006 sales will show another strong increase.
"With the current state of the real estate market, sellers see the attractiveness of knowing they will sell it on a given day versus keeping it on the market for months and sometimes years and incurring costs such as taxes, insurance on the home, upkeep and marketing," said Erica Brown, a spokeswoman for the auctioneers' association.
This is not news to Brian Herron.
The founder of Bradenton-based All Florida Realty & Auction Co. has been having multiples of the number of auctions so far this year compared to last year.
Herron turns down more than half of the requests he gets, and still finds himself holding as many as four auctions on any given Saturday.
Auctioneer Daniel DeCaro found himself turning away so much real estate auction action this summer that he formed a new division to handle it. Based on Longboat Key, his Daniel DeCaro Real Estate Auctions Inc. has long specialized in properties of $2 million or more.
"We can only do so many. It is like selling a Rolls-Royce or selling a Chevette. Which pays you more?"
But now, partnering with former auction client Dudley Brown, DeCaro has formed "DeCaro South," a new division handling homes as low as $800,000.
"We are getting five to six calls a day to sell homes in that price range," DeCaro said. "It is just unbelievable. The market demand just mandated that we not let that business go."
'Show me your paddle'
In Venice on Tuesday, Van De Ree warmed up the crowd before getting to David Holland's Venice house with a "pretend" auction for a Lexus in the garage that had its trunk stuffed with gold coins.
He invited folks to bid with invisible money for the luxury car as a way to accustom them to his auction patter.
Then he turned to the businesses at hand, selling Holland's house.
After a couple of delays to take $15,000 deposit checks from last-minute arrivals, Van De Ree shifted into an upbeat recitation of the home's attributes, and then into an intelligible but rhythmic auctioneer's patter.
"I have $235,000 from No. 13. Show me your bidding paddle ... Do I hear $240,000?"
The bids were so slow in coming that Van De Ree stalled twice, turning the microphone over to an assistant while he walked around the room, coaxing reluctant bidders into holding up that paddle one more time.
Finally, after 15 or 20 minutes of this odd courting ritual, Van De Ree knew the time had come to bring the gavel down three times in a row: an announcement that the property had sold.
"I knew I would probably lose money," said Holland, the seller, after the festivities. "But I thought it would sell for at least $300,000. The problem is there aren't any buyers. I think the people coming to auctions today know that, and they are looking for just incredible deals."
That's exactly what they are looking for.
Steve and Sara Schwartz stopped bidding at $250,000, which left them in the No. 3 position at the gaveling. The couple is attempting to use the auction process to upgrade at a bargain price from their Sarasota condo.
They had planned to stop at $225,000 on Holland's Venetian Falls home.
"We got a little bit of auction fever," Sara Schwartz admitted. "That always happens. Even at $250,000 I think it would have been a good deal."
Stan Pincus, another bidder, had an even lower cutoff in his head because he was looking for a pure flip. His number was way below the $255,000 win, and here's why:
In his opinion, if Pincus were to take possession and then sell again, owning the home would cost him about $320,000. Under the auction's rules, the bidder would be paying for the county's tax on purchases, called doc stamps and other closing costs, including title insurance. Then, as a normal seller, he would be paying for the doc stamps all over again.
Pincus said he would have gone for $250,000 if he thought he could flip the property within 30 days. That would allow him to assign the title and skip the doc stamps.
"But chances are slim that you're going to sell a property over $300,000 in less than 30 days," Pincus said, acknowledging just how slow the region's real estate sales are right now.
Struggling in Bradenton
In some ways Holland was lucky because at least he found a bidder who would meet him more than halfway.
Others taking the auction route have not been so fortunate.
David Douthitt's canal-front home in east Bradenton near Interstate 75 -- stalled in the midst of renovation with a stop-work order -- drew one lonely bid of $100,000 on Saturday, far below the seller's reserve.
Douthitt had previously been successful in having Herron's firm unload his other waterfront investment home, in Ellenton.
With the north Manatee County home, "we had legitimate bidders all the way. It was a pretty substantial loss for me, but I needed to sell it," Douthitt said.
He could not believe the lack of interest in his Bradenton property. It needs a few more months of work to compete, but it is situated on a deep-water canal in the midst of $500,000-plus homes.
"Today's was absolutely stupid -- $100,000," Douthitt said Saturday. "You can't even buy a vacant lot for $100,000."
The lack of interest in the canal-front home shows clearly why absolute auctions are dangerous in today's market, Herron said.
It is a subject that he and Van De Ree disagree about.
"In the good markets, where we almost were in a lottery to buy a property, an absolute auction would be great, because you know you're going to get your price," Herron said. "But look at today's auction. The seller would have gotten killed."
A Sarasota condo bargain
For Herron, there is not much time to commiserate on this particular Saturday: He has to grab lunch and then set up shop at the downtown Sarasota condo that is scheduled for preview at 1 p.m. and a 2 p.m. auction.
As is the case with the Holland's Venetian Falls Centex home, the seller at the downtown Marquee never moved in, and now wants out.
The 29 units, each with their own elevators, were originally priced at $800,000 and up. As at Venetian Falls, the developer still has units to sell, making life tougher for those trying for a resale.
Unlike Van De Ree, Herron advises sellers against holding absolute auctions in today's gun-shy market. While bidders didn't know the reserve during the auction at the Marquee, Herron knew his seller had set the bar at $700,000.
"That auction there -- if somebody buys it at the bottom line, they are stealing it," Herron said on the phone the day before the sale. "The man is going to lose a tremendous amount of money."
While Van De Ree's absolute auction in Venice drew a crowd of about 40, Herron's reserve auction in downtown Sarasota drew far fewer onlookers. There was only one bidder actually standing there when Herron set up shop in the kitchen and dining room on the third floor.
The auctioneer was able to start the bidding with a written offer for $500,000.
The man in the room stopped bidding at $650,000, leaving the person on the phone with the final bid of $660,000.
That price didn't meet the seller's reserve, Herron announced.
But within an hour of the auction, the bidder came back with a slightly bigger offer and the seller accepted it.
The seller, Herron said, "wasn't happy about it but he signed it."
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060821/BUSINESS/608210570/-1/GOOGLE01
Mortgage lenders taking steps to prevent foreclosures
BY LEW SICHELMAN
The lending business is marshaling its forces in an unprecedented scale to get in front of what possibly could be a monumental flood of foreclosures.
Mindful that conventional methods of reaching out to financially troubled homeowners simply don't work, lenders, investors and loan servicers are joining with nonprofit counseling agencies in an attempt to coax reticent borrowers to come forward so they won't lose their homes.
They've also persuaded the Advertising Council to launch a three-year, public-service campaign aimed at convincing late payers to come out from behind their locked doors and talk to impartial, third-party counselors about how they can get back on the straight and narrow. Also on tap is a syndicated, Spanish-language soap opera that contains subtle hints about what to do if you can't pay your mortgage.
"We're trying to create a comprehensive safety net to help people stay in their homes," says Craig Nickerson, executive vice president of expanding markets at Freddie Mac. "It's a new frontier for us, but it will mark our legacy in this field for at least the next five years."
It's too early to know how many owners will face the possibility of being unable to make their house payments. But already, 167,000 families enter into foreclosure every three months, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. And that could just be the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
With mortgage rates climbing, millions more borrowers with pay-option and interest-only loans face the prospect of larger payments. Even those with conventional adjustable-rate loans will feel the pinch.
According to an estimate by the PolicyLab Consulting Group, an Ithaca, N.Y., consulting firm with an expertise in housing economics, $375 billion worth of loans will adjust to higher rates this year and $1 trillion will reset in 2007. Couple that with higher energy costs, higher homeowners' insurance premiums, higher property taxes, and it's easy to see a disaster in the making.
"When the rate on these mortgages begin to reset," says Ken Wade of NeighborWorks America in Washington, which provides training and other assistance for loan community development groups, "many borrowers who were just able to afford their homes with low-rate mortgages are going to be in for significant payment shocks."
How significant? If the rate on a 5-year-old, $200,000 interest-only mortgage moves up just 1 percentage point, from 6.1 percent to 7.1 percent, and begins requiring a payment to principal as well as interest, the monthly cost would jump $409, from $1,021 to $1,430.
Now suppose a 7 percent, $200,000 loan in which the borrower can make a full payment, a minimum payment or pay something in between. Most people chose to pay only the minimum, which often isn't even enough to cover the interest owed, so the difference every month was added to the outstanding balance.
If this were the case and the rate rose to 8 percent, again just 1 percentage point, the payment at the beginning of the sixth year would jump $928, from $643 to $1,571, and the borrower would owe $30,000 more than he started with.
Particularly hard hit will be underserved borrowers who often don't understand what they've gotten themselves into, are more likely to experience job loss, major illnesses and other life-changing events that tend to disrupt their ability to make timely payments, and have a much more difficult time recovering from financial trauma.
History shows that the majority of borrowers in default (60 or more days late) will self-cure. In the past 20 years, the foreclosure rate has never gone beyond 0.5 percent. But when you consider the millions of loans outstanding, even 0.5 percent is a huge number, warns J. Michael Collins, a principal at PolicyLab.
Lenders and the companies that administer loans on behalf of the investors who own them have a wide array of tools at their disposal to help troubled borrowers. Not deadbeats who simply refuse to make their payments as promised, but borrowers who are in financial straits because of no fault of their own and can demonstrate an ability to catch up on what they owe.
Among other things, they can reduce or suspend your payments and cancel late fees, allow you to make up what you owe in small increments over 24 months, add what you owe to your loan balance and allow you to start over with a clean slate, sometimes at a lower interest rate, or extend the term of your loan.
But the problem is that, in many instances, borrowers don't reach out to their lenders. "Most have a low opinion of their lender's willingness to help, especially those under stress," says Collins, who has done extensive studies on how borrowers behave when they get in trouble.
Many folks believe their lenders want to take their houses away from them because they make money doing so. But the truth is, lenders lose, too -- up to 60 cents on the dollar, in some cases. The typical cost of a foreclosure, which is a long, drawn-out legal procedure that can take months in some states, is $59,800, according to Freddie Mac, a major supplier of money for mortgages.
That's why big investors like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae actually "incentivize" lenders to work with troubled borrowers. "We want lenders to be aggressive," says Ingrid Beckles, vice president of default asset management at Freddie Mac. "Not just in collections, but in reaching out to help people. We even pay them to do so."
Nevertheless, studies show that half of all borrowers in default have no contact with their lender, and two out of five who go into foreclosure never talk to their lender. Says Beckles: "The attitude is, 'If I don't call, they never can get me,' but that's an express train to foreclosure."
Studies also show, however, that borrowers are much more willing to speak with counselors from agencies in their own neighborhoods, who, as participants in a Chicago focus group see it, "have no ulterior motives" and are "more concerned about saving your house and keeping the community stable."
That's why, in addition to their own efforts to extend a helping hand, financial heavyweights, such as Bank of America, Chase, Countrywide and National City, have joined with NeighborWorks America and other nonprofits to establish foreclosure-intervention programs in cities with high repossession rates; improve counseling training and capacity; and link troubled owners to the Minneapolis-based Homeownership Preservation Foundation's hotline, which will guide callers to free counseling services from federally approved local agencies.
Starting this spring, the Homeownership Foundation's toll-free hotline -- (888) 995-HOPE -- will be stressed in the Ad Council's PSA campaign aimed at overcoming the reticence on the part of tardy homeowners who see lenders as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
BY LEW SICHELMAN
The lending business is marshaling its forces in an unprecedented scale to get in front of what possibly could be a monumental flood of foreclosures.
Mindful that conventional methods of reaching out to financially troubled homeowners simply don't work, lenders, investors and loan servicers are joining with nonprofit counseling agencies in an attempt to coax reticent borrowers to come forward so they won't lose their homes.
They've also persuaded the Advertising Council to launch a three-year, public-service campaign aimed at convincing late payers to come out from behind their locked doors and talk to impartial, third-party counselors about how they can get back on the straight and narrow. Also on tap is a syndicated, Spanish-language soap opera that contains subtle hints about what to do if you can't pay your mortgage.
"We're trying to create a comprehensive safety net to help people stay in their homes," says Craig Nickerson, executive vice president of expanding markets at Freddie Mac. "It's a new frontier for us, but it will mark our legacy in this field for at least the next five years."
It's too early to know how many owners will face the possibility of being unable to make their house payments. But already, 167,000 families enter into foreclosure every three months, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. And that could just be the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
With mortgage rates climbing, millions more borrowers with pay-option and interest-only loans face the prospect of larger payments. Even those with conventional adjustable-rate loans will feel the pinch.
According to an estimate by the PolicyLab Consulting Group, an Ithaca, N.Y., consulting firm with an expertise in housing economics, $375 billion worth of loans will adjust to higher rates this year and $1 trillion will reset in 2007. Couple that with higher energy costs, higher homeowners' insurance premiums, higher property taxes, and it's easy to see a disaster in the making.
"When the rate on these mortgages begin to reset," says Ken Wade of NeighborWorks America in Washington, which provides training and other assistance for loan community development groups, "many borrowers who were just able to afford their homes with low-rate mortgages are going to be in for significant payment shocks."
How significant? If the rate on a 5-year-old, $200,000 interest-only mortgage moves up just 1 percentage point, from 6.1 percent to 7.1 percent, and begins requiring a payment to principal as well as interest, the monthly cost would jump $409, from $1,021 to $1,430.
Now suppose a 7 percent, $200,000 loan in which the borrower can make a full payment, a minimum payment or pay something in between. Most people chose to pay only the minimum, which often isn't even enough to cover the interest owed, so the difference every month was added to the outstanding balance.
If this were the case and the rate rose to 8 percent, again just 1 percentage point, the payment at the beginning of the sixth year would jump $928, from $643 to $1,571, and the borrower would owe $30,000 more than he started with.
Particularly hard hit will be underserved borrowers who often don't understand what they've gotten themselves into, are more likely to experience job loss, major illnesses and other life-changing events that tend to disrupt their ability to make timely payments, and have a much more difficult time recovering from financial trauma.
History shows that the majority of borrowers in default (60 or more days late) will self-cure. In the past 20 years, the foreclosure rate has never gone beyond 0.5 percent. But when you consider the millions of loans outstanding, even 0.5 percent is a huge number, warns J. Michael Collins, a principal at PolicyLab.
Lenders and the companies that administer loans on behalf of the investors who own them have a wide array of tools at their disposal to help troubled borrowers. Not deadbeats who simply refuse to make their payments as promised, but borrowers who are in financial straits because of no fault of their own and can demonstrate an ability to catch up on what they owe.
Among other things, they can reduce or suspend your payments and cancel late fees, allow you to make up what you owe in small increments over 24 months, add what you owe to your loan balance and allow you to start over with a clean slate, sometimes at a lower interest rate, or extend the term of your loan.
But the problem is that, in many instances, borrowers don't reach out to their lenders. "Most have a low opinion of their lender's willingness to help, especially those under stress," says Collins, who has done extensive studies on how borrowers behave when they get in trouble.
Many folks believe their lenders want to take their houses away from them because they make money doing so. But the truth is, lenders lose, too -- up to 60 cents on the dollar, in some cases. The typical cost of a foreclosure, which is a long, drawn-out legal procedure that can take months in some states, is $59,800, according to Freddie Mac, a major supplier of money for mortgages.
That's why big investors like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae actually "incentivize" lenders to work with troubled borrowers. "We want lenders to be aggressive," says Ingrid Beckles, vice president of default asset management at Freddie Mac. "Not just in collections, but in reaching out to help people. We even pay them to do so."
Nevertheless, studies show that half of all borrowers in default have no contact with their lender, and two out of five who go into foreclosure never talk to their lender. Says Beckles: "The attitude is, 'If I don't call, they never can get me,' but that's an express train to foreclosure."
Studies also show, however, that borrowers are much more willing to speak with counselors from agencies in their own neighborhoods, who, as participants in a Chicago focus group see it, "have no ulterior motives" and are "more concerned about saving your house and keeping the community stable."
That's why, in addition to their own efforts to extend a helping hand, financial heavyweights, such as Bank of America, Chase, Countrywide and National City, have joined with NeighborWorks America and other nonprofits to establish foreclosure-intervention programs in cities with high repossession rates; improve counseling training and capacity; and link troubled owners to the Minneapolis-based Homeownership Preservation Foundation's hotline, which will guide callers to free counseling services from federally approved local agencies.
Starting this spring, the Homeownership Foundation's toll-free hotline -- (888) 995-HOPE -- will be stressed in the Ad Council's PSA campaign aimed at overcoming the reticence on the part of tardy homeowners who see lenders as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
the houses for auction looked gorgeous, anybody want to bid on them? http://www.vanderee.com/index.html
Housing slump harsher than predicted
Slowdown hurting builders, owners
Originally posted on September 10, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
HERNDON, Va. â For years, real estate brokers and home builders promised that the soaring property market eventually would glide to a soft landing. These optimists predicted that home prices, which had more than doubled in parts of the country between 2000 and 2005, would continue to rise, but at a more normal pace of 5 percent or 6 percent a year.
It isn't working out that way. The rapid deterioration of the market over the past 12 months has caught many homeowners and builders off guard. Some are being forced to cut prices far below what their homes could have fetched a year ago. It's too early to say how hard the landing will be, but at a minimum it will be bumpy for many people who need to sell homes. And the economy as a whole, buoyed in recent years by the housing frenzy, could suffer.
The pain that homeowners and home builders are now feeling follows a raging national house party. As Americans soured on the stock market after the tech bubble burst in 2000, they poured money into real estate, spurred on by the lowest interest rates in four decades and looser lending standards. Surging demand created home shortages in California, Florida and the Northeast. Over the five years ending Dec. 31, average U.S. home prices jumped by 58 percent, according to a federal housing index.
Then mortgage rates began rising and surging inventories of homes for sale finally caught up with demand. Though economists had been predicting a slowdown in housing for years, many homeowners and builders were surprised by how fast the market changed.
"It's just like somebody flipped a switch," says Lynn Gardner, a real estate auctioneer who works in Northern Virginia.
"It would be difficult to characterize the position of home builders as other than in a hard landing," says Robert Toll, chief executive of luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc., which reported last week that net income fell 19 percent in the third quarter ended July 31.
In his 40 years as a home builder, Toll says, he has never seen a slump unfold like the current one. "I've never seen a downturn in housing without a downturn in employment or ... some macroeconomic nasty condition that took housing down along with other elements of the economy," he said. "This time, you've got low unemployment, you've got job creation, you've got a stable stock market and relatively low interest rates."
Joan Guth is one homeowner who was taken by surprise. Last September, she put her stately five-bedroom home in Herndon, Va., on the market for about $1.1 million. She was confident she would get something near that price, and planned to use the proceeds to buy a retirement home in Florida. But her home in the Washington suburbs attracted few serious lookers, and in March, she cut her asking price to $899,900. Still there were no takers. Finally, on the advice of her broker, she called in an auction firm, beginning a process that would eventually reveal to her just how weak the Northern Virginia market had become.
In much of the country, property markets began cooling rapidly in the second half of last year. Home builders were still turning out houses at a rapid clip, and the surge of new and previously occupied homes on the market convinced buyers there was no need to hurry. Over the past
year, the number of previously occupied homes listed for sale nationwide has risen nearly 40 percent. In some metropolitan areas, including Orlando and Phoenix, the supply has quadrupled.
Investors who during the boom had been snapping up properties from the outskirts of Phoenix to the slums of Baltimore began dumping them on the market, hoping to get out with a profit before it was too late.
The resulting slump, thus far, is being felt mainly on the East and West coasts and in Florida, where home prices had soared beyond the average working family's ability to pay. In California's San Diego County, the median home-sale price was $487,000 in July, down 1.8 percent from a year earlier, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a research firm in San Diego. Prices in the Northern Virginia counties of Fairfax and Arlington and in nearby towns, near Washington, averaged $537,731 in July, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors.
In some other parts of the country, notably Texas and the Seattle area, local housing markets remain robust. Texas' low housing costs are attracting new residents and investors, while Seattle's strong job market and shortage of homes have kept prices rising.
Nationwide, the median sale price of previously occupied homes in June was 0.9 percent higher than it was a year earlier, the smallest year-to-year increase since May 1995, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade group. Over the next few months, the median price may decline from year-earlier periods, a spokesman for the association says, something that hasn't happened since February 1993.
The market may be weaker than the Realtors' widely followed monthly reports suggest. The group's data don't reflect the latest transactions. Its report on July home sales, due last week, will mainly reflect sales that were agreed upon in May or June and closed in July. Moreover, when the market turns down, many home sellers initially let their homes sit instead of cutting prices enough to entice buyers.
Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics Inc., a New York research firm, contends that housing is poised for something "harder than a soft landing but softer than a hard landing."
The weaker market will hurt the economy by eliminating jobs in construction and other housing-related fields and by reducing the ability of consumers to finance spending by borrowing against their home equity. Sinai predicts these factors could shave as much as a percentage point off economic growth over the next year or so. Taking that into account, he expects the economy to grow at a relatively sluggish annual rate of 2.5 percent to 2.75 percent in 2007, compared with 2.5 percent in this year's second quarter and 5.6 percent in the first quarter.
With fewer consumers applying for home loans, some big mortgage lenders are already retrenching. Countrywide Financial Corp. last month announced plans to reduce costs by $500 million. Earlier this year, Washington Mutual Inc. eliminated 2,500 jobs at loan-processing centers.
Builders, who were optimistic about prospects until a few months ago, are cutting back too. KB Home, a big home builder based in Los Angeles, has eliminated 7 percent of its work force, or 440 jobs. In July, U.S. home builders started construction at an annual rate of 1.45 million single-family homes, down 20 percent from the January peak.
Last August, when Horsham, Pa.-based Toll Brothers reported that its quarterly profit had doubled, Toll boasted: "We've got the supply, and the market has got the demand. So it's a match made in heaven." Since then, Toll has cut its guidance four times on the number of homes it expects to close on, and its share price has fallen by more than 45 percent. Last week, the company said orders for new homes in the third quarter were down 48 percent from a year earlier.
Toll blames a "drop in confidence" among prospective home buyers, who he says are worried about "the direction of America" and the situation in Iraq. The retreat of speculators who were buying and "flipping" homes also hurt the market, he says. Such speculative buyers, who Toll estimates accounted for about 10 percent of demand one year ago, are now sellers.
Even so, Toll contends that new household formation, immigration, job creation and rising affluence are currently producing a pent-up demand for housing. Once Americans believe that home prices have bottomed, he argues, they will rush back into the market, although he is unwilling to predict when that will happen.
At D.R. Horton Inc., the nation's largest home builder by units built per year, executives said late last year they were confident that quarterly earnings would continue to increase even during a housing-market slump. In July, Horton reported a 21 percent decline in net income for the third quarter ended June 30, the first quarter in 28 years in which it didn't report year-over-year profit growth. Horton's chief executive, Donald Tomnitz, said the surge in home prices had priced many people out of the market.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060910/RE/609100315/1076
Slowdown hurting builders, owners
Originally posted on September 10, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
HERNDON, Va. â For years, real estate brokers and home builders promised that the soaring property market eventually would glide to a soft landing. These optimists predicted that home prices, which had more than doubled in parts of the country between 2000 and 2005, would continue to rise, but at a more normal pace of 5 percent or 6 percent a year.
It isn't working out that way. The rapid deterioration of the market over the past 12 months has caught many homeowners and builders off guard. Some are being forced to cut prices far below what their homes could have fetched a year ago. It's too early to say how hard the landing will be, but at a minimum it will be bumpy for many people who need to sell homes. And the economy as a whole, buoyed in recent years by the housing frenzy, could suffer.
The pain that homeowners and home builders are now feeling follows a raging national house party. As Americans soured on the stock market after the tech bubble burst in 2000, they poured money into real estate, spurred on by the lowest interest rates in four decades and looser lending standards. Surging demand created home shortages in California, Florida and the Northeast. Over the five years ending Dec. 31, average U.S. home prices jumped by 58 percent, according to a federal housing index.
Then mortgage rates began rising and surging inventories of homes for sale finally caught up with demand. Though economists had been predicting a slowdown in housing for years, many homeowners and builders were surprised by how fast the market changed.
"It's just like somebody flipped a switch," says Lynn Gardner, a real estate auctioneer who works in Northern Virginia.
"It would be difficult to characterize the position of home builders as other than in a hard landing," says Robert Toll, chief executive of luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc., which reported last week that net income fell 19 percent in the third quarter ended July 31.
In his 40 years as a home builder, Toll says, he has never seen a slump unfold like the current one. "I've never seen a downturn in housing without a downturn in employment or ... some macroeconomic nasty condition that took housing down along with other elements of the economy," he said. "This time, you've got low unemployment, you've got job creation, you've got a stable stock market and relatively low interest rates."
Joan Guth is one homeowner who was taken by surprise. Last September, she put her stately five-bedroom home in Herndon, Va., on the market for about $1.1 million. She was confident she would get something near that price, and planned to use the proceeds to buy a retirement home in Florida. But her home in the Washington suburbs attracted few serious lookers, and in March, she cut her asking price to $899,900. Still there were no takers. Finally, on the advice of her broker, she called in an auction firm, beginning a process that would eventually reveal to her just how weak the Northern Virginia market had become.
In much of the country, property markets began cooling rapidly in the second half of last year. Home builders were still turning out houses at a rapid clip, and the surge of new and previously occupied homes on the market convinced buyers there was no need to hurry. Over the past
year, the number of previously occupied homes listed for sale nationwide has risen nearly 40 percent. In some metropolitan areas, including Orlando and Phoenix, the supply has quadrupled.
Investors who during the boom had been snapping up properties from the outskirts of Phoenix to the slums of Baltimore began dumping them on the market, hoping to get out with a profit before it was too late.
The resulting slump, thus far, is being felt mainly on the East and West coasts and in Florida, where home prices had soared beyond the average working family's ability to pay. In California's San Diego County, the median home-sale price was $487,000 in July, down 1.8 percent from a year earlier, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a research firm in San Diego. Prices in the Northern Virginia counties of Fairfax and Arlington and in nearby towns, near Washington, averaged $537,731 in July, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors.
In some other parts of the country, notably Texas and the Seattle area, local housing markets remain robust. Texas' low housing costs are attracting new residents and investors, while Seattle's strong job market and shortage of homes have kept prices rising.
Nationwide, the median sale price of previously occupied homes in June was 0.9 percent higher than it was a year earlier, the smallest year-to-year increase since May 1995, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade group. Over the next few months, the median price may decline from year-earlier periods, a spokesman for the association says, something that hasn't happened since February 1993.
The market may be weaker than the Realtors' widely followed monthly reports suggest. The group's data don't reflect the latest transactions. Its report on July home sales, due last week, will mainly reflect sales that were agreed upon in May or June and closed in July. Moreover, when the market turns down, many home sellers initially let their homes sit instead of cutting prices enough to entice buyers.
Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics Inc., a New York research firm, contends that housing is poised for something "harder than a soft landing but softer than a hard landing."
The weaker market will hurt the economy by eliminating jobs in construction and other housing-related fields and by reducing the ability of consumers to finance spending by borrowing against their home equity. Sinai predicts these factors could shave as much as a percentage point off economic growth over the next year or so. Taking that into account, he expects the economy to grow at a relatively sluggish annual rate of 2.5 percent to 2.75 percent in 2007, compared with 2.5 percent in this year's second quarter and 5.6 percent in the first quarter.
With fewer consumers applying for home loans, some big mortgage lenders are already retrenching. Countrywide Financial Corp. last month announced plans to reduce costs by $500 million. Earlier this year, Washington Mutual Inc. eliminated 2,500 jobs at loan-processing centers.
Builders, who were optimistic about prospects until a few months ago, are cutting back too. KB Home, a big home builder based in Los Angeles, has eliminated 7 percent of its work force, or 440 jobs. In July, U.S. home builders started construction at an annual rate of 1.45 million single-family homes, down 20 percent from the January peak.
Last August, when Horsham, Pa.-based Toll Brothers reported that its quarterly profit had doubled, Toll boasted: "We've got the supply, and the market has got the demand. So it's a match made in heaven." Since then, Toll has cut its guidance four times on the number of homes it expects to close on, and its share price has fallen by more than 45 percent. Last week, the company said orders for new homes in the third quarter were down 48 percent from a year earlier.
Toll blames a "drop in confidence" among prospective home buyers, who he says are worried about "the direction of America" and the situation in Iraq. The retreat of speculators who were buying and "flipping" homes also hurt the market, he says. Such speculative buyers, who Toll estimates accounted for about 10 percent of demand one year ago, are now sellers.
Even so, Toll contends that new household formation, immigration, job creation and rising affluence are currently producing a pent-up demand for housing. Once Americans believe that home prices have bottomed, he argues, they will rush back into the market, although he is unwilling to predict when that will happen.
At D.R. Horton Inc., the nation's largest home builder by units built per year, executives said late last year they were confident that quarterly earnings would continue to increase even during a housing-market slump. In July, Horton reported a 21 percent decline in net income for the third quarter ended June 30, the first quarter in 28 years in which it didn't report year-over-year profit growth. Horton's chief executive, Donald Tomnitz, said the surge in home prices had priced many people out of the market.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060910/RE/609100315/1076