Monthly Archives: April 2014

Eroding home affordability carries housing bubble concerns | South Salem Real Estate

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As home prices and mortgage interest rates rise, potential homebuyers are finding that fewer homes are within their financial grasp, prompting parallels to the most recent housing bubble.

A study by real estate portal Zillow has found that, for a full one-third of homes for sale nationwide in the fourth quarter, buyers would pay a larger percentage of their income toward a mortgage than in the pre-bubble era.

Zillow analyzed fourth-quarter income, mortgage and home value data. The company measured affordability by comparing how the share of an area’s median household income needed to cover the mortgage payment of a median-priced area home in the fourth quarter measured relative to the income-share needed to make a mortgage payment on a median-priced home in the same area between the years of 1985 and 2000.

While two-thirds of U.S. homes for sale were affordable in the quarter compared to the pre-bubble years, Zillow expects affordability to wane as interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages continue to rise toward an expected 5 percent over the next year. Rates on that type of mortgage have jumped close to 1 percentage point from 3.54 percent in April 2013 to 4.41 percent this week, according to Freddie Mac.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2014/04/04/eroding-home-affordability-carries-housing-bubble-concerns/?utm_source=20140404&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinespm#sthash.BZUVApUm.dpuf

Alternatives to Putting 20% Down on a Home | Katonah Real Estate

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It’s a mantra often repeated in the real estate industry: If you want to buy a house, you need a 20 percent down payment. But with the average house in the U.S. costing $311,400 as of December 2013, according to the Census Bureau, all one has to do is the math to get a coronary. Raising a 20 percent down payment isn’t an easy thing to do.

Fortunately, you don’t have to. “It’s a myth that all homebuyers must have a 20 percent down payment to buy a home,” says Nancy Herrera-Siples, a Riverside, Calif., branch manager at Primary Residential Mortgage.

“Putting less than 20 percent is OK with most banks,” agrees Christopher Pepe, president of Pepe Real Estate in Brooklyn, N.Y. So why do you constantly hear that you need to put 20 percent down? Because if you don’t, it usually means you’ll have to shell out money for either private mortgage insurance or government insurance, which is usually financed by the Federal Housing Administration. Mortgage insurance protects the lender in case you can’t make your payments and the house is foreclosed on. But PMI payments don’t last forever. When your loan-to-value ratio is 80 percent, you can ask the lender if you can stop paying PMI; at 78 percent, the lender is required to cancel it.

Still, PMI can easily cost a couple hundred dollars a month, assuming your house is valued in the neighborhood of $200,000. Pepe says the average he sees is $700 a month just for PMI. But keep in mind that he’s based in New York City, which boasts one of the highest costs of living in the country.

So if you really want a house and you’re looking for alternatives to putting 20 percent down, here’s what you need to know.

Figure out financing before looking for a house. There are numerous programs that will help you buy a home without 20 percent down, says Dan Smith, president of Private Mortgage Solutions, a mortgage bank in Atlanta.

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/alternatives-putting-20-down-home-124500838.html

Mortgage Resets Are Beginning, and Things Could Get Ugly | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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The Home Affordable Modification Program was a godsend to many troubled homeowners after the financial crisis, allowing tens of thousands of mortgage holders to reduce their monthly payments to no more than 31% of their gross monthly income, often through interest rate reductions.

But, all good things must end, and HAMP – which helped many avoid foreclosure – was only a five-year, temporary fix. Now, modifications that began in February 2009 are maturing out of the program, and into a gradual increase in interest rates. For most, this means a final monthly payment increase of $196; for some, it could be as high as $1,724, depending upon where the average rate for a 30-year loan sat at the time of the modification.

 

 

 

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/05/mortgage-resets-are-beginning-and-things-could-get.aspx

 

Almost 90% of HAMP loans will see increases According to the latest report from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, 88% of the nearly 900,000 active HAMP loans will see their payments rise between now and 2021. With many borrowers having their rate reduced to as little as 2%, a 1% per year rise will likely be painful. Some will see their rates reset up to 5.4% over the next few years — more painful still.

Obviously, the redefault risk is pretty high. As SIGTARP notes, those in the HAMP program the longest default at the highest rate – nearly 50%. Almost half of homeowners with HAMP modifications received them from 2009 to 2010. The overall default rate at the end of last year was 28%.

Which institutions hold these loans? Of the 10 major servicers involved with HAMP, Bank of America Corp.  (NYSE: BAC ) , JPMorgan Chase & Co.  (NYSE: JPM )  and Wells Fargo  (NYSE: WFC )  are in the top five. At the end of 2013, redefaults for each bank associated with HAMP loans was 31% for B of A, 23% for JPMorgan, and 24% for Wells. Ocwen Loan Servicing and Nationstar Mortgage, the other two servicers in the top five, each had redefault rates of 30% and 26%, respectively. Can they expect a whole lot more in the next few years? It certainly seems like it.

 

 

 

Two Types of Real Estate I’ll Never Invest In | Bedford Real Estate

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I generally try to avoid blanket statements such as this, but I’m confident I will never invest in the following two types of real estate:

1. A Speculative Development Project I know, I know some of the most successful real estate investors in the world have made vast fortunes and built empires through development. I just won’t be one of them. Right or wrong, here is my rationale:

  • Development is all about timing and I’m not clever enough to consistently time the market over an entire investing career. Often the best time to build is when the market is in the gutter and development doesn’t “pencil” (i.e. the numbers look awful). If you start to build when the market is on fire, you’ll often miss the party before you finish construction.
  • Developers often have to “land bank” to wait for the right time to build. The holding cost of land creates a negative carry investment, which eats into the project’s final returns.
  • The entitlement and permitting process is expensive and tortuous. Get out your checkbook, because every consultant and city agency is going to have its hand out. The EIR (Environmental Impact Report) alone can wreck a pre-development budget (traffic study, wind study, etc.) and everything takes 2-3 times longer than your “most conservative” project timeline.
  • Too much construction / execution risk. One failed development can crush a company’s reputation and balance sheet; erasing years of positive returns. Why not let others develop and just wait for a market dip to buy buildings below replacement cost?

2. A Suburban Office Property I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I owned a leveraged office property outside of a major city. Here’s why…

 

 

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/06/two-types-of-real-estate-ill-never-invest-in.aspx

Londoners priced out of real estate market blame foreigners | Katonah Real Estate

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Protesters shouting “No more homes for millionaires!” outside London City Hall this week want real estate developers to stop pandering to wealthy foreign buyers and start building more housing that locals can afford.

Sparking the protest was a plan by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. to build up to 3,500 new homes not far from London’s Canary Wharf financial district. Mayor Boris Johnson has approved the project.“These are the kind of homes that local people will never be able to afford,” said Cheryl Coyne, a 63-year-old semiretired schoolteacher.

“There are thousands of people in the borough who need homes, and instead they’re building flats for multimillionaires.”Average London house prices increased 18 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the most since 2003, to a record 362,699 pounds ($604,000), the Nationwide Building Society said.

Much of that increase stems from wealthy non-British investors seeking assets that would hold their value. Builders use advance sales, often to buyers from Asia, to help finance new projects. Foreign-born buyers made 69 percent of central London new-home purchases in the two years through June 2013, with 28 percent living outside the U.K., broker Knight Frank LLP said in October.

When the Malaysian owners of the Battersea Power Station project, on the south bank of the River Thames, sold the first 866 homes in just three days in January, more than half went to foreign buyers.

 

 

 

Source: Bloomberg – See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/londoners-priced-out-of-real-estate-market-blame-foreigners/?utm_source=20140404&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinesam#sthash.F8Or8wU6.dpuf

Mortgage debt relief extension closer to reality | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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The Senate Finance Committee has passed a two-year retroactive extension of a law that allowed homeowners to avoid being taxed on debt forgiven in a short sale or through a principal reduction, Realtor Magazine reported.

The extension still needs to be passed by the full Senate and by the House of Representatives. The federal Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 expired on Dec. 31, 2013, despite strong bipartisan support.

In addition to mortgage debt relief, there are some promising signs that Congress may pass extensions of other popular housing-related tax benefits sometime this spring, including write-offs for energy-saving improvements and mortgage insurance premiums.

Source: realtormag.realtor.org

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/mortgage-debt-relief-extension-closer-to-reality/?utm_source=20140404&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinesam#sthash.rEHB52Ud.dpuf