Category Archives: blog

Alabama coach Nick Saban lists house for $11 million | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate

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The home, however, was not lived in by Saban himself. If you buy this house, not only are you buying a wonderful estate, but you’re buying an estate that’s located near Nick Saban’s vacation home. That’s right, you’ll be neighbors with Nick Saban, writes CBS Sports.

“My family and I own another home on the lake, which we have enjoyed for 12 years, so I was excited when this very special lot came available to develop with Jim [Suddes],” Saban told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. “Lake Burton is our favorite getaway. It’s a beautiful, hidden gem, where we find great peace and seclusion.”

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/fastnews

Mortgage market of the past may hold some clues for the future | Bedford NY Real Estate

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James Hagerty of the Wall Street Journal hosted a session on the future of America’s mortgage market this week at the MBA Secondary Conference in New York.

The title of the session and the majority of the discussion assumes in some way that the mortgage market needs to be different than it is today. This leads me to wonder: Does the mortgage market need to be fixed and if so what still needs to be fixed?

We are all well aware of the extent to which GSEs and FHA currently provide liquidity to the U.S. mortgage market. I suspect consensus on this development is that it is far from ideal. Private, not public, capital should be supporting the mortgage market at least more than it does today.

But how much more?

Think back to before the mortgage crisis: Public capital played a very significant role, and had historically done so in the U.S. mortgage market.

The GSEs also brought something else to the market: standardization.

Is this a role that the private sector is qualified or prepared to play going forward?

Is the goal to achieve a level of private capital that is higher than before the crisis?  One highly oversimplified argument against this is that the private-label RMBS market was a a major contributor to the financial crisis.

Yes, regulators have put in place new rules to reign in many of the bad practices of the past, but a new privately built market structured would be untried.

What if rather than creating a whole new market structure, as some have proposed, what if we went back to the way it was before with a few important improvements?

The first improvement would be to develop private-label RMBS standards. Just as the GSEs issue standardized MBS, there could be a standard template for private label RMBS.

For example, there would be standards for the types of loans in the security, the type and amount of due diligence performed on the loans, and for the contract terms.

This is part of what was missing in the private-label RMBS market of old. Second, go back to the conforming loan limits of old which will reduce the market share of the GSEs.

Moving forward loan limits can be used to adjust the share of public versus private capital in the mortgage market over time.

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/rewired

Elevated refi activity pushes mortgage applications higher | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Mortgage applications increased 7% for the week ending May 3 when compared to a week earlier, an industry trade group said Wednesday.

The steeper jump comes after only slight increases these past few weeks, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

The refinance index also soared 8%, reaching its highest level since December 2012.

“The gain in the refinance index was due to increases in both the conventional and government refinance indices of 8.8% and 5.7% respectively,” the MBA noted.

The seasonally adjusted purchase index rose 2%, bringing it back to its highest level since May 2010.

Breaking a three-week trend, the refinance share of overall mortgage activity inched up to 76% of total applications compared to 75% last week.

Additionally, the adjustable-rate mortgage share of activity increased slightly and now accounts for 4% of all mortgage applications.

The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage with a conforming loan balance continued to slip to 3.59%, the lowest level since December 2012, and down from 3.60% the previous week.

Meanwhile, the average 30-year, FRM with a jumbo loan balance dipped to 3.79% from 3.80% last week.

The average contract interest rate for the 30-year, FRM backed by the FHA ticked up to 3.35% compared to 3.34% the previous week.

Both the 5/1 ARM and the 15-year, FRM fell to the lowest rate in the history of the survey, tumbling to 2.53% and 2.81%, respectively.

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/news

Survey of Economists Finds Fears of New Bubble | Bedford Corners NY Real Estate

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More than 100 forecasters in a national survey said they expect the home values to reach an average of 5.4 percent year-over-year and that current Federal Reserve policies post some risk of re-inflating the housing bubble.

In the survey of 105 economists, real estate experts and investment and market strategists, panelists said they expected median U.S. home values to rise to $165,280, on average, by the end of 2013. At the end of 2012, the U.S. Zillow Home Value Index stood at $156,800.  The survey was sponsored by Zillow and is conducted quarterly by Pulsenomics LLC.

In the survey conducted in late February and early March, respondents said they expected average home value growth of just 4.6 percent in 2013. Looking forward, respondents predicted average home value appreciation of 4.4 percent in 2014, up from prior expectations of 4.2 percent.

While panelists were more bullish on near-term home value appreciation this year and into 2014, their expectations for nationwide home value growth in 2015, 2016 and 2017 were slightly more pessimistic than in prior surveys. On average, panelists said they expect annual home value growth between 3.5 percent and 3.7 percent from 2015 through 2017, down modestly from previously expressed expectations in the 3.6 percent to 3.8 percent range. Cumulatively, survey respondents predicted home values to rise 22.3 percent, on average, through 2017.

Banks Cool to FICOs Below 620 | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

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Borrowers with FICO scores of 620 or lower will get a chilly reception from a growing number of banks unless they are willing to make substantial down payments.

Banks, most of them smaller banks, participating in the most recent Survey of Senior Loan Officers by the Federal Reserve indicated that they were less likely to approve loan applications with a FICO score of 620, depending on the size of the down payment.

Currently the median FICO score for all approved loans is 748. For approved conventional purchase loans, the median is 761 and for FHA purchase loans, 698.

Banks were more likely to approve an application for a conventional loan with a FICO score of 720 and a 20 percent down payment. However, about one-third of said they were less likely to approve loan such applications with FICO scores of 580 or 620.

Overall, only a few banks reported changes in either standards or demand for any type of residential real estate lending during the previous three months, though a significant number said that indicated that the demand for prime mortgages had picked up. A few domestic banks reported having eased their standards on prime residential mortgages, and respondents’ lending standards for nontraditional mortgages were little changed.

Roughly three-fourths of banks viewed the outlook for house prices or economic activity as important factors currently affecting their bank’s residential real estate lending. Three-fourths of banks also cited the risk of putback of delinquent mortgages by the GSEs as an important factor restraining their current ability or willingness to approve home-purchase loans. A large fraction of banks reported an increase in the importance of this factor over the past year.

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/05

Prices Soar at Boom Speed | Armonk NY Real Estate

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March home prices rose at double digit rates-increasing faster than they have in seven years-and the outlook is nearly as good for April.

Home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased 10.5 percent on a year-over-year basis in March 2013 compared to March 2012. This change represents the biggest year-over-year increase since March 2006, at the height of the housing boom, and the 13th consecutive monthly increase in home prices nationally. On a month-over-month basis, including distressed sales, home prices increased by 1.9 percent in March 2013 over to February 2013.*

Excluding distressed sales, home prices increased on a year-over-year basis by 10.7 percent in March 2013 compared to March 2012. On a month-over-month basis, excluding distressed sales, home prices increased 2.4 percent in March 2013 compared to February 2013. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions.

The CoreLogic Pending HPI indicates that April 2013 home prices, including distressed sales, are expected to rise by 9.6 percent on a year-over-year basis from April 2012 and rise by 1.3 percent on a month-over-month basis from March 2013. Excluding distressed sales, April 2013 home prices are poised to rise 12 percent year over year from April 2012 and by 2.7 percent month over month from March 2013. The CoreLogic Pending HPI is a proprietary and exclusive metric that provides the most current indication of trends in home prices. It is based on Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data that measure price changes for the most recent month.

“For the first time since March 2006, both the overall index and the index that excludes distressed sales are above 10 percent year over year,” said Dr. Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “The pace of appreciation has been accelerating throughout 2012 and so far in 2013 leading into the home buying season.”

“Home prices continue to rise at a double-digit rate in March led by strong gains in the western region of the U.S. Looking ahead, the CoreLogic pending index for April indicates that upward price appreciation will continue,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “Much of the price increases we are seeing are the result of rising demand among investors and homebuyers for a still-limited supply of homes for sale.”

Highlights as of March 2013:

  • Including distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were: Nevada (+22.2 percent), California (+17.2 percent), Arizona (+16.8 percent), Idaho (+14.5 percent) and Oregon (+14.3 percent).

 

 

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/05

Housing Crash Fades as Defaults Decline to 2007 Levels | Mt Kisco Real Estate

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First-time delinquent home loans fell to 0.84 percent of the 50.2 million mortgages in March, the first month below 1 percent since 2007, before a wave of defaults led to the financial crisis, according to a report today by Lender Processing Services Inc. The rate of first-time defaults, defined as loans that went from performing to at least 60 days delinquent, peaked at 2.89 percent in January 2009.

The decline in new problem loans shows that the recovering U.S. economy, falling unemployment and rising home prices, combined with more than four years of banks’ tightening lending standards, are propelling the worst real estate crash since the Great Depression into the rearview mirror.

“Mortgage quality is improving rapidly,” Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics Inc. said in a telephone interview from his office in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “Once we’re able to work through this last bulge of foreclosed property, which I think we’ll be able to do over the next 18 to 24 months, mortgage credit quality is going to look absolutely beautiful.”

Mortgages at least 30 days delinquent or in some stage offoreclosure fell to 5 million in March, down from a peak of 7.7 million in January 2010, according to Lender Processing Services, a real estate information service based in Jacksonville, Florida. That’s still more than double the 2.2 million non-current mortgages of January 2005, when the housing market was rising toward its peak.

Lending Standards

Tight lending standards have made it harder for borrowers to obtain mortgages, helping drive down default rates while reducing the homeownership rate in the first quarter to 65 percent, the lowest since 1995.

The Federal Housing Administration, which offers loans to buyers with downpayments as low as 3.5 percent, has steadily raised its credit scores. In the third quarter of 2012, the most recent available, 97 percent of FHA borrowers had credit scores above 620 of a possible 850. In the last quarter of 2006, only 53 percent had a score above 620.

 

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news

Fannie Mae: Homebuilding jobs far from normal | North Salem Real Estate

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Residential construction jobs faced a 41% drop between 2006 and 2011. With homebuilding predicted to return to normal by 2016, housing starts may double over the next four years,Fannie Mae said.

This return to normalcy also implies an improvement in residential construction employment. But many are wondering how many jobs will come out of this homebuilding rebound.

In its latest edition of Housing Insights, Fannie Mae studies the historical relationship between housing starts and residential construction employment coupled with Economic and Strategic Research’s housing starts forecast, to project future homebuilding employment.

If housing starts keep up with expectations and return to normal levels in 2016, it is predicted that residential construction employment will rise to nearly 2.5 million jobs.

Fannie Mae predicts housing construction will recover to a “normal” level of about 1.6 million units in 2016. But what does this mean for homebuilding employment?

Fannie’s forecast predicts that residential construction employment will increase by 412,000 jobs between 2012 and 2016. This 20% rise in homebuilding employment will nearly triple the forecasted pace of total job growth during this time period.

However, the pace of growth will not be quick enough to bring back all homebuilding jobs lost during the housing bust. In 2016, the number of residential construction jobs is expected to remain nearly 1 million jobs below peaks established during the housing boom.

 

 

http://www.housingwire.com/news

THE MOST POWERFUL FACEBOOK SMART LIST | Cross River Realtor

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One of the most underutilized features in Facebook is the ability to create lists.  Lists can be an effective way to funnel the noise that seems to present itself every time you log into Facebook.  Let’s face it, we have all made regretful “friend” decisions on FB and for some reason those are the people that tend to dominate our newsfeed.

Lists can help us to listen and communicate with the people that matter to us most.  If you aren’t usingFacebook lists at all, then you might want to start here.facebook geographic smart list

However, one list in particular stands apart from the rest.  The geographic smart list can be an extremely powerful tool for engaging local connections with relevant targeted data about real estate, without spamming and perhaps alienating your other Facebook friends.

Watch the video below for some tips on how to use it.

 

http://techsavvyagent.com/text

Home construction continues to add jobs | Waccabuc Real Estate

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superchargeSalesCycle

Builders continued to hire more workers in April, though employment among an age cohort important to household formation slipped, according to today’s jobs report, which showed more overall growth than expected.

Residential construction jobs are up 4.1 percent year over year, towering about the overall jobs growth rate of 1.6 percent, said Trulia Chief Economist Jed Kolko, citing data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today.

Total residential-construction jobs moved up from a seasonally adjusted 580,200 in March to 586,400 in April, according to the report. In April of last year, the sector supported 572,000 jobs, the report showed.

But that jobs growth lags compared to actual construction growth. Kolko chalks up the discrepancy to the fact that the number of jobs for every construction project is more than normal.

At the same time, today’s report also showed that employment among a cohort that is crucial to household formation, 25 to 34-year-olds, has slipped recently, dropping from 75.6 percent in December 2012 to 75.2 percent in April, Kolko said.

But Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan said that the report was positive overall and “better-than-expected.”

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/05/03/home-construction-continues-to-add-jobs/#sthash.c6qctOjM.dpuf