Distressed sales go through several stages – the initial overdue status for mortgage payments, the actual foreclosure by the financial institution, and the final sale of the property, frequently by Realtors® through the MLS.

• Measured at the MLS sales level, distressed sales have hovered in the 30 to 35 percent range for a number of years, with heavy sales concentrations in a few states. According to the latest Realtors® Confidence Index, as of March 2012, distressed sales were 29 percent of total sales. Realtors® in some areas are reporting shortages in inventory as demand picks up and have indicated that additional distressed properties on the market could be sold relatively easily.
• The Existing Home Sales market is bifurcated, with distressed properties frequently being sold at significant discounts to market, frequently in subpar condition when going to market, and reported to be popular with investors seeking bargain prices.
• The level of distressed sales fluctuates from month to month.
• Currently Realtors® in a number of states are reporting shortages of inventories of distressed real estate: the market is clearing distressed properties from the market at a rapid rate.

The 62% of Americans who say they own their own home marks a new low since Gallup began tracking self-reported homeownership in 2001.

It’s down from 68% in 2011.

But those surveyed also said they thought it was a good time to buy and that they thought prices would rise this year.

While the recession and financial crisis took place in 2008-2009, homeownership rates didn’t begin to reflect the bursting of the housing bubble until 2010, when 65% of Americans reported owning their own home — the lowest level recorded before this year.

Fifty-three percent of Americans believe their house is worth more today than when they bought it, down significantly from 80% in 2008 and 92% in 2006.

Still, 70% of Americans surveyed said it’s a good time to buy a house.

Americans are also much more positive about the direction of housing prices this year than they were last year.

Thirty-three percent expect houses in their neighborhood to rise in price. Last year, only 28% expected prices to rise.

Results were based on telephone interviews conducted April 9-12 with a random sample of 1,016 adults in all 50 states.

Beginning June 15, real estate agents working with distressed homeowners whose loans are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should expect to receive a decision on a short sale offer within 30-60 days.

The GSEs issued new guidelines Tuesday that fall under the Servicing Alignment Initiative rolled out last fall and aim to bring greater transparency to the short sale process and expedite decisions related to these pre-foreclosure sales.

Not only is a short sale an effective foreclosure alternative when home retention is no longer an option, but it keeps homes occupied and helps to maintain stable communities, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

Addressing real estate practitioners’ No. 1 complaint about short sales, FHFA directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to establish a new uniform set of minimum response times that servicers must follow in order to facilitate more efficient short sale transactions.

The GSEs’ new short sale timelines require servicers to make a decision within 30 days of receiving either an offer on a property under the companies’ traditional short sale programs or a completed Borrower Response Package (BRP) requesting short sale consideration, whether it’s through the federal government’s Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternative (HAFA) program or a GSE program.

If more than 30 days are needed, servicers must provide the borrower with weekly status updates and come to a decision no later than 60 days from the date the BRP or offer was received.

According to the GSEs, this 30-day add-on will provide some leeway for servicers who may need more time to obtain a broker price opinion (BPO) or a private mortgage insurer’s approval for a short sale. All decisions must be made within 60 days.

In the event a servicer makes a counteroffer, the borrower is expected to respond within five business days. The servicer must then respond within 10 business days of receiving the borrower’s response.

The GSEs plan to use the new short sale timelines to evaluate servicer compliance with the Servicing Alignment Initiative.

Edward DeMarco, acting director of the FHFA, says the GSEs new borrower communication and timeline requirements for short sales “set minimum standards and provide clear expectations regarding these important foreclosure alternatives.”

GSE servicers must comply with the new minimum communication time frames for all short sale evaluations conducted on or after June 15, 2012, although servicers are encouraged to begin implementing the new requirements sooner.

“I applaud Fannie and Freddie for finally coming out with real guidance with real world timelines for their servicers,” commented Anthony Lamacchia, broker/owner of McGeough Lamacchia Realty Inc., which specializes in short sales. “There is no question that this will help short sales and the market as a whole.”

Last year Freddie Mac completed 45,623 short sales, a 140 percent increase since 2009. Fannie Mae’s short sale completions shot up by 101 percent over the same period, totaling around 79,800 in 2011.

This guest post is by Kraig Stewardson of IT Manager HQ.

My blog was failing.

My subscribers were nonexistent.

My posts were disjointed.

My writing was awful.

My confidence was shot.

Honestly, I felt like giving up. I knew that I needed to make a change. I knew that I couldn’t continue this way.

Sound familiar? That was me a little over month ago, before I took some drastic steps to turn things around.

How bad was it?

They say that most blogs are never even read, and mine fell into that category. I still remember the day when I got my first spam comment. I was elated. A bot found my blog—no one else did—but hey, a spam bot did! Then as the months went on, even the spammers lost interest.

I noticed that no one, not even my family, read my blog. But I still wrote. When life got busy, I didn’t post as regularly as I knew I needed to. Inspiration to keep going that used come from all sorts of places faded. The “this band is a 20-year overnight success” or “blogger writes for two years straight then finds an audience” stories that can only take you so far. I knew a change need to happen, so it was time to take a class and get schooled on what I should be doing.

Starting to turn it around

So I look at my blog, and how bad it looked. I read my blog—every cringe-worthy post. Great, now even I couldn’t stand reading my own blog. This was going to be a challenge, that was for sure.

I started with a few questions:

• Why did I create the blog in the first place? This blog is all of the things I wish I knew right before and within the first year of being an IT Manager. When I became an IT Manager, it was based on my abilities as an IT professional. No one taught me there is an art to managing highly skilled people.
• What makes my blog different, and why should anyone read it? In the IT Management space, there is very little information about how to lead and manage people. My competition with other IT Management blogs is mostly about new technologies and security threats.
• How am I going to market my blog? I struggled with this question. To gain an audience in a competitive field requires a plan. My plan is to write great content and to guest post where I can.
• After doing this for a little while, do I still want to? Yes. I have found there is something cathartic about writing to help people.
• Am I secretly afraid to succeed? Also, the answer here is yes. Even though I am very proud of this blog I have, I haven’t told absolutely everyone, yet. If I am not telling the people who know me, how can I tell the people who don’t?

Finding help

For some reason, every few months, about ten courses open up to help you fix various aspects of your website. Courses on AdSense websites, affiliate marketing, gaining traffic, YouTube videos, writing posts, finding a better job—you name it, there is a course for it.

There are so many to choose from, and so many of them seem worthwhile. I am a practical person, so I wanted one that would help me in an aspect of my life that goes beyond websites.

As for the question, “Should I pay for a class or find a free class?”, I chose to take a paid class. There is a built-in accountability for having plunked down your hard earned money, and that doesn’t exist if the product is free. I knew in needing to grow in areas that I am not always comfortable with, I’d need that accountability.

The class I chose, was a shot in the arm to continue my blog. It came in the form of a new class, a writing course from Danny Iny at Firepole Marketing. It was time to confront my arch nemesis from high school: writing. This ended up being a great choice, since effective writing can be used beyond a blog post, in all aspects of your blogging, and your life.

What did I learn?

While things are still a struggle, they are much better. I am more efficient and effective in my writing. With a full-time job, a growing blog, and a one-month old baby at home, any area where I can be even slightly more efficient is very valuable.

Structuring a blog post for me used to be a four- to five-day event, which would take about an hour a day, and even so I struggled to eke out 500 words.

Before taking the class, my approach to posting looked like this:

• Day 1: Type blindly for ten to 15 minutes, not caring about spelling, grammar, or even if I wrote actual words.
• Day 2, 3, 4: Edit and try to turn my random key strokes into something that didn’t sound like I was drunk when I wrote it.
• Day 5: Re-read and publish post.

One of the greatest things Danny helped me realize is that I needed to outline my posts before I wrote them. Write it down; don’t dream it up on the commute to work, then try to remember it when you get home and can start typing. Think of the key points you want to make, organize them, and then fill in the blanks. This was a classic forehead-smacking moment for me.

After taking the class, my writing approach looks like this:

• Step 1: Come up with a title and theme for the post. A great title is the difference between thousands of readers to an article and only a handful. Here are two headlines for basically the same article “How companies learn your secrets” and “How Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father”. Which would you rather read?
• Step 2: Create outline (ten minutes, tops). The outline is the key to the whole post. What issue are you trying to solve, or what are you trying to get the reader to do? Create an abbreviated version of the outline:
  • Set the scene and get their attention
  • Detail the problem
  • What is your solution?
  • How do you implement it?
• Step 3: Fill in blanks in the outline by writing the article. Since you have an outline, and you had to think about what you wanted to say, this part is as simple as write what comes naturally to you.
• Step 4: Wait at least a half-day, then re-read, fix grammar, and publish. When you come back and re-read the stuff you wrote previously, you’ll likely realize that what you wrote doesn’t make as much sense as you initially thought. As a side benefit, you will catch grammar issues and typos.

The training program expanded on this and went into great detail as to how and why this is incredibly effective.

How much time did I spend on my first post using the new way? About 45 minutes total. Oh, and it was 1100 words long.

Gaining confidence

As the old cliché goes, nothing breeds success like success. As I see my posts getting better, the writing coming more easily, and my traffic increasing, my desire to post more has also returned with a vengeance. In the first week following the course, my list of post ideas has tripled and I now look forward to writing posts on my own blog.

• My writing has improved.
• My traffic has increased dramatically.
• I am starting to get some key guest posting opportunities.
• Most importantly, I feel energized to post more.

What areas of blogging have you been lacking in where some accountability and maybe a class will give you the extra boost to succeed? Share them with us in the comments.

Kraig Stewardson blogs to help new and aspiring managers in the IT field. He is a proud alumni of the Write Like Freddy class from Firepole Marketing.

Each day the Research staff takes a look at recently released economic indicators, addressing what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update discusses personal income and consumer sentiment.

• Personal Income and disposable personal income each increased by 0.2 percent in February, a good but not overly strong increase. At the same time, personal consumption expenditures increased by 0.8 percent.  This brought the personal saving rate down to 3.7 percent in February from 4.3 percent in January.
• Separately, consumer sentiment improved, perhaps explaining the increase in consumption and slippage in savings rate.  The index of consumer sentiment rose from 75.3 in February to 76.2 in March and is nearly 13 percent higher than the reading one year ago.
• The increase in sentiment was driven largely by an improvement in consumers’ current situation.  The current situation index was up 3.6 percent from February to March in spite of rising gas prices as consumers reported income gains and job opportunities.  These survey responses suggest that an increase may be in store for March income data when it is reported next month, and that further consumption growth may continue.