Tag Archives: Waccabuc Homes for Sale

Great Recession creates 4.8 million renters | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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The United States added 4.8 million renters in the past six years while losing 1.7 million owner households as the dynamics of the real estate space changed in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The market experienced additional changes in the first nine months of 2012, creating unexpected outcomes in the housing finance sector, prompting the MBA to alter its forecast for 2012.

In brief, the MBA revised its estimate for 2012 mortgage originations to $1.7 trillion, up from $1.4 trillion a year earlier. Still, the trade group predicts total originations will taper off to $1.3 trillion in 2013, eventually hitting $1.1 trillion in 2014. However, mortgage rates are expected to hover below 4% through the mid-part of next year.

The MBA expects gross domestic product will inch up from 1.6% in 2012 to 2% in 2013. Meanwhile, the forecast suggests existing home sales will increase from 4.6 million in 2012 to approximately 4.78 million next year.

Still, economic growth is contingent on government tax policies and at least a temporary avoidance of the fiscal cliff in early 2013.

“The tax increase in particular would be devastating to economic growth,” said MBA chief economist Jay Brinkmann.  “We believe that the entire package of tax increases and spending cuts, if left unaltered, would cut 3.5 to 4 percentage points from our growth forecast.”

Another outlier is the final definition of the qualified mortgage rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will define what type of mortgage qualifies as safe from repurchase risk in cases of default. It’s unknown whether the final rule from CFPB, which is due out in  January, will contain a safe harbor provision to protect lenders from buy back risk if they follow the guidelines.

These forecasts are based on the idea that QM comes in with a safe harbor and legislatures get past the fiscal cliff without dramatic spending and tax changes, said Mike Fratantoni, the MBA vice president of research and economics.

If the nation moves past the QM rule and the fiscal cliff without the introduction of new risks, the MBA expects moderate economic growth and an uptick in home prices annually from roughly 1.2% in 2012 to 3.5% in 2013.

via housingwire.com

Waccabuc NY Real Estate | Mortgage delinquencies spike in September, report says

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While the nation’s foreclosure inventory continues to shrink, new delinquencies spiked sharply during September 2012, new data released Monday afternoon showed.

According to Lender Processing Services ($28.51 0%), the total U.S. mortgage delinquency rate — loans 30-plus days past due, but not in foreclosure — surged upward by 7.72%, reaching 7.4% in September versus the 6.87% reported one month earlier.

Despite the spike, September 2012 delinquency totals still remain below levels seen last year, LPS said.

While new delinquencies spiked in September, the volume of properties in foreclosure continues to shrink as banks and other financial instutions continue to work through a backlog of distressed real estate that remains well above historical levels of half of a percent or so, according to most industry experts.

LPS said that the nation’s foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate fell to 3.87% during September, down 4.05% from one month earlier and down 7.37% less than one year ago.

Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada, and Louisiana represented the states with the highest percentage of noncurrent loans, according to the data report; Lousiana replaced New York, which had been in the top five for most of this year.

Despite the drop in foreclosure inventory, the surge in new delinquencies has led to something not seen this year until now: an increase in the amount of distressed properties, defined as properties 30 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure.

According to LPS, there were 5.45 million properties in distress during August 2012; for September, thanks to increasing delinquencies, that number now equals 5.64 million.

via housingwire.com

10 Strategies To Increase Your Credit Score In 24 Hours | Waccabuc Realtor

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When you are in a hurry to increase your credit score there is 10 things that you can do with in 24 hours that help immensly. Here are the 10 things to increase your score:

1. Order your credit reports online for each of the top three credit reporting agencies individually. Even though it may be cheaper to order a three in one report offered by one of the Agencies, ordering individual credit reports will grant you the access to initiate a dispute online with each agency. You can’t improve your score in 24 hours unless you know what it is! Knowing where to start is important.

2. Call your credit card companies and request to increase your credit lines. Increasing credit lines will improve your outstanding debt to-available-credit ratio amounts on your revolving accounts, and can improve your credit by as much as 60 points.

3. Rearrange your debt so that every one of your credit cards have the lowest possible outstanding debt-to-available-credit ratio. A ratio of 25%-35% is ideal.

4. If you have the ability, pay down the cards until that ratio is recognized on your credit report.

5. Borrow money to pay down your debts referenced on your credit reports from a lender that doesn’t report, such as friends and family. Unreported debts will assist you to decrease those debt to available credit ratios and boost your score. Your private lenders may even want lesser interest than you are paying on the cards! While this business deal doesn’t appear on your credit report, it’s still debt, so use it wisely. You don’t want horrible Thanksgiving dinners after failure to pay on a loan made by a family relative.

6. If you have freshly paid down or paid off debts and they don’t show corrected on the report, fax that information to the credit agencies. Providing them with the verification of payoff is much faster then initiating a dispute of the account information. In many cases, the agency won’t verify the payoff with the lender, and accept your proof as correct.

7. Begin your dispute approach online with each service. The online dispute will suspend the negative derogatory items from your credit report for the short term, increasing your score. When the dispute is resolved your score will change accordingly, but for the period in-between you get a momentary reprieve from the effects of the negative derogatory information.

8. If you must choose one credit score to work on, spotlight your focus on the middle score. For most major purchases such as real estate or a vehicle, the lender will pull all three credit scores and use the middle score, (all three scores in one is called the tri-merge score) so this is the one that matters the most. If you improve your middle score over your highest score, the formerly top score is the one that now matters most.

9. Have a close friend or family member with a solid credit history add you to their card. You don’t even need to have the possession of an actual card, but by adding you to the account, you get the benefit of their long credit history. This doesn’t hurt their credit history at all. A Credit report is a compilation of accounts with your social security number attached to them. When your social security number was added to their account, you agreed to be responsible for it, and their years of good credit history now show up on your credit report. The individual person who lent you their excellent credit didn’t add their social security number to any of your accounts with the negative or derogatory history, so there is no way for the bad information to appear on their credit report.

10. If you have recent collection account reporting to your credit file that haven’t been paid? If so call the collection agency and ask, “do you delete?” About half of all collection agencies will take away the item from your credit report if you pay it in full, or a generous portion of the debt. Sometimes the collection agency can remove the debt from the credit bureaus instantaneously.

There are other things that can help you improve your credit score that will take much longer to implement. I think this list will suffice for now because these things can be done in 24 hours.

via articles.submityourarticle.com

‘Obamacare’ individual mandate has no teeth | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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If, like most real estate professionals, you’re self-employed, you have to obtain your own health insurance unless you can obtain coverage through a spouse. Lots of self-employed people have no health coverage because they can’t afford it.

Starting in 2014, these people will run up against the most controversial portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) — the individual health insurance mandate. This is the requirement that most legal residents of the United States obtain at least minimal health insurance coverage by 2014.

The word “mandate” sounds pretty serious. But what will actually happen if you don’t obtain health insurance by 2014? Surprisingly little.

The health care law says that individuals who can afford health insurance coverage and are not otherwise exempt must purchase minimum essential health coverage or pay a penalty to the IRS with their tax returns. The assessment of this penalty is the only consequence of not obeying the health insurance “mandate.”

How much is the penalty?

The exact amount of the tax penalty is based on household income above the level at which an uninsured individual is required to file a tax return — currently $9,500 per person and $19,000 per couple. This penalty is scheduled to be phased in over the next several years as follows:

  • for 2014, the penalty is the greater of $95 or 1 percent of income
  • for 2015, the greater of $325 or 2 percent of income
  • for 2016, the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income, and
  • the $695 amount is indexed for inflation after 2016.

The penalty for children is half the amount for adults, and an overall cap will apply to family payments. This cap will be three times the amount of the per-person penalty, regardless of how many people are in the family. Thus, the cap is $285 in 2014 but rises to $2,085 in 2016, after which point it is indexed to inflation. Moreover, the total penalty can never be more than the cost of a minimal “bronze” heath insurance plan that can be purchased through a state health insurance exchange. The CBO estimates that these policies will cost $4,500-$5,000 per person and $12,000-$12,500 per family in 2016, with the costs rising thereafter.

All in all, for most people the penalty will be less than the cost of obtaining health insurance. Many people may choose to wait until they get sick to purchase health insurance. This is something they will be able to do because “Obamacare” does not allow health insurers to refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions.

In addition, the penalty applies only to taxpayers who can afford insurance but do not purchase it. The Congressional Budget Offices says that of the 30 million non-elderly Americans it estimates will not have health insurance in 2016, only about 6 million will be subject to the tax. The remainder will be exempt because their income is too low or they qualify for another exemption.

How will the IRS collect?

Taxpayers subject to the penalty are supposed to report the amount due on their tax returns and pay it along with their income taxes. What happens if they don’t? Not nearly as much as when they don’t pay their regular taxes.

The law greatly limits how the IRS can collect the penalty. It cannot use liens or levies to collect it, and taxpayers are not subject to criminal prosecution or any additional penalty if they don’t pay. Moreover, the IRS says that its revenue agents will not be involved in enforcing the penalty — that is, they won’t ask you about it during an audit. All enforcement will be done through automatic assessments and computer-generated correspondence.

The only power the IRS will have to collect the penalty is to withhold it from an uninsured taxpayer’s tax refund. Currently, most taxpayers get refunds because they have too much tax withheld during the year. This year 77 percent of taxpayers received an average refund of $2,707.

However, self-employed taxpayers have no tax withheld from their pay. Instead, they pay estimated taxes to the IRS four times a year. Self-employed people can easily avoid qualifying for a tax refund by making sure they don’t pay too much in estimated tax. If you have no refund, the IRS will have no way of collecting the penalty.

As a result of all this, some experts predict that the IRS will be unable to effectively enforce the penalty tax. Only time will tell.

via inman.com

Does China build quickly and cheaply for a reason? | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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Having spent a fair amount of time in China over the past 18 years, and having witnessed its spectacular rise, I’ve always been puzzled that this remarkable nation still cares so little about the quality of the things it makes. Today, more than 30 years after the Opening in 1978, China has yet to address this shortcoming: Everything from dime store trinkets to high-rise buildings continue to show an astonishing indifference to detail.

As a Westerner steeped in the Protestant work ethic, I’ve written thousands of words and done much hand-wringing about Chinese quality over the years, wondering when China would follow in Japan’s footsteps — when it would finally pull off a miraculous reversal in its attitude toward quality, as Japan did in the decades after World War II. It hasn’t happened, and from what I can see, it probably won’t.

All of which has gotten me to wondering if it’s my own Western concept of quality that’s become obsolete. Perhaps making things last has become pointless in a world that changes so quickly.

It wouldn’t be the first time there’s been a fundamental shift in the prevailing idea of what constitutes quality: America’s own early history furnishes a parallel. For obvious reasons, the relatively crude buildings and manufactured goods of the young United States couldn’t compare to those of the Old World — one reason wealthy Americans in the early 18th century still insisted on importing their building materials, hardware and dishes from Great Britain.

Naturally enough, the British remained more than a little condescending toward their renegade former colony, whose building and manufacturing efforts fell far below English standards. This was, after all, an England whose houses were built with cut stone and massive oak timbers, whose cabinets used fine hardwoods in places you couldn’t even see, and whose steam engines were routinely polished, painted and pinstriped in gold.

Yet by the time the Yanks showed off their latest products at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876, it began to dawn on the Brits that America’s mass-produced products, as coarse as they appeared, were overtaking their own. This passing of the torch was symbolized by the towering Corliss steam engine that formed the fair’s iconic centerpiece, but it was apparent in all kinds of exhibits, from to stoves to clocks to furniture.

From the British viewpoint, nothing had changed. They had scrupulously upheld their accustomed standards of quality, steadfastly insisting on the very finest workmanship even when — like those gilded steam engines — it had no conceivable purpose. The eventual result of this shift in perception was an end to Britain’s industrial pre-eminence, and the beginning of our own.

It’s likewise possible that the world is once again changing, this time in a way that’s unfamiliar to our Western frame of reference. Perhaps China builds quickly, cheaply and with indifferent quality because the pace of change no longer demands permanence.

Then again, perhaps the point is moot. China comprises nearly one-fifth of the world’s population and serves, by our own admission, as “America’s workshop.” Its attitude to quality — like it or not — will inevitably affect our own.

via inman.com

Existing home sales fall 1.7% in September | Waccabuc NY Realtor

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home for sale

Story Highlights

  • Dip in sales rate matches some economists’ expectations
  • Median home prices rises 11.3% from year ago
  • Supply of homes for sale continues to tighten

Existing home sales declined in September from August, falling 1.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.75 million, the National Association of Realtors reported Friday.

That compares with an upwardly revised August pace of 4.83 million sales. Many economists had forecast sales would be flat or down slightly in September.

However, median prices rose 11.3% year-over-year — to $183,900 last month — while the inventory of existing homes for sale fell 20% from a year ago.

“Despite occasional month-to-month setbacks, we’re experiencing a genuine recovery,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.

Other recent data have signaled the housing industry is steadily gaining ground, though still far from the high levels that preceded the housing bust.

A report Wednesday showed builders started construction on homes at the fastest rate since July 2008. Applications for building permits — a sign of plans for future construction — also hit their highest rate since July 2008.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve’s purchases of mortgage bonds are keeping mortgage rates near historic lows.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage fell to 3.37% this week, from 3.39% a week ago and just a hair above the record low of 3.36%, Freddie Mac reported Thursday. For a 15-year mortgage, a popular refinancing option, the average rate is 2.66%. That is down from 2.7% a week ago.

via usatoday.com

Mixed news for homeowners facing foreclosure | Waccabuc NY Homes

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So-called short-sales of homes are rising, according to HOPE NOW, a private-sector alliance of mortgage investors, servicers, insurers and non-profit counselors.

The number of short-sales — when banks accept less money for a home than is currently owed on the mortgage —  crept up in August from the previous month. In theory, that’s good news because an uptick in short-sales should fewer homes going into foreclosure.

But that’s not the case yet. August foreclosure sales increased 12 percent from July, and foreclosure starts grew 14 percent. Faith Schwartz, executive director of HOPE NOW, attributed the rise to lenders clearing their foreclosure backlog, noting that many of the foreclosures have been in process for at least a year.

“The incentives for short-sales continue to increase,” she said. “The $25 billion foreclosure settlement, and the fact that many servicers aren’t used to holding on to foreclosures or [real-estate owned properties] means incentive is increasing.”

The goal is to resolve foreclosures before homes end up sitting abandoned and blighting the surrounding community, Schwartz added.

The data also suggest that more homeowners are making mortgage payments on time. The number of homeowners delinquent 60 days or more on their mortgage fell 2 percent in August, down to 2.42 million. In July, 2.47 million homeowners were seriously delinquent on their mortgages. Fewer borrowers are falling behind at least 60 days on their mortgages, and there are fewer current (30 day) defaults.

“While this is almost 40 percent lower than the all-time high of 4 million homeowners seriously past-due on their mortgage, we cannot forget there are many more who remain at risk of foreclosure,” Schwartz said, noting that short-sales are an integral part of helping homeowners. Yet many borrowers don’t know a short-sale is an option.

While short-sales, foreclosure starts and foreclosure sales rose in August, the number of homeowners who got mortgage relief in the form of loan modifications fell. Roughly 76,000 homeowners got permanent loan modifications under both both lender programs and the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). That’s down from July, when more than 82,000 homeowners received modifications from both HAMP and private companies.

Most loan mods start as HAMP modifications. If the borrower does not meet HAMP standards, they may be considered for alternative, proprietary modifications.

In total, 5.75 million homeowners have received permanent loan modifications since 2007, with more than 543,000 of those modifications occurring since January. Most homeowners who have had loans modified since the beginning of the year have done so through a lender or loan servicer.

Only 143,420 homeowners have received loan mods this year under HAMP which has very rigid documentation and debt-to-income standards. Since 2007, most of the loan mods — nearly 4.7 million — have been completed via proprietary loan modifications. Comparatively, the government’s HAMP program has modified roughly 1.1 million loans since it began reporting in 2009.

via cbsnews.com