Archive for May, 2009
San Francisco Home Prices Fall 41% on Foreclosures
San Francisco Bay Area home prices fell 41 percent in April from a year earlier as foreclosures accounted for almost half of all sales, MDA DataQuick.
The median price dropped to $304,000 from $518,000 a year earlier. That’s 54 percent below the peak reached two years ago, the San Diego-based research company said today in a statement. percent increase from April 2008.
This is for all you who said “it would never be as bad here as your Central Valley junkers”
High-End Foreclosures Are Next
National Association of Realtors Chief economist Lawrence Yun said that the supply of existing homes for sale over $750,000 has reached a forty-month supply.
That means it would take well over three years at the current place to sell off all of those homes.
Great deal on your dream home coming soon !
12 % are behind on mortgage or in foreclosure
Mortgage Bankers Association said that a record 12 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are behind on their payments or in foreclosure as the housing crisis spreads to borrowers with good credit.
MBA said Thursday the foreclosure rate on prime fixed-rate loans doubled in the last year, and now represents the largest share of new foreclosures. Nearly 6 percent of fixed-rate mortgages to borrowers with good credit were in the foreclosure process.
At the same time, almost half of all adjustable-rate loans to borrowers with shaky credit were past due or in foreclosure.
California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida accounted for 46 percent of new foreclosures in the country.
Bad news- 6% of good credit borrowers in FC
LPS Reports Delinquencies Still Rising
Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS), a Florida-based provider of mortgage technology and services, released its May 2009 LPS Mortgage Monitor on Tuesday, which provides market performance indicators based on mortgage data collected through April of this year.
LPS reported that total mortgage delinquencies in April rose slightly to 8.1 percent, with a year-over-year increase of 43 percent. In an interesting vintage delinquency analysis, the report shows that recent loans are showing a clear and steady trend of improvement through reduced delinquency rates.
LPS found that mortgages originated in 2009 have a lower default rate than those originated between 2004 to 2008.
April existing home sales rise by 2.9 percent
The National Association of Realtors (A real estate group) says sales of previously occupied homes rose modestly from March to April as buyers swooped in to take advantage of prices that were 15.4 percent below year-ago levels.
NAR said Wednesday that home sales rose 2.9 percent to an annual rate of 4.68 million last month, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.55 million in March.
The median sales price plunged to $172,000, down from $201,300 in the same month last year. That was the second-largest drop on record after January, when prices fell 17.5 percent.
NAR loves to use month/month data, let’s use Yr/Yr data to see the real picture.
Fewer And Fewer Make Timely Mortgage Payments
The number of people who cannot pay their mortgages is spiking up.
According to the FT, “The percentage of loans that were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due rose to 11.93 per cent in the fourth quarter, the highest since the MBA began keeping records in 1972 and a jump of almost 2 percentage points since the third quarter.”
Despite the Administration’s new mortgage rescue plan, the figure is likely to go higher. More people will lose jobs. More homeowners will find that their home loans are much larger than the equity of their houses. As home prices fall, that ratio will get even worse.
No matter how much assistance goes into the system to help “worthy” people keep their houses, the number of people who cannot wait to turn in the keys or have lost work will continue to rise.
The Myth Of Saving The Mortgage Market
There is some logic to that. Helping people who are broke does almost nothing. Someone who cannot make a $900 a month house payment is unlikely to be able to handle one at $600. Many of the people in question are out of work or have low paying jobs. Many have considerable consumer debt which makes them like almost every other citizen.
The federal government cannot halt the decline in the housing market by resetting terms for homeowners who won’t benefit from the process.
Until the issues of having too many homes which are worth less than there mortgages and the rising rate of unemployment is addressed, the government is better off buying the homes and letting their current residents stay in them. By:Douglas A. McIntyre
The Failure Of The Mortgage Modification System Threatens Housing
According to The Wall Street Journal, a conservative projection was that between 65% and 75% of modified subprime loans will fall 60-days or more delinquent within 12 months of the loan change.”
That makes the problem so severe that any effort to turn home prices back in the right direction is likely to fail.
Californians reject budget measures; state’s deficit deepens to $21.3 Billion
State lawmakers are now faced with having to plug a budget deficit projected to balloon to $21.3 billion within the next 13 months, following Tuesday’s special election in which voters soundly rejected five proposals that would have cut that number by about $6 billion.
Here we go again….
