Jobless rate up on housing cuts

San Diego is one of the most desirable spots in the world to live, so many can't believe why anyone would want to move out of the area or why others aren't flocking to the area. One of the main reasons is that it is too expensive and many are losing their jobs in key industries like real estate. The article below describes how declining home prices are leading to massive lay-offs all throughout the real estate industry. The real question that everyone is bracing for is how much will the declining real estate market effect the rest of San Diego.

County unemployment hits a six-month high

By Dean Calbreath
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

March 3, 2007

Construction and real estate layoffs helped push San Diego County's unemployment rate to its highest point since last July, according to data released yesterday by the California Employment Development Department.

The county lost 23,400 jobs from December to January, but most of the losses were caused by seasonal reductions at retail shops and restaurants related to the end of the holiday shopping season.

More significant were the cuts in the real estate industry, continuing a five-month decline. January's job cutbacks included 2,500 construction workers, 700 real estate workers and 1,100 workers at furniture and home-improvement stores.

“The housing sector is really starting to have an impact on our overall year-to-year job numbers,” said Alan Gin, economist at the University of San Diego.

Gin worried that the real estate downturn is affecting the retail market. From January 2005 to January 2006, 2,500 retail workers lost their jobs, mostly in department stores.

“When you've got fewer people working in construction and fewer people buying homes, you've got fewer people shopping in the community, and that can translate to fewer retail jobs,” Gin said.

The report showed that only 13,000 jobs were created between January 2006 and January 2007, which is low for a county this size.

“Not too long ago, we were adding about 20,000 jobs per year, and there have been times in the past when we've added as many as 50,000,” said Kelly Cunningham, an economist with the San Diego Institute for Policy Research.

The county's unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent, compared with 3.7 percent in December, which typically has a low unemployment rate. While the jobless rate is still low by historical standards, it is slightly higher than the January 2006 rate of 4.1 percent.

In comparison, the state unemployment rate – adjusted for seasonal fluctuations – was 4.8 percent in December and January, down from 5.1 percent in January 2006.

Statewide, employers cut payrolls by 4,500 jobs from December to January, mostly due to losses in the leisure and hospitality industry, the Employment Development Department reported.

During the year ended in January, California employers added 251,400 jobs, a 1.7 percent increase, compared to a 1 percent increase in San Diego County. Statewide, construction firms added 4,900 jobs during the year. Part of that growth came from non-residential construction and part was because the housing sector grew strongly during the first half of the year.

Since the housing market peaked in August, the state has lost 9,100 residential construction jobs and 39,500 specialty trade construction contractors, as well as 3,800 real estate jobs.

Howard Roth, chief economist for the California Department of Finance, predicted that the housing market will continue to decline in the state through at least June. He said the slowdown is having an impact on the state's income tax revenue.

In January, the state took in about $8 billion in income taxes – $1 billion less than previously forecast. Roth said that part of the drop was due to declines in the money earned by real estate brokers and professionals in related industries.

“The slowdown in the California and national housing sectors is not yet over,” Roth told a meeting of San Diego's Chartered Financial Analysts on Thursday. “And it has turned out to be worse than was expected.”

On the other hand, Roth said that because San Diego was one of the first areas of the nation to experience a slowdown, it will be one of the first to stage a comeback. By 2008, the statewide market should recover, he said.

There was some good news about local employment yesterday. A survey of small businesses in the county released by Union Bank showed that 98 percent do not anticipate cutting their payrolls in 2007 and 29 percent plan to increase their staffing levels. But the number of businesses planning to hire new workers was 9 percentage points lower than last year.

“Given the optimism expressed by respondents, I am a little surprised that more businesses are not planning to add employees,” said Union Bank economist Keitaro Matsuda. “The extremely tight labor market and rising wages are perhaps making small businesses rely more on technology for productivity gains.”

Marney Cox, economist for the San Diego Association of Governments, said the county's diverse employment base will keep job growth steady, even if it is significantly slower than in previous years.

“When some pieces of our economy turn down, they're able to pass the baton to others,” he said.

He pointed to job growth in telecommunications, which reversed previous declines with the addition of 800 jobs last year, as one hopeful sign.

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Mortgage Execs see further dip int he market

North County Times article below describes the worrisome situation that the mortgage industry finds itself following the decline in housing prices and the rise in foreclosures.

Many who continue to minimize the dire situation that real estate is in will find it harder as evidence like this surfaces. Just as the mortgage boom fueled the rising real estate prices from 200- to 2005, a mortgage bust will further draw down prices and limit the the pool of buyers that can buy the homes available.

If you are selling, focus on pricing right, but weight offers from sellers with more money down over those with closer to 100% financing. Realize that the fledgling mortgage industry will also effect your buyers and that of course, effects you. Time is not on your side, so don't waste it by holding on to a price that isn't getting any offers.


If you have tried to sell you home and haven't yet or you need to sell quickly and would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.




Prominent mortgage exec sees further dip in market

By: ANN PERRY - Staff Writer

SAN MARCOS -- The nation's troubled housing and mortgage markets will decline even further before they rebound, a prominent mortgage executive told a gathering of real estate agents at Cal State San Marcos on Friday.

Robert A. Camerota, Sr., senior vice president and manager of GMAC's Mortgage group in Coast Mesa, sketched a bleak forecast for the housing industry: falling home prices, increased foreclosures, more failed mortgage companies and increased revelations of mortgage fraud.

"We're all going to be struggling, struggling more than we are today," he said. "We're headed halfway down the mountain, and we've got a ways to go."

Camerota, who is also chairman of the California Mortgage Bankers Association, was one of seven real estate experts participating in a panel discussion called Conversations '07, sponsored by the North San Diego County Association of Realtors and the university. More than 100 real estate professionals attended the half-day event.

Some members of the panel and the audience said the real estate market in North County was relatively strong because of continued demand from buyers wanting to live in the area. In most parts of the country, housing prices have fallen since hitting a peak in 2005.

Camerota said that guidelines proposed Friday by federal regulators to tighten mortgage lending requirements and reduce problems in the "subprime" mortgage market were necessary. But, he added, they would dramatically decrease the number of new mortgage loans issued, as well as mortgages refinanced.

Subprime loans are made to borrowers, considered high risk because of their poor credit, at interest rates higher than those made to borrowers with good credit.

Camerota's company, GMAC, is one of the nation's largest subprime mortgage lenders. The increasing failure of the company's borrowers to repay subprime mortgages has cost the company more than $1 billion already and could cause General Motors, part-owner of GMAC, to take a major financial hit, according to an article distributed Friday by Dow Jones Newswires.

Revelations of mortgage fraud, the use of bogus income and tax documents by borrowers to obtain large loans, will increase, Camerota predicted. He said that, contrary to what some legislators propose, no new laws are need to combat mortgage fraud.

Instead, he said, "We need to go to the attorneys general and the district attorneys. We don't need more laws. We need more enforcement."

Camerota and other mortgage experts said they would like to see lenders be able to change the terms of existing mortgages to stave off foreclosures by the borrowers. "We're all looking for an opportunity to adjust our guidelines, to go to customers and ask what we can do to help you," he said.

He also predicted more subprime mortgage lenders would fold. He noted that New Century Financial Corp. of Irvine, one of the nation's largest, was laying off hundreds of workers on Friday. The company disclosed Friday that a federal prosecutor and the New York Stock Exchange are investigating the trading of its stock.

Realtors in attendance noted that the booming real estate market of recent years created a "perfect storm" for problems now surfacing: low interest rates, rising property values and lenient lending standards led to buyers taking on larger homes and bigger mortgages than they could afford.

One Realtor said that buyers contributed to the problem, by wanting to "keep up with the Joneses," and to buy their dream homes: "Our clients were saying, 'Supersize Me!' "

What a Buyer Wants

In this market many sellers must be scratching their heads and wondering, "What does a buyer want?"

In the simplest terms, they want value. Value is made up of many variables and the home's price has the most weight. After that could be location or schools, or some other quality about the house that fits the buyers lifestyle. In a seller's market, buyers are willing to pay top dollar because they know they will get the value out of the home as the price continues to rise. In this market though, buyers know the home prices are falling and want to get the house as cheap as they can.

Because price weighs so heavily in the equation, it can easily solve most issues. As sellers in this market, you must be prepared to lower the price and be honest about the feedback you are getting from your marketing and open houses. Here are some good rules-of-thumb to follow:
- If you're getting showings and offers, your list price is about right.

- If you're getting showings and no offers, you're 5% to 10% too high.

- If you're getting no showings, your list price is at least 10% too high.

Be careful not to fall into these mental traps, the market is changing...

A. "I'm not in a hurry"

B. "I'll wait for the right buyer" or

C. "I'm not going to give it away",

Your 'days on market' are killing your chances of selling for top dollar. Buyers figure that if you've been on the market for 30 or more days, all the other buyers before them must have passed on yours for a reason - the price ain't right.

If you have tried to sell your home and your listing has expired, call me. I can make an offer on your home in less that 48 hours and will be able to buy it from from for cash or lease it from you.

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Freddie Mac Pulls Back

Here is an excellent article that discusses the effect foreclosures, sub-prime lending, and falling real estate prices are having on Federal lending guidelines. For those of you thinking about selling your home, there are a couple of implications:
1. In a short time it will likely be more difficult to to find qualified buyers. The days of 100% financing are quickly coming to a close. When you receive offers, make sure the buyers are qualified and can make a decent down payment.
2. Because buyers will likely find it harder to qualify, the pool of potential buyers will certainly shrink as well. It may be harder to find buyers and buyers will certainly be pushing for the lowest price because they can only qualify for the low end of your price range.

Bottom line, be sure to price your home right and be willing to sacrifice some money in the purchase price for a buyer who is willing to commit more money upfront and is a strong candidate to receive the needed financing.

During the housing boom that ended in 2005, money was poured into home loans that let people buy homes with little down or without verifying their incomes. Now, lenders, financiers and buyers of mortgages are pulling back.

In a sign of that wariness, Freddie Mac, one of the largest buyers of mortgages, said yesterday that it would tighten lending standards and stop buying certain kinds of risky home loans made to borrowers with weak, or subprime, credit records.

The move comes as default rates are rising, smaller lenders are starting to fail and investors are shunning bonds backed by mortgages.

The pullback will be most severely felt by minority and poor home buyers and owners, who will face trouble in refinancing adjustable rate loans that they can no longer afford. Those looking to buy homes with a small down payment or none could also be forced to pay higher interest rates and may not be able simply to declare their income without providing documentation like tax returns and paycheck stubs.

“Lenders and originators are being significantly penalized for the loose standards that we saw last year,” said Brian J. Carlin, head of fixed-income trading at JPMorgan Private Bank. “And they are going to take that out on current borrowers.”

Financiers and buyers of mortgages are more concerned about the risks of their own investments. Though some skeptics and critics had been concerned about subprime mortgages for several years, the mortgages only recently began falling out of favor on Wall Street.

The tipping points have been weakness in home prices and rising default rates among mortgages written as recently as the first half of 2006. In certain kinds of loans, the default rates six months after mortgages were issued are two or three times higher than defaults at the same stage among loans written in 2005.

Indeed, concerns about the deterioration of the subprime market have weighed on financial stocks. Those concerns persisted yesterday amid a sharp sell-off in stock markets around the world.

Although large forces in the mortgage market, Freddie Mac and its larger sister, Fannie Mae — both created by Congress — have played a small and diminishing role in the subprime business as large Wall Street institutions and hedge funds have become more active.

The mortgage agencies do not buy such loans directly from the companies that write them, as they do with prime loans. Instead, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy bonds backed by subprime loans.

Even as the market was growing in recent years, the agencies were pulling back; they bought $119.8 billion of subprime bonds in 2006, down from $169.4 billion in 2005 and $175.6 billion in 2004, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication.

But Freddie’s announcement is confirmation to other investors in mortgages that a segment of the market that was once Wall Street’s darling finds itself in the doghouse.

“Freddie is giving its stamp of approval to what the market has already done,” said Dwight Jaffee, a real estate finance professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Already consumers were going to be finding these loans harder to get.”

In another sign of problems in the sector, the Corporation">Fremont General Corporation, a large provider of subprime mortgages through brokers and lenders, postponed filing earnings for the fourth quarter and for 2006.

Yesterday’s move by Freddie Mac comes at a time when the Democratic-controlled Congress is taking up bills to restrict what critics call “predatory lending” and measures intended to limit Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which have been under scrutiny in recent years because of accounting problems. The agencies were created to make it cheaper for Americans to buy homes, by buying mortgages and packaging them into tradable bonds; together, they buy one in five home mortgages issued nationally.

Freddie’s move was praised by Democratic leaders in Congress and housing advocacy groups. The groups have criticized lenders, saying they take advantage of unsophisticated home buyers by giving them loans that are more costly and onerous than they could qualify for. But the Mortgage Bankers Association of America questioned the decision, saying it would hurt minority and other underserved home buyers.

In a statement released yesterday, Fannie Mae said subprime loans represented just 2.2 percent of its business and it would not change its approach to the market until its regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, hands down guidance on mortgages.

Richard F. Syron, Freddie’s chairman and chief executive, noted that the agencies played a small part in the subprime market, with his agency holding about $184 billion of subprime securities in its portfolio.

Still, he added, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would be called upon to play a bigger role as more lenders and investors pull out of the market in the coming months. He also rebutted the idea that the agency’s move would hurt borrowers.

“You have to come back to the question: Do you want someone that is in a difficult situation now to get themselves into an even more difficult situation later on because they have postponed a day of reckoning?” Mr. Syron said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Freddie will put its new, stricter standards into effect for loans written on Sept. 1 and after. The impact will be greatest on adjustable rate mortgages that have a low fixed rate for the first two or three years but that adjust to higher rates after that. Under the new guidelines, borrowers will have to qualify as if the higher rates were already in effect.

It will also “strongly recommend” that lenders collect borrowers’ taxes and insurance payments and put them in escrow for borrowers, a common practice in prime lending but one that is not uniformly followed in the subprime world.

But the Mortgage Bankers Association criticized the move, specifically Freddie’s decision not to buy bonds backed by adjustable rate mortgages if borrowers do not make enough money to make payments at the highest possible rate under the loans. Lenders will often make such loans based on borrowers’ ability to pay the low initial payments.

Kurt P. Pfotenhauer, a senior vice president with the mortgage bankers’ group, said most borrowers refinance their loans before they adjust to higher, variable rates. He also noted that though defaults were rising, only 13.5 percent of subprime borrowers were either behind on payments or in foreclosure.

“Put another way, 86.5 percent of people who have subprime ARMs are paying on time,” he said.

The Federal Reserve reported yesterday that 2.11 percent of residential loans held by banks were delinquent at the end of 2006, the highest that figure has been since 2002.

Still, other industry officials say the debate over Freddie’s new, tighter standards will most likely be moot by the time they take effect, because bankers and brokers are already well on their way to tightening the money flowing into the housing market.

First Franklin, one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders and a subsidiary of Merrill Lynch & Company, recently told mortgage brokers it does business with that it was raising the minimum credit scores for borrowers who wanted to finance 100 percent of a home’s purchase price.

All first-time home buyers will be required to put down at least 5 percent of the purchase price, or verify their income with tax documents.

Community HousingWorks, a counseling service in San Diego, has seen an influx of borrowers who are in default on adjustable rate loans that had a fixed interest rate for the first two years of the loan’s life.

Gabriel del Rio, homeownership director at the counseling service, said many of the people are stuck in a tough place because weak credit scores make it hard for them to get another loan and the falling value of homes in the area has made it harder to sell properties bought in recent years. The price of single-family homes fell 4.5 percent in San Diego in the fourth quarter, according to the National Association of Realtors.

“We are getting about one call a day, and that started in the last quarter of last year,” Mr. del Rio said. “Before then it was literally nothing. We got one or two calls a year.”

Robert Moulton, who owns a mortgage brokerage firm on Long Island, said the industry’s greatest failing was not fully anticipating or preparing for the troubles of the housing market, especially the drop in home prices in some areas. Too many people believed that home prices would not or could not fall.

Adjustable rate loans made sense as long as home prices were rising; borrowers could sell their properties for more than they bought them or refinance using their rising equity.

“When these subprime loans were written, I honestly don’t think anyone from the borrowers to the bank anticipated a collapse in real estate values,” he said.





If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

San Diego Foreclosure Rates and 100% Financing

Here is a short clip from an excellent blog maintained by Ben Jones in Arizona. The article details the decline in San Diego Real Estate and the effect sub-prime and $0 down loans had on the real estate boom and the growing number of foreclosures resulting from those loans.

The interesting thing to keep in mind is what will the effect be on lending and people able to get no money down loans. I was talking with a loan broker today and discussing how I, as a Real Estate investor, could help them. As we talked, I brought up Lease Option or Rent to Own programs. He thought that those had gone away but he remembered them being quite common in the 1980's and 1990's. Well my guess is that they will be coming back as lenders will have to conform to more strict lending guidelines and fewer borrows will qualify. If you don't understand rent to own programs, they are an excellent way to buy and sell your house. For the buyer, they offer great flexibility in the sense that you can try out a home before you buy it. What if you don't like the neighbors, or think the traffic noise is too loud? In most cases, you are stuck! I know that I wished I would have known that I was moving next to a very nosey neighbor before I moved in. They also are excellent ways of repairing your credit and making it easier for a lender to qualify you for a loan. If you are recovering from a divorce, a lay-off, or some other unfortunate event and have a good paying job, making one year's worth of payments goes a long way to help you qualify. For the Seller, it offers instant debt relief, in some cases increased cash flow and at the very least, someone else is paying off your mortgage for some time. That is not a bad deal at all. If you would like to learn more about Lease Options from the buyers and sellers perspective, sign up for my free e-course or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com.

Now for the article...To read the entire post, click on the title of this post.

The Voice of San Diego reports from California. “The number of San Diego County homes in some level of foreclosure activity reached 1,150 last month, according to RealtyTrac. That’s up 20 percent from January 2006 and up more than 240 percent from the first month of 2005. But even as the market has slowed, the popularity of risky loans has spread. New data for San Diego County reveals that 67 percent of loans made in the first 11 months of 2006 were interest-only or negatively amortized.”

“Of that 67 percent, 30 percent were negative-amortization loans, a threefold increase since January 2004 and 30-fold jump since January 2003, according to FirstAmerican Loan Performance.”

“Last week, a San Diego-based subprime lender, Accredited Home Lenders, joined the ranks of companies vowing to tighten standards after reports of significant losses last quarter. Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac said he’s noticed the link between the lenders’ stricter regulations and the rate of foreclosure activity. ‘I think the two go hand-in-hand,’ Sharga said.”

“Now, home values have stopped appreciating and pricing in some areas has leveled or even declined. Last month, the median sale price for a home in San Diego County was 5.6 percent lower, nearly $30,000, than the $500,000 price logged in January 2006, according to DataQuick.”

“In a report published in December, the Center for Responsible Lending stated that the default rate for subprime loans made between 1998 and 2001 was 3.2 percent in San Diego County. But for the nearly 5,000 such loans originating in 2006, the center predicts that 21.4 percent are headed for default.”

“‘There are some fundamental flaws in the underwriting process that are coming back to haunt lenders,’ the centers’ Paul Leonard said. ‘The lenders seemed to count on appreciation rather than the people’s actual income.’”

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Luxury Home Prices Slip in San Diego

Latest indication of the Real Estate market slowing in the San Diego area...

By Dan Levy

Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Luxury home prices in California, the nation's most expensive real estate market, fell for the first time in two years as potential buyers waited for prices to fall and fewer sellers received multiple offers, according to a survey by San Francisco-based First Republic Bank.

The average price of a luxury home fell to $2.9 million in San Francisco, $2.35 million in Los Angeles and $2.15 million in San Diego, First Republic said. The bank's survey covers hundreds of homes in places such as Atherton, Los Gatos, Orinda and Tiburon in Northern California and Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Malibu, Del Mar and La Jolla in Southern California.

Fourth-quarter prices for a basket of high-end homes tracked by the bank's own index fell 1.5 percent in the San Francisco area and 1.3 percent in the San Diego area. That's the first quarterly drop in those cities since 2004, First Republic said. In the Los Angeles area, prices declined 0.8 percent, the first drop since 2002.

What has your experience been in selling luxury homes in the San Diego area?

To read the full article, click on the title of this post.

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Who is your Open House Really Helping?

In a continuing of series of posts looking at whose interest a Realtor really serves, this post briefly touches on open houses and who is really best served by them, you the seller or the listing agent.

The below portion is an excerpt from an article on MSN. Here the Realtor clearly explains why she holds open houses - TO MEET NEW CLIENTS, NOT SELL YOUR HOUSE! Again, if you are going to sell your home, think carefully about how you will sell it and sign up for my free e-course to help save you from a lot of mistakes and head aches.

Los Angeles real estate agent Liz Johnson loves open houses, but not because they move her properties. The real reason Johnson holds them is because they bring her more business. Prospective home buyers walk through and ask what other listings she has. "They've always been better for agents than sellers," she says.

The proliferation of Internet listings and other online real estate information is quickly making open houses more of an option, rather than a requirement for selling a home. In 1995, just 2% of home buyers used the Internet to look for a home, according to the National Association of Realtors. Last year, 77% of home buyers shopped online.

Indeed, only 2% to 4% of Johnson's listings sell from open houses. "It's not a necessity," she says.

If the prospect of dealing with Realtors that you don't know if you can trust or not and you just need to sell your house quickly, then you may want to visit my website. If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Does a Realtor Really Represent Your Interests?

The following was actually a comment from another blog I was reading and. It made me think about some of the many concerns a seller should have when they consider hiring a listing agent. The issue here is understanding whose interests the Realtor is really representing.

Our listing agent screwed up the multiple offers situation when we put our house on market in summer of 2005. We received two offers within a week, one buyer offered lower price but with half million cash down payment and a 30-day escrow, the other buyer offered higher price but with very low down payment and asked for 60-day escrow. Our agent persuaded to go with the higher offer even though we preferred the lower offer with 30-day escrow. It turned out our listing agent is a good friend of the buy agent he favored. Unfortunately escrow fell through, and due to the long escrow period we agreed to, we missed the peak selling season. When we listed the house again in September, it took multiple price reductions to finally find another buyer in early 2006.

I had a slightly different experience when I bought my first home. My wife and I were tired of renting and we decided we were ready to buy. We were inexperienced and went with a Realtor we really didn't interview. My wife did her own searching and found a probate sale home and we decided to make an offer. To make a long story short, because the seller was motivated, our Realtor was bidding on the property at the same time we were! She would submit low ball offers and then encourage us to submit high-end bids. Her ruse was finally uncovered when she accidentally faxed us a counter offer that was hers. We contacted the listing agent and she told us what she thought was happening. You need to be careful and ask your Realtor tough questions.

Keep an eye out for other articles that talk about how to interview Realtors and how to make the best choice. You can also sign up for my free e-course that talks about this topic and many others. Selling your house with a Realtor is only one way to sell your home. If you decide to take that route, that's great, but don't think the work is done for you. As this blog shows, choosing the wrong Realtor can spell disaster.


If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

No Down, AS Foreclosures Rise..The Economy will Likely Suffer

This short video clip explores the connection between so many home owners who purchased their home with little or nothing down and financed the purchase with sub-prime loans. The bottom line is that these homeowners are far more likely to default on their loan. Because they can't pay their mortgage, the assumption is that they likely won't really be able to buy other goods and services which will further hamper the economy. This is only the effect that the home owner has, it does not include the effect the banks, losing all this money in defaulted loans, will have.

The other lesson here is that housing decline is not likely to end any time soon. The ripple effect of the defaulted loans should last at least as long as the housing market downturn of the 1990's if not longer.

If you are thinking about selling your home and want to sell quickly and still get the most out of this market, do your research, understand your options, price it right, and sign up for my free e-course. If you want to sell even faster, visit my website http://SDHomeSaver.com and click on the instant cash offer link.

Good luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

How to Auction Your House

This is an option that many homeowners don't consider and it is a good one. If you watched the earlier video where the Realtor did a silent auction and compare it to this seller who conducted the auction differently.
To find out more helpful tips and what mistakes to avoid, sign up for my free e course. We discuss auctions and how best to use them to sell your house fast. No Realtors, no commissions, just some marketing know-how and a little preparation. Go ahead, sign up, what have you got to lose!

Real estate tips - interviewing listing agents w/ Jim Klinge

This is a very helpful video from a Realtor in Carlsbad who works all throughout San Diego. he has many helpful tips on how to choose a listing agent.

If you like these tips and want more helpful tips, sign up for my free e-course to have the latest tips and techniques to help you sell your home fast.

Short Sale

So many home owners are in this situation and you should not feel alone if you are facing the same situation. Notice in this situation how the bank may not accept the lower offer on the house and the bank may still force the home owner to pay taxes on the difference of what is owed and the sale price.
If you are behind on your payments, you have a couple of options. Obviously someone willing to pay at least what you owe and cover the closing costs would be nice, but that is likely not reality, it certainly isn't for these home owners. An additional option that you may want to consider is allowing an investor to take over your payments for a period of time, then split the equity in the sale of the home. This may sound outrageous to some, but there are many benefits to the seller. It "stops the bleeding" of the monthly mortgage payments. It allows an investor to improve the home and make the needed upgrades for the house to be more desirable.

To find out more about how these selling solutions work, sign up for my free e-course. In I will show you how I, as an investor, structure deals to help the home owner. What I look for and what I need to assume the risk of the home. You will be well prepared to talk with an investor and understand what he realistically can do. You will know how to avoid scams and protect yourself.

If you are even thinking of having to sell your house and need to sell your house fast, sign up for the e course. If your house is vacant or the payments are just too much for you to pay, contact me at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com or click on the instant cash offer the helpful links. I look forward to hearing from you.

Option A.R.M. Loans

If you have an Option ARM loan and it has recently adjusted or you are worried become it is about to, you know all about this video. If you in an Option ARM loan and don't understand what the loan is, please watch this video! If you see your Option period is coming to a close, and you are not sure what to do, please conact me at sdhomesaver@gmail.com. If you live in North County or San Diego County and need to sell or refinance, please call me; I can help.

Hard to Sell

This video from YouTube shows one home owner who is in the same position that many sellers find themselves in. He needs to sell his house fast, but has had to continually lower his price to find a buyer. He has made several costly mistakes along the way, choosing the wrong Realtor, pricing the house incorrectly, not staging the home, and the list goes on. To avoid these costly mistakes, sign up for my e course that helps you understand your options and proceed confidently with whatever you choose. Don't let this be you.

House Doesn't have any Foot TrafficWhy Not Try Auctioning Your House

The video from YouTube describes one Realtors approach to trying to get more foot traffic in her listing. She used a silent auction. While it did increase the foot traffic, it did not sell the house. Auctioning your home is an excellent way to sell your house quickly, but she made a few mistakes in her execution. She should have held a public auction and increased the bidding fever. To find out how to use auctions effectively, sign up for my free e-course and learn how to set up your own auction or find a local auction company that handles everything.

Mortgage Rates on the Way Back Up

Saving your home may mean refinancing it to get cash out. Mortgage rates are slightly increasing and may increase even more. The article below shows how interest rates are rising slowly. This is critical to understanding how you can still sell your house quickly despite interest rates rising. Sign up for my free e-course and learn how "Owner Financing" will push your listing to the top of all Buyers' list.

Freddie Mac reported that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages rose to 6.3 percent this week from 6.28 percent last week. Last week had been the first decline in rates since early December.
Rates on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages edged up to 6.03 percent from 6.02 percent. Five-year, adjustable-rate mortgages rose to 6.01 percent from 5.99 percent. One-year ARMs rose to 5.52 percent from 5.49 percent.

The mortgage rates do not include add-on fees known as points. Thirty-year and 15-year mortgages each carried a nationwide average fee of 0.4 point. Five-year mortgages carried an average fee of 0.5 point, while one-year mortgages carried a fee of 0.6 point.

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

How Does San Diego County Compare to Other Southern CA Counties

DataQuick recently released their homes sales statistics. The following link takes you to an excellent analysis of the DataQuick numbers and shows how San Diego County compares to other counties in Southern California.

The bottom line, San Diego has slowed and will likely continue to slow.

http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2007/02/dataquick.html

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Hard luck for housing

The below article describes how housing prices compare to previous years in San Diego County. They are not promising and homes prices have slipped to 2004 levels. One of the important things to keep in mind is the optimism at the end of the article. The California Association of Realtors (CAR) continues to say that the bottom has been hit and 2007 will be better, but historical precedent clearly tells us that the market will get much worse. If you decide to sell with a Realtor, price your house right!

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Countywide price median at its lowest point since July 2004

By Roger Showley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 15, 2007

San Diego County housing prices slid a bit further last month, returning to mid-2004 levels, as buyers pressed for more concessions from builders and discounts from sellers.

The overall median price stood at $472,000, down 5.6 percent from a year ago and $23,000, or 4.6 percent, less than in December, DataQuick Information Systems reported yesterday. The last time the median was that low was in July 2004, when it was $470,000. The market reached its all-time peak of $517,500 in November 2005.

Single-family resale homes, the biggest part of the market, shed $20,000 from the January 2006 level of $560,000, but the latest median of $540,000 was unchanged from December.

Similarly, the resale condominium median was unchanged at $380,000 from December to January. It was 3.6 percent below the year-ago level of $394,000.

It was in the new-housing sector that the biggest price fluctuations occurred. The median for newly built houses, condos and condo conversions was $395,000, down 8.8 percent from the $433,000 median one year ago and a dip of 14 percent from the December median of $460,000.

Tim Sullivan, a San Diego-based real estate analyst, said what's at work in the new-housing category is a buildup of completed, unsold inventory – finished homes sitting empty in subdivisions and condo projects.

“Inventory (of unsold homes) is the bugaboo everyone is focused on,” Sullivan said.

Sharon Hanley, who publishes a weekly bulletin on local new-home sales, reported that the inventory of unsold homes stood at 5,095 at the end of January – a 36-week supply – with 871 detached and 4,224 attached homes available. At the same time five years ago, the inventory was 2,378 homes.

To reduce the backlog last year, many builders began offering incentives, such as upgrades, discounts and special financing.

Tom Archbold, vice president for sales and marketing at San Diego-based Hallmark Communities, said the company's just-opened, 22-unit Vineyard project in San Marcos offers $30,000 in incentives on single-family homes built on small lots. Prices range from $459,000 to $554,000. Three of the first seven homes released were sold over the weekend.

Archbold said the incentives, usually taken in the form of interest-rate buy-downs, may not last much longer.

“It's not going to get any better than this,” he said.

Hallmark President Mike Hall said last year's sluggish new-home market prompted him to delay his next project, Dixie Village in Oceanside, by several months. Grading is now scheduled to start in April, with sales beginning in June.

“There was a lot of inventory on the market, and that caused prices to soften,” Hall said. “We have enough lots to build on right now, so we're holding them back.”

Tony Pauker, who heads Olson Co.'s San Diego division, said his sales staff detects a slight change in mood among visitors to the company's projects.

“Traffic isn't up terribly in terms of gross traffic, but of those, the true buyers are actively looking in the market,” Pauker said.

To adjust to the slower pace of sales, Olson plans no new openings this year, Pauker said.

DataQuick reported that San Diego's home sales in January totaled 2,772, 4.3 percent below year-ago levels.

The January sales pace marked the 31st straight month of year-over-year declines, but it was the smallest drop since August 2005 and sharply contrasted with the 18.1 percent year-over-year decline registered in December.

The figures were derived from a revised methodology adopted by DataQuick that includes about 10 percent more transactions than previously considered. The way regional median prices are calculated also was altered slightly.

On a month-over-month basis, January had 27.5 percent fewer sales than December, but it was the smallest January pullback from December sales levels in five years. January almost always sees fewer sales than December because so many builders and consumers want to close escrow for tax reasons before the end of the year.

By other measurements, the housing market is not necessarily recovering rapidly from the 2006 downturn. The number of active listings this week on the Sandicor multiple listing service stood at about 16,700, higher than 16,300 last month and 14,200 a year ago, but lower than the cycle's peak of nearly 23,000 in August. The average time it took to sell a resale house last month was 81 days, compared with 69 days a year ago.

Even if slower than a year ago, San Diego's sales pace was much healthier than in other Southern California counties, DataQuick reported. There were 18,128 sales in Southern California last month, down 17.2 percent from January 2006. Riverside County was off 34.2 percent, followed by San Bernardino County, down 28.5 percent, and Orange County, down 16.3 percent. Los Angeles was off 6.9 percent.

As for the resale market, David Cabot, president of the San Diego Association of Realtors and a top executive with Prudential California Realty, said agents in his company and around the county were more optimistic about the coming year.

“I believe the bottom has been hit and should level out and should be going up a little bit,” Cabot said. “I don't know if that is accurate; we'll have to wait until June to see.”

It wasn't just real estate agents who were seeing an end to the downturn. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke before Congress yesterday about the “drag from housing” diminishing, while his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, told a Canadian audience that the “worst is behind us.”

Downturn in housing sends Accredited's revenue south

The below article describes the secondary effects the slowing housing market has on lenders. If you need to sell your home or may be losing your home to foreclosure, you need to be careful if you are considering refinancing your equity to get cash and take care of bills and other debts. In many cases, it is better to sell the home and get a portion of the equity and no longer have to worry about the house, then it is to refinance and still have to worry about making house payments.

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. If you would like to understand more of your options on how best to sell your home, sign up for my free e-course. It offers excellent advice on how to pick the best realtor, sell your house as a FSBO, or how best to work with an investor to sell your house. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

By Mike Freeman
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

February 15, 2007

San Diego's Accredited Home Lenders posted a hefty fourth-quarter loss yesterday as the housing downturn continued to take a toll on lenders who specialize in mortgages for borrowers with blemished credit.

Accredited, the nation's 11th-largest subprime lender, lost $37.8 million for the quarter, or $1.49 per share. That compared with a $43.2 million profit a year earlier.

Revenue dropped 60 percent for the quarter to $59 million as the company boosted credit standards for borrowers and consequently lost business to competitors.

For the year, the company reported net income of $57.7 million, or $2.48 a share, down from $155 million, or $7.37 a share, in 2005.

This reversal of fortune is not limited to Accredited. The entire subprime industry has been trampled as more borrowers default on their loans and investors who buy mortgages become wary of purchasing subprime loans.

Last year, at least three subprime lenders collapsed into bankruptcy reorganization. Others have slashed their work forces. Last week, European banking giant HSBC, a big player in the U.S. subprime market, warned that it needs to set aside nearly $10.6 billion to cover loans that it expects won't be repaid. New Century Financial of Irvine, the nation's second-largest subprime lender, also warned investors that its loan portfolio was losing value as more borrowers missed payments.

Accredited has responded to the industry downturn by tightening standards for borrowers and boosting reserves for bad loans. Investors who purchase these loans in the secondary market require originators to buy them back if borrowers default.

“We have been making adjustments to the products we offer as well as processes and underwriting discipline,” said Joseph Lydon, Accredited's president and chief operating officer, in a conference call with analysts. “We recognize the market we're in, and we believe credit quality has to be the No. 1 priority.”

The question for the housing industry is whether the troubles in subprime lending will spill over into more conventional mortgages.

If they do, lenders could tighten credit standards for borrowers – requiring larger down payments, better credit scores or more income to qualify for loans.

And that could hurt not only first-time buyers but also people who recently purchased homes using hybrid adjustable rate mortgages with the idea of refinancing.

Hybrid ARMS offer a low teaser interest rate for a certain time – usually two or five years. Then the loans reset into full-fledged adjustable mortgages. The result often is a significant jump in monthly payments for borrowers.

Nationwide, between $1.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion in hybrid adjustable mortgages are scheduled to reset this year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

With little or no price appreciation in the past year, it may prove difficult for these borrowers to refinance out of their hybrid loans if lenders boost credit standards.

For now, however, the problems in the mortgage business have been limited to the riskiest borrowers in the subprime industry, according to analysts.

“I don't foresee it spreading throughout the mortgage sector or the consumer credit sector as a whole,” said Robert Napoli, an analyst with Piper Jaffray who follows Accredited.

During the housing boom, scores of lenders entered the niche business of making loans to borrowers with tarnished credit. The increased competition for loans led to easy credit.

“There are only so many people in that market, said Lou Galuppo, director of residential real estate at the University of San Diego's Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate. “The only way to enlarge the market is to drop the (credit) score.”

Today, more borrowers are missing payments on their loans or going into foreclosure. Defaults in California reached their highest levels in eight years during the fourth quarter, according to the DataQuick Information Services research firm. Lenders sent out notices of missed payments to 37,273 of the state's homeowners, a 145 percent increase from a year earlier.

It is unclear just how many of these homeowners are subprime borrowers. But the nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending in Washington, D.C., issued a study in January that one in five subprime loans made in the past two years will end in foreclosure.

Richard Eckert of Roth Capital Partners of Newport Beach said Accredited's management has understood that the loose credit standards would not last. So while it relented and made loans to compete and keep its brokers from jumping to other lenders, the company is perhaps better prepared to deal with the current slump than other firms, he said.

Lydon, Accredited's president, said the company is hoping to see market improvement in the second half of the year as more companies abandon the subprime business.

“I just don't think there's a whole lot of room for anyone in the business to continue to book bad loans,” he said. “The buyers of the loans are putting them back fairly quickly” if they default.

Realtors Fired Unexpectedly..

The below article came from the North County Times and is yet another indication of the declining housing market in San Diego. I wonder what happen to all of the listings the real estate office had? I would hate to have been one of those unfortunate home owners!

If you would like to receive an instant offer on your house, go to www.SDHomeSaver.com or email me directly at SDHomeSaver@gmail.com. Remember, I don't list homes, I buy them. I work hard to understand your unique situation and create an offer that meets your needs, and solves your situation. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing from you.

Hanson Realty shut down

By: - North County Times

ESCONDIDO ---- At least 40 real-estate agents and employees at Hanson Realty, the city's oldest major residential and commercial real-estate company, were let go without warning today, local real-estate professionals said.

They action was taken by McMillin Realty, a division of the Corky McMillin Companies based in San Diego, that purchased Hanson in 2001, from owner Paul Van Elderen.

Dallas Woodring, a veteran broker at Hanson, said that employees were stunned this morning at a staff meeting when told by McMillin officials that they were to be released, that the office locks would be changed immediately, the furniture would be moved out today and the phones shut off.

"They just stabbed us in the heart," Woodring said.

Woodring said that the abrupt move was not the result of the downturn in the real-estate market, but rather a long-festering difference of corporate culture between Hanson and McMillin.

McMillin blamed the closure on the declining housing market.

Hanson was planning to celebrate its 50th anniversary this summer.