St. Louis Mortgage

St. Louis Mortgage and Home Loans: Housing Recovery May Happen In 2013

liberty — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:45:36 +0000

St. Louis Mortgage Broker, Principal Loan Reduction and Home Loan News: Housing Market Recovery May Be In 2013

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The U.S. housing market may continue to fall under the weight of foreclosures and not rebound until 2013, even as the economy builds momentum and mortgage rates remain at record lows, according to a survey of 109 economists released this week by Zillow Inc. When values do rise, the gains probably won’t match those seen in the years prior to the bursting of the bubble in 2006.

Prices for resold homes are down 31 percent since the July 2006 peak, based on the S&P/Case-Shiller Index that tracks 20 major metropolitan areas. Values have increased 3.1 percent since bottoming out in March, though more than a quarter of homeowners with a mortgage are “underwater,” or owe more than their property is worth.

Prices may drop an additional 7 percent, according to Scott Simon, head of the mortgage- and asset-backed securities teams at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California. Homes are more affordable now than at any time on record, setting the stage for a turnaround, he said in a telephone interview.

U.S. home values probably had their smallest decrease in four years in 2011, according to Zillow, whose survey found that prices may find their floor in late 2012 or early 2013 and will begin rising by 3 percent a year through 2016. That appreciation is modest compared with the last decade, when double-digit annual increases were common, the Seattle-based provider of real estate data said. “Negative equity, unemployment and low consumer confidence remain the key factors delaying a true recovery,” Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Home prices are predicted to fall 1 percent in 2012 and rise 2 percent in 2013, said Frank Nothaft, chief economist for mortgage-finance company Freddie Mac. “A full-fledged recovery in the housing sector will likely elude the US in 2012, but new construction and home sales are expected to be greater than in 2011,” Nothaft wrote.

Beating 2011 shouldn’t be hard. Sales of new single-family homes this year are on pace to fall to 301,000 from 323,000 in 2010, which was the lowest in Commerce Department data going back to 1963. While housing starts hit a 19-month high in November, led by a surge in multifamily construction, the annual rate of 685,000 for the month compares with a January 2006 high of 2.27 million.

Existing home sales rose to an annualized 4.42 million in November, the highest in 10 months after figures were revised, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday. The data showed that annual sales were an average of 14 percent lower than previously reported since 2007, magnifying the impact of the downturn. “Even before the revisions things were bad,” Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief economist, said at a news conference yesterday. “Now they are even worse.”

As lenders tightened credit standards, 33 percent of Realtors reported sales being canceled last month because of problems such as mortgage denials or low appraisals, the Chicago-based group said yesterday. That’s up from 9 percent a year earlier. Americans are taking advantage of low interest rates to refinance rather than buy, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Refinancing accounted for 80.7 percent of home-loan applications December 2011, the most in 13 months, the Washington-based group reported.

Foreclosure filings, which slowed in 2011 as banks and loan servicers faced investigations over the use of improper documentation to seize homes from delinquent borrowers, are expected to be little changed in 2012, according to RealtyTrac Inc. A total of 224,394 properties received default, auction or repossession notices in November, down 14 percent from a year earlier, the Irvine, California-based real estate data service in December 2011.

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St. Louis Mortgage and Home Loans: Short Sales Increase

liberty — Sun, 06 May 2012 22:34:09 +0000

St. Louis Home Loan and Mortgage Broker News: Short Sales Increase In Florida and California

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Short sales made up 73 percent of the pending sales last month in the core Orlando market, up from 64 percent a year ago, according to a report released Wednesday by the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. Sales of these “underwater” houses constituted about a third of the 1,950 November closings reported by Realtors in the core market, which consists mainly of Orange and Seminole counties. Sales of “ordinary” existing homes constituted about 40 percent of the market, while bank-owned properties made up about a quarter of the month’s sales.

Short-sale prices have also risen during the past year, from $99,000 in November 2010 to $106,000 last month. But the median price of “normal” resales has declined 8 percent during the same 12 months.

Over the past year, short sales and foreclosures, key indicators of the health of the housing market, have dramatically increased in California too. Originally, foreclosures and short sales were occurring in the Inland Empire, Lancaster and northern Los Angeles County, but now they’re creeping south. From January 1st to December 1st, 2010, 59 short sales were recorded in Sherman Oaks. This year during the same period, 92 homes sold in short sales with another 36 pending sales and 22 actively listed, for a total of 150 properties, a 154 percent increase.

Meanwhile, foreclosures sold during the same months last year totaled 48, compared to 51 foreclosure sales closed, four pending and another nine on the market, for a total of 64 homes, a 33 percent increase. About a third of the short sales and the majority of foreclosures occurred in pricey neighborhoods north of Ventura Boulevard. Although home prices in the southern San Fernando Valley, including Sherman Oaks, slid down about 26 percent to 35 percent during the economic downturn, they were still less than the 40 percent to 60 percent price declines recorded in other locales.

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St. Louis Mortgage and Home Loans: Modifications Outpace Short Sales

liberty — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:10:58 +0000

St. Louis Mortgage Broker and Home Mortgage News: Loan Modifications Outpace Short Sales

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A homeowner is more likely to get a principal loan reduction than a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program launched in April 2010 to give borrowers who are eligible for HAMP a chance at a short sale or DIL. Participating servicers completed about 20,700 of these deals as of October, with less than 600 of them deeds-in-lieu, according to Treasury Department data.

The principal reduction alternative, or PRA, began in October 2010 and only for mortgages not guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. But in six fewer months, servicers started 33,376 modifications by writing down principal. The effect of the reduction is eye catching. The median loan-to-value ratio on modifications that went through principal reduction was 158 percent. After the workout was complete, the borrower held an LTV of 115 percent, meaning he or she owed 15 percent more on the mortgage than the home was worth rather than being 58 percent underwater.

The average amount reduced is more than $65,000 or 31% of the unpaid principal balance. Through PRA, the Treasury pays investors for every dollar of principal forgiven on a sliding scale depending on how far underwater the borrower is. HAMP enters its final year next month, and it has been criticized at nearly every turn since it launched in March 2009.

It will not reach the 3 million to 4 million originally predicted. After redefaults are factored in, roughly 800,000 homeowners will avoid foreclosure thanks to HAMP, according to the Congressional Oversight Panel. The Treasury did not release estimates for HAFA or the PRA programs when these launched. But to have principal reductions, which has been long thought of as the spark for anyone considering strategic default, outpace short sales highlights how convoluted and fraudulent the process remains.

Especially when banks experience a loss rate of 60 percent on short sales compared to 70 percent on the lengthy foreclosure and REO process, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Bren Sheriff, a co-owner of AMAXX Title Services, a boutique title firm for inner city Chicago, said the problem is that many buyers in short sales can’t take the wait. “It has taken so long for some of the short sales to get completed, investors have lost their end buyers thus no deal,” she said.

It isn’t just the public short sale program struggling but private ones as well. The top 10 servicers gave short sales or DILs to roughly 35,500 borrowers canceled out of HAMP trials through September. The nearly 92,000 foreclosure starts on this group of borrowers was nearly triple that amount.

In January, the Treasury attempted to relax certain HAFA guidelines such as no longer requiring a servicer to verify a borrower’s financial information or to determine if the monthly mortgage payment exceeds 31 percent of his or her income. At the time, HAFA had totaled roughly 660 short sales and has since added 20,000.

Christopher Hanson, who works on short sales at the Hanson Law Firm, said because of the various qualifiers borrowers had to reach, HAFA was doomed from the beginning. “The loss sharing agreement (under the principal reduction program) criteria are more realistic than the borrower eligibility under HAFA at least that’s what I’d suspect,” Hanson said.

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St. Louis Mortgage and Home Loans: Two Housing Markets, Really

liberty — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:37:15 +0000

St. Louis Mortgage Broker and Home Mortgage News: Olick Reports On Two Housing Markets?

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As we head toward the end of the year, for some reason the drumbeat to claim that housing has bottomed is growing louder. There were a few positive indicators in September, rising housing starts and rising home sales, that gave some analysts fodder for optimism, but the readings on prices are far less rosy, and alas far more complicated. Two reports at the end of last year show home prices are falling again after seeing some gains in the Spring and Summer.

Lender Processing Services says they’re down 3.7 percent annually in September, erasing the gains of the Spring, and they say all of the 13,500 zip codes it tracks are in the negative. Meanwhile CoreLogic says prices fell 3.9 percent in October, but when you take out foreclosures and short sales (the latter when the home is sold for less than the value of the mortgage), home prices are down just 0.5 percent annually. The vaunted S&P/Case-Shiller home price index was down 3.9 percent in September, and that’s a three month running average including distressed and non-distressed property sales.

So why are analysts now predicting a house price recovery?Goldman Sachs put out a report late last week predicting that S&P/Case-Shiller would drop 2.5 percent further and then bottom,probably in the summer of 2012. This when the S&P/Case-Shillerfolks themselves predict a 3.5 percent drop and a bottom later in 2012.

The Goldman theory is based on some kind of ‘equilibrium’ price model for each market. They also claim that homes no longer appear ‘expensive.’ when you look at price/rent ratios, and that historical models suggest that income and population, as always,will drive improved demand. Then this week analysts at Barclays Capital honed in on the difference in price drops between distressed and non-distressed properties.

They claim the non-distressed market is stabilizing, so that must mean that a foreclosure or short sale is, ‘increasingly being seen as a poor substitute for a non-distressed home,’ according to analyst Stephen Kim. He claims the disparity will in fact widen over time.

So are we just supposed to ignore the distressed market? What about the fact that in some cities more than half of the properties selling are distressed? And what about the fact that there are more distressed properties coming to market, as the banks ramp up the long-stalled foreclosure process? And how about appraisers using distressed properties as comps to non-distressed properties?

I realize many of you think I’m too bearish on housing’s recovery, but trust me, nobody’s more sick of reporting the same lousy numbers than I am. The problem is that while sales are improving slightly, and consumer sentiment may be settling a bit, the mess left to clean up from the past is still weighing heavily on the future. The economy may be improving slightly, buyers may be considering getting back in, but we are barely half way through the overhang of distress, and any change in the economy could set us back even further.

I am in no way claiming that housing is in for a quadruple dip nor that we are going to see more big losses. Frankly I think we’re going to be flat in housing for a long time, which is not a very interesting story to tell from a reporter’s perspective. While there may be two types of properties (distressed and non-distressed), there is just one housing market, and you cannot negate one to inflate or deflate the other.

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St. Louis Mortgage and Home Loans: Why Cancellations Are Higher

liberty — Tue, 01 May 2012 13:33:44 +0000

St Louis Mortgage and Real Estate News -

St. Louis Home Loan, Homes for Sale Saint Louis and Mortgage Broker News: Olick Report Asks Why Are Cancellations Even Higher?

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For the past several months, Realtors across the nation have been reporting an ever-increasing number of cancelled existing home sale contracts. The latest Realtors Confidence Index now puts the cancellation rate at 20 percent, way up from the historical norm of around four to six percent.

‘On-time settlements were reported as declining from 65 percent to 47 percent,’ according to the Realtors. It’s not why you think, or at least not why I thought. Inability to get a mortgage was reported by just 9 percent of respondents to the Realtor survey. Bigger issues were failed inspections, buyers with cold feet and adverse economic conditions. I’m sure appraisals figured in there as well. It begs the question then, if these are just delays or true cancellations?

Anecdotally, I was doing a report on a residential street in Northwest DC last week, an area that is still holding its own and didn’t lose much in the housing crash. I was standing in front of a ‘For Sale’ sign, when the Realtor from the sign came out of the house. She wanted to know what we were saying about the neighborhood, concerned of course that there were any signs of cracking.

I assured her there were not, but asked about the house she was selling. The Realtor told me it was actually under contract, after about 35 days on the market. I asked why there was no ‘under contract’ sign, which used to be so commonplace before the ‘sold’ sign goes up. She said they hadn’t had the inspection yet, although the house looked, at least from the outside, to be in very good condition. When I asked if she worried about that, her answer was, ‘You never know these days.’ Apparently the jitters are widespread, even in one of the nation’s most secure housing markets.

With so much of the current housing market comprised of distressed property sales, and with the Realtors unable to capture so much of that share in their data, uncertainty is certainly understandable if not mandated. I read a report today citing Barclay’s analyst Stephen Kim of Barclays Capital, who is upgrading builders and raising price targets on the premise that we will see a housing ‘rebound’ in 2012.

‘In the absence of a government homebuyer incentive, prices for non-distressed home sales have stabilized for almost a year. In our opinion, this is the most important trend in the housing industry right now,’ notes Kim. ‘We are amazed at how little attention it has been getting from the media and the Street. This stability on the part of non-distressed prices has occurred despite a very high share of distressed activity and continued declines in overall prices.’

I’m not sure where he’s getting that stabilization. CoreLogic reported home prices in September, excluding distressed sales, fell 1.1 percent in September. Their chief economist Mark Fleming cites a supply and demand imbalance and adds, ‘Distressed sales remain a significant share of homes that do sell and are driving home prices overall.’

We obviously have to be very careful reading today’s housing market tea leaves. There are so many different indicators and so many different entities reporting these indicators, that it’s often hard to find out what’s really going on. That’s why I always go back to the Realtors on the front lines. They are telling us that this market, distressed or not, is skittish and undependable. A 20 percent cancellation rate for existing sales is shocking and does not suggest a rebound on the horizon. At best, I’m looking for simple stabilization.

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St. Louis Mortgage and Home Loans: Delinquencies Down, Foreclosures Up

liberty — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:10:19 +0000

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St. Louis Mortgage Broker, Loan and Customer Financing News: Delinquencies Are Down While Foreclosure Inventory Sets Record High

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The October Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) shows mortgage delinquencies continue their decline, now nearly 30 percent off their January 2010 peak. Meanwhile, foreclosure inventories are on the rise, reaching an all-time high at the end of October of 4.29 percent of all active mortgages.

The average days delinquent for loans in foreclosure extended as well, setting a new record of 631 days since last payment, while the average days delinquent for loans 90 or more days past due but not yet in foreclosure decreased for the second consecutive month.

Judicial vs. non-judicial foreclosure processes remain a significant factor in the reduction of foreclosure pipelines from state to state, with non-judicial foreclosure inventory percentages less than half that of judicial states.

This is largely a result of the fact that foreclosure sale rates in non-judicial states have been proceeding at four to five times that of judicial. Non-judicial foreclosure states made up the entirety of the top 10 states with the largest year-over-year decline in non-current loans percentages.

The October data also showed that mortgage originations are on the rise, reaching levels not seen since mid-2010. Mortgage prepayment rates have also spiked, as much of the new origination is related to borrower refinancing; loans originated in 2009 and later are the primary drivers of the increase.

While FHA origination activity is down, GSE and FHA originations still account for the vast majority of all new loans – nearly nine out of every 10 new mortgages.

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St Louis Homes, Lending, and Customer Financing: Foreclosure Crisis Not Over

liberty — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:10:03 +0000

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St. Louis Mortgage Brokers and Homes For Sale Saint Louis: Foreclosure Crisis Only Halfway Over

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A brand new analysis suggests that the tide of home foreclosures isn’t going to recede anytime soon. The report from the Center for Responsible Lending, “Lost Ground, 2011,” finds that at least 2.8 million mortgages loaned from 2004 through 2008, or about 6 percent, have ended in foreclosure and that nearly 4 million more home loans which comes to approximately 8.2 percent from the same period remain at serious risk of default.

In other words, “The nation is not even halfway through the foreclosure crisis,” says the report, which analyzed 27.3 million mortgages made over the five years. Across the country, low and moderate-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with high concentrations of minorities have been hit especially hard, according to this report.

The report also noted that certain types of loans have much higher rates of completed foreclosures and serious delinquencies. They include loans originated by brokers; hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages, option ARMs, loans with prepayment penalties and loans with high interest rates (subprime or bad credit market).

African Americans and Latinos were more likely to receive a high-cost mortgage with risky features, regardless of their credit. For example, among borrowers with good credit (a FICO score of over 660), African-Americans and Latinos received a high-interest-rate loan more than three times as often as white borrowers.

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In addition, if you need commercial financing or a merchant account company that will save you money, Floyd Tapia and his lending and new business resources team can focus on bringing you innovative private lending solutions and financial services to meet all types of financing needs. Let us turn your challenges into closings (or from being underwater equity wise) and help you get a St Louis commercial lending, mortgage or financing loan.

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St Louis Homes: Tips On How To Get Home Improvement Projects Right

liberty — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:40:29 +0000

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St. Louis Homes, Houses, Homes in St. Louis for Sales and Home Mortgage News: The Type of Home Improvement You Want

By: Rina Woodward

What could be a better 25th wedding anniversary present to your partner than a home makeover? Perhaps you and your spouse lived in the same abode for the last quarter of a century. Perhaps all your kids have been born there. The abode sheltered you well from the elements; it is an extension of your life.

After all these years that your house has stood, you may perhaps notice that its charm is already faded. You may have already noticed that your roof leaks each time it rains and that the walls are cracked in various places. Thus, it might be very necessary to call in the professional home renovators. So call in the professional renovators. To motivate yourself further for this home improvement, you can set that the renovation will be done in time for your wedding anniversary. Then it would surely be a magnificent present.

Professional abode renovation firms can help you accomplish the task of improving your abode’s appearance in time for the date of your wedding anniversary. Before calling in the contractors, however, there are some things worth considering in your abode improvement efforts. The following are some of the things you must have an answer to prior to embarking on that renovation.

The primary thing to consider is the type of home improvement you want. Is it perhaps the installation of a modern bathroom fixture? Perhaps you are planning to put in the most modern bathroom fixture? Maybe you are planning to remodel the bedroom as an accomplishment of a long-standing promise to your partner. If your partner can cook and prefers spending time in the kitchen to whip up delicious dishes for you to enjoy, then maybe the priority of your abode renovation should begin in the kitchen. Maybe you want an extra room in the home, so installing one is a priority in order to accommodate your growing family.

The budget is the next thing to consider. How much is your budget limit for this type of renovation? As a rule of thumb, the cost of a home improvement should not exceed thirty percent of the market value of your house. Third, consider the contractor. It is important to choose the contractors who are known for their honest and fair service. After properly addressing these concerns, you can begin the actual renovation.

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St Louis Mortgage Refinancing and Customer Financing: Prices and Ownership Down

liberty — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:13:01 +0000

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St. Louis Mortgage Refinancing and In-House Financing News: Olick Reports Prices and Ownership Down

Home prices across the nation are now right back where they were at the beginning of 2003. All that was gained is largely now lost, and the effect on home ownership could continue for decades. ‘Consumer attitudes have gotten a lot more negative about long-term commitment,’ said Standard and Poors’ David Blitzer, after reporting home prices through September had fallen a deeper-than-expected 3.9 percent compared to the third quarter of 2010.

‘They dropped to new lows. This takes them below the point we saw in 2009, where briefly we all thought this thing was about to turn around.’ And that’s the problem. Every time we think things are turning around in the housing market, we get hit with some new problem, like last year’s so-called ‘robo-signing’ foreclosure paperwork scandal, which managed to stall the cleansing of distress in the market for over a year. Now that foreclosures are ramping up again, prices are coming down again.

All this could push home ownership down to levels not seen at least since before the Census began tracking this data in 1963. Home ownership soared to 70 percent in 2005, but it could fall to 62 percent by 2015, according to the number crunchers at John Burns Real Estate Consulting. They suggest that the effect of foreclosures drops home ownership 5.6 percent, and cyclical trends, like poor consumer confidence, tightening mortgage credit and the weak economy drop it 3 percent.

Positive demographic trends would only offset that by 0.7 percent. ‘People’s memories take a while to fade,’ says John Burns.’It [also] takes a while to rebuild your balance sheet after a recession, and that’s what many people need to do before they buy homes again. Homeowners need to build back up to have a down payment for their next house, and renters will need to save more than before to become homeowners.’

Burns believes home ownership will return by 2025 to around 67 percent, as previously foreclosed borrowers return to the housing market, cyclical trends improve and positive demographics start to carry more weight. One thing Burns doesn’t mention, though, is negative equity, or borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. ‘It’s not just negative equity that we often focus on, but it’s also insufficient equity.

All the people who have those primary loans that are somewhere between 80 and 100 percent LTV (loan-to-value) also basically don’t have don’t have access to the credit markets,’ notes Mark Flemming of CoreLogic, which today reported negative equity at 22.1 percent of all homes with a mortgage at the end of the third quarter. As home prices refuse to stabilize, and in fact continue to fall, negative equity will only increase.

The vast majority of the ten plus million people who are underwater are still paying their mortgages, but they are deeply underwater, 30 percent and higher. That will take a long time to correct, and will stagnate much of the market for years to come, as these owners are unable to sell. Which leaves us to ask, is a 62 percent home ownership rate so bad? It’s still far higher than in most European countries. Why is home ownership so intrinsic to the ‘American Dream?’ I’ll leave that to you faithful readers to discuss.

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St Louis Commercial Loans and Customer Financing: Commercial Market Up

liberty — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:09:46 +0000

St Louis Mortgage and Real Estate News -

St. Louis Commercial Financing and In-House Financing News: NAR Reports Will There Be Growth in Commercial Markets Next Year?

Commercial real estate markets have been relatively flat this year, but improving fundamentals mean a more positive trend is expected in 2012, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). NAR’s latest COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE OUTLOOK offers projections for four major commercial sectors and analyzes quarterly data in the office, industrial, retail and multifamily markets.

Historic data for metro areas were provided by REIS, Inc., a source of commercial real estate performance information.

- Office Markets

Vacancy rates in the office sector are expected to fall from 16.7 percent in the current quarter to 16.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. The markets with the lowest office vacancy rates presently are Washington, D.C., with a vacancy rate of 9.3 percent; New York City, at 10.3 percent; and New Orleans, 12.8 percent. After rising 1.4 percent in 2011, office rents are forecast to increase another 1.7 percent next year. Net absorption of office space in the U.S., which includes the leasing of new space coming on the market as well as space in existing properties, is projected to be 20.2 million square feet this year and 31.7 million in 2012.

- Industrial Markets

Industrial vacancy rates are projected to decline from 12.3 percent in the fourth quarter of this year to 11.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. The areas with the lowest industrial vacancy rates currently are Los Angeles, with a vacancy rate of 5.2 percent; Orange County, Calif., 5.7 percent; and Miami at 8.4 percent. Annual industrial rent should decline 0.5 percent this year before rising 1.8 percent in 2012. Net absorption of industrial space nationally should be 62.0 million square feet this year and 41.2 million in 2012.

- Retail Markets

Retail vacancy rates are likely to decline from 12.6 percent in the current quarter to 11.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. Presently, markets with the lowest retail vacancy rates include San Francisco, 3.7 percent; Long Island, N.Y., and Northern New Jersey, each at 5.7 percent; and San Jose, Calif., at 6.0 percent. Average retail rent is seen to decline 0.2 percent this year, and then rise 0.7 percent in 2012. Net absorption of retail space is seen at 1.2 million square feet this year and 13.5 million in 2012.

- Multifamily Markets

The apartment rental market – multifamily housing – is expected to see vacancy rates drop from 5.0 percent in the fourth quarter to 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012; multifamily vacancy rates below 5 percent generally are considered a landlord’s market with demand justifying higher rents. Areas with the lowest multifamily vacancy rates currently are Minneapolis, 2.4 percent; New York City, 2.7 percent; and Portland, Ore., at 2.8 percent.

Average apartment rent was projected to rise 2.5 percent in 2011 and another 3.5 percent this year. Multifamily net absorption is likely to be 238,400 units this year and 126,600 in 2012.

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