Daily Archives: August 11, 2015

Foreclosure Rates, Inventory Continue to Drop: CoreLogic | South Salem Real Estate

Foreclosure inventory and completed foreclosures declined drastically during June, real estate analytics firm CoreLogic found in its monthly survey.

Foreclosure inventory declined 28.9% on a year-over-year basis in June to 472,000 homes. Completed foreclosures also declined year-over-year, down 14.8% to 43,000. Likewise, the number of homes in “serious delinquency,” which the firm defined as 90 days or more past due on mortgage payments, declined 23.3%.

“The foreclosure rate for the U.S. has dropped to its lowest level since 2007, supported by a continuing decline in loans made before 2009, gains in employment and higher housing prices,” said CoreLogic chief economist Frank Nothaft in a release.

“The decline has not been uniform geographically, as the foreclosure rate varies across metropolitan areas,” he said, adding that Tampa, Fla., and Nassau and Suffolk counties in New York have seen increased foreclosure rates.

“Serious delinquency is at the lowest level in seven and a half years reflecting the benefits of slow but steady improvements in the economy and rising home prices,” said CoreLogic president and chief executive Anand Nallathambi in the release. “We are also seeing the positive impact of more stringent underwriting criteria for loans originated since 2009 which has helped to lower the national seriously delinquent rate.”

Las Vegas housing prices dip | Katonah Real Estate

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Las Vegas housing resale prices dipped in July but remained higher than they were a year ago, while sales volume continued to climb, according to a new report.

The median sales price of single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada last month was $218,000, down 0.9 percent from June but up 9 percent from July 2014, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors.

Buyers picked up 3,180 single-family homes last month, up 4 percent from June and 20.4 percent from July 2014.

The number of ignored listings, however, also rose. There were 7,636 single-family homes on the market without offers by the end of July, up 2.7 percent from June and 5 percent from a year ago, the GLVAR reported.

The trade association reports data from its listing service, which largely comprises previously owned homes.

In the report, GLVAR President Keith Lynam said he likes to compare the housing market to a marriage: “It’s a good thing when it’s stable.”

“For the most part, that’s what we’ve seen so far this year,” he said.

Prices are rising at a much slower pace than in recent years. After the economy tanked, investors gobbled up cheap homes to turn into rentals and pushed up housing values at one of the fastest rates nationally, raising fears of another bubble. However, the housing marketcooled considerably last year as investors, faced with higher prices, backed out.

Baltimore housing prices stagnate | Bedford Hills Realtor

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The four-bedroom, 2.5-bath home on Cromwell Bridge Road in Towson listed in June for $324,900. And lingered.

June Piper-Brandon, a real estate agent with Century 21 New Millennium, and the seller, David Walcher, recently reduced the price by about $25,000. Even so, no one showed up at an open house this weekend.

“We keep dropping the price and hoping,” Piper-Brandon said.

The good news and the bad news in Baltimore’s real estate market is the same for both buyers and sellers: Prices aren’t going up.

Nationwide home prices recovered to pre-housing-crash levels in June, rising 6.5 percent year-over-year after months of steady gains, according to the most recent existing home sales data from the National Association of Realtors.

But the median cost of a home in the Baltimore metro area increased just 1.5 percent last month from July 2014, to $259,900, according to a report released Monday by RealEstate Business Intelligence. And so far this year, the median price has fallen about 1.6 percent and remains about 10 percent off the 2007 peak.

The affordability may be fueling demand. More homes sold in Baltimore City and the five surrounding counties last month than in any July since 2005, continuing an eight-month streak of year-over-year, double-digit gains. The 3,623 deals were 23 percent more than a year ago. The number of pending deals also rose nearly 16 percent.

But the disconnect between local and national prices coupled with the increased demand may be causing pricing confusion in the Baltimore market.

“I don’t know too many markets in the country that look like Baltimore,” said John Heithaus, the self-identified “chief evangelist” for RealEstate Business Intelligence, the affiliate of the region’s multiple listing service that produces the monthly housing analysis. “Clearly, yes, for the entire [mid-Atlantic] region, [prices in] the Baltimore metro is certainly lagging, but what we want to see is increases in sales.”

Piper-Brandon said some homeowners have gotten encouraged to sell as more emerge from being underwater. But many prospective buyers are still backing away and opting to rent.

“We’re certainly seeing people going back to work, but they’re not making as much money as they used to make,” she said.

After dropping the price on his home, Walcher, 48, said his family is in no rush — they just found a bigger home with a pool they liked more. They bought the property from a bank after a foreclosure, so there’s some wiggle room.

“I think this may be an opportunity for somebody to take advantage of the situation we’re in and get a good deal that might not be available at other times,” said Walcher, an insurance agent. “If it doesn’t sell, OK, I had planned to live here for 20 years anyway.”

Danielle Hale, the National Association of Realtors director of housing statistics, said price increases nationally reflect pressure created by relatively low inventories and rising demand. However, she said, demand remains lower than expected, given population growth, which some observers chalk up to slowly rising incomes, more renters and fewer people creating new households, among other factors.

Those dynamics are part of the story in Maryland, where job creation and income growth have lagged behind the rest of the country in recent months. The region’s stagnant prices also reflect a continued churn of distressed properties, which drag down prices while feeding supply.

Foreclosures and short sales — with a median price of $118,000 — increased 43.5 percent year-over-year in July, to 673, or 18.5 percent of all transactions.

Many of the distressed properties date to delinquencies that started in the recession, and are just now appearing as the market adjusts to regulatory changes. While the situation is improving, Maryland continues to have one of the three worst delinquent markets in the country, according to a recent RealtyTrac report.

“It’s that lingering overhang,” said Frank Nothaft, a Washington-based senior vice president and chief economist for CoreLogic. “The serious delinquency rate has come down a great deal in the Baltimore market. … It’s still really high.”
The delinquent market continues to weigh especially on Baltimore City, where the median sales price was $135,000, the same as in July 2014. Of the 700 home sales in the city, about 200 — more than 28 percent — were short sales or foreclosures, similar to last year’s share, according to RBI.

But the city in July also saw a 17.1 percent increase in closed sales and 11.4 percent increase in pending sales.

“The city seems to have weathered the potential storm of the civil unrest,” said T. Ross Mackesey, president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. “We still have a huge distressed-property problem.”

John Kaburopulos, an agent with Keller Williams Flagship of Maryland, listed a recently rehabbed two-bedroom rowhouse on Lehigh Street in Greektown for $165,000 at the end of May, but recently dropped the price to $150,000 to try to attract more interest.

Farm real estate values decrease slightly | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced Nebraska’s 2015 farm real estate value and cash rent for cropland has decreased by 2 percent.

Allan Vyhnalek, educator at the Platte County Extension Office, said based on the changing prices of corn and soybeans, the decline in real estate value is “absolutely expected.”

In February 2015, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln published a report on farm real estate that gave specific numbers for regions within the state.

The east region, which includes Platte and Colfax counties, saw an overall decrease of 3 percent. Dryland cropland decreased by 9 percent and other types of cropland (pivoted, gravity irrigated, etc) decreased by 3 percent. However, the values of grazing land increased, tillable by 16 percent, non-tillable by 20 percent and hayland by 24 percent.

Due to the 2005 ethanol mandate, Vyhnalek said crop prices jumped to $5 to $7 a bushel for corn and $11 to $15 a bushel for soybeans. When grain prices rose, so did the cost of production and real estate. According to the 2015 UNL real estate report, over the past five years the east region’s real estate values increased by 89 percent.

Statewide, values increased by 116 percent.

Prices for corn are now around $3.41 a bushel with soybeans at $8.85 a bushel, lower than previous years.

Thomas Dobbe, regional vice president of Farm Credit Services of America, said the increased cost of equipment, fertilizer, seeds, etc., could have “acted as a damper” on the real estate market, but it’s too early to tell if this decrease is a fluke or the start of a trend.

“It may be an indication that the market will not go any higher,” Dobbe said, “or a sign that the market is taking a breather. We won’t know if it’s done going up or if it will continue to go up.”

Dobbe and Vyhnalek said the value of an individual plot of land depends more on the quality of its soil and topography than overall trends. Property taxes will continue to increase, and the value decrease is unlikely to affect rental prices.

South Florida home flippers still on the hunt as prices rise | Bedford Corners Realtor

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Even as local real-estate prices soar, home flipping is still a big business in South Florida.

While it’s getting harder to find a good deal, flippers say they’re riding the wave of rising home values to steady profits— and they don’t expect a crash that will leave them underwater.

Nearly 1,400 single-family homes were flipped in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties during the second quarter of 2015, according to a report from RealtyTrac released Thursday.

That’s about 10 percent of overall home sales, the highest rate among major metro areas in the U.S. Around the nation, only 4.5 percent of sales were flips. RealtyTrac defines a flipped home as one that sells twice in a single year.

“South Florida is a hot spot,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.

Blomquist said that the region’s high rate of foreclosuresand strong record of price growth make flipping a good bet in South Florida.

Even so, local home flipping is slowing somewhat, with the number of flips down about six percent year-over-year. “The prices are starting to hit a level that is out of the sweet spot for a lot of flippers,” Blomquist said. “We’re seeing the number of flips come down and that to me is a sign that we’re in a sustainable housing economy and not a bubble.”

Flips accounted for nearly 14 percent of all sales in South Florida during the headiest days of the bubble, RealtyTrac found.

Although flipping is down slightly, the profits are still there. The average flipped home in South Florida cost $220,000 to buy but sold for $302,000 about six months later, RealtyTrac found. That’s a healthy gain even after repairs and closing costs are taken out

Home prices rose in 93% of metro areas during the second quarter | Bedford Real Estate

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The median existing single-family home price rose in 93% of 176 metropolitan areas during the second quarter, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. That’s up from 85% of metro areas in the first quarter. The price rose 8.2% compared to the second-quarter of 2014 to $229,400. The five most expensive housing markets in the second quarter were the San Jose, Calif., metro area, where the median existing single-family price was $980,000; San Francisco, $841,600; Anaheim-Santa Ana, Calif., $685,700; Honolulu, $698,600; and San Diego, $547,800. The five lowest-cost metro areas in the second quarter were Cumberland, Md., where the median single-family home price was $82,400; Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio, $85,000; Rockford, Ill., $94,700; Decatur, Ill., $96,000; and Elmira, N.Y., $98,300.

Real Estate Myths That Plague Buyers and Sellers | Chappaqua Real Estate

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Buying or selling a house is not something most of us do every day. You may do it once a decade, or even once in a lifetime. Despite the fact that most of us enter the world of real estate only rarely, we all think we know how it works, based on the experiences of friends and family members, stories we have heard and things we have read.

But for everything we believe we know about the industry, there are a number of myths that circulate about how real estate actually works. Buying into those can hurt your chances of buying or selling the right home at the right price.

In recent years, technology has radically changed the way homes are bought and sold, and yet some aspects of real estate are the same as they were when your parents bought their last home. If a long time has passed since your last transaction, you may be surprised at how much has changed.

The Internet has made much more information available to consumers, but not all the information is equal, or even accurate.

“A lot of people, for some reason, they believe what they read on the Internet,” says Gea Elika, principal broker of Elika Real Estate in New York and a regional director of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. “Read everything you see on the Internet with a grain of salt.”

The danger with believing everything you hear or read is real estate myths can cost you money when it’s time to buy or sell a home. Here are nine of the most common ones that can trip up buyers and sellers:

Set your home price higher than what you expect to get. Listing your home at too high a price may actually net you a lower price. That’s because shoppers and their real estate agents often don’t even look at homes that are priced above market value. It’s true you can always lower the price if the house doesn’t garner any offers in the first few weeks. But that comes with its own set of problems. “Buyers are highly suspicious of houses that have sat on the market for more than three weeks,” says Nela Richardson, chief economist for the brokerage Redfin. In areas such as San Francisco where multiple offers are common, sellers will actually price their homes for less than they expect to get, in the hopes of getting multiple offers above asking price. However, if you do this in a declining market, the danger is that all the offers will come in at the asking price or lower.

You can get a better deal as a buyer if you don’t use a real estate agent. “That’s a completely false premise,” Elika says. If the house is listed with a real estate agent, the total sales commission is built into the price. If the buyers don’t have an agent, the seller’s agent will receive the entire commission.

You can save money selling your home yourself. Some people do successfully sell homes on their own, but they need the skills to get the home listed online, market the home to prospective buyers, negotiate the contract and then deal with any issues that arise during the inspection or loan application phases. It’s not impossible to sell a home on your own, but you’ll find that buyers expect a substantial discount when you do, so what you save on a real estate commission may end up meaning a lower price. It’s not impossible to sell your home on your own for the same price you’d get with an agent, but it’s not easy.

The market will only go up. In recent years, homebuyers and sellers have experienced a time of increasing home values, then a sharp decline during the economic downturn and now another period of increasing values. “They think that the market only goes up,” Elika says. “They don’t think about when a correction will come.” The recent recession should have reminded everyone that real estate prices can indeed fall, and fall a lot. Economist Robert Shiller created an inflation-adjusted index for home prices dating to 1890 and found that home prices have fallen a number of times over the years, including in the early 1990s, the early 1980s and the mid-1970s.

You should renovate your kitchen and bathroom before you sell. If your kitchen and baths work, a major remodel could backfire. Prospective buyers may not share your taste, but they don’t want to redo something that has just been renovated. “You’re better off adjusting your price accordingly,” says Kevin Brown Jr., president of Praedium Real Estate Services in Pittsburgh and a regional director of the NAEBA. “Most buyers want to put their own spin on things.”

Buying Bedford Real Estate

Robert Paul Realtor buying Bedford real estate

Daily Archives: August 11, 2015

Foreclosure Rates, Inventory Continue to Drop: CoreLogic | South Salem Real Estate

Las Vegas housing prices dip | Katonah Real Estate

Baltimore housing prices stagnate | Bedford Hills Realtor

Farm real estate values decrease slightly | Pound Ridge Real Estate

South Florida home flippers still on the hunt as prices rise | Bedford Corners Realtor

Home prices rose in 93% of metro areas during the second quarter | Bedford Real Estate

Real Estate Myths That Plague Buyers and Sellers | Chappaqua Real Estate