Tag Archives: Cross river NY Luxury Homes for Sale

As Inventories Shrink, So Do Seller Concessions | Cross River NY Real Estate

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With inventories down and prices up, sellers are ending the costly incentives they have been forced to offer buyers during the six-year long buyers’ market.  Concession-free transactions make deal-making simply on both sides of the table.

There’s no better gauge of the onset of a seller’s market than the demise of concessions that were considered essential to attract buyer interest just a few months ago.  The National Association of Realtors’ December Realtor Confidence Outlook reported that the market has steadily moved towards a seller’s market with buyers more willing to bear closing costs, in some cases paying for half or more of the closing cost.  Tight inventories of homes for sale are making markets increasingly competitive.

NAR reports that last year 60 percent of all sellers offered incentives to attract buyers.  The most popular was a free home warranty policy, which costs about $500, offered by 22 percent of sellers, but 17 percent upped the ante by paying a portion of buyers’ closing costs and 7 percent contributed to remodeling or repairs.

Concessions linger where inventories are still adequate and sales slow, but in tight markets like Washington DC the times when buyers can expect concessions are already over.

“Buyers are discovering, to their dismay, that homes they wanted to see or possibly buy have already been snatched up before they even get a chance to see or make an offer on the property. This area’s unprecedented low inventory levels are slowly driving up home prices and making sellers reluctant to cede little if any concessions to buyers. Realtors are warning (or should in some cases) buyers to be prepared to act that day if they are interested in a property,” reporters a local broker.

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Fed Officials Saw Start of Subprime Crisis in August 2007 | Cross River Real Estate

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Federal Reserve officials in August 2007 saw the beginnings of the crisis in subprime mortgages and concluded that the U.S. economy would be able to withstand it, transcripts from their 2007 meetings show.

“Well-capitalized banks and opportunistic investors will come in and fill the gap, restoring credit flows to nonfinancial businesses and to the vast majority of households that can service their debts,” Donald Kohn, then vice chairman of the board, said in Aug. 2007 according to transcripts of the Federal Open Market Committee meetings released today in Washington.

The transcripts show the committee’s slow grasp on the enormity of contagion that was to spread throughout global markets as a result of billions of dollars in low-quality housing assets that had been securitized into bonds and sold to banks and investors worldwide.

“The odds are that the market will stabilize,” Bernanke told the committee in Aug. 2007, according to the transcripts from that year. “This restrictive effect could come in various magnitudes. It could be moderate, or it could be more severe, and we are just going to have to monitor how it adjusts over time.”

Concern about capital losses from toxic mortgage securities froze interbank lending markets and prompted runs against major investment banks. The Fed and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) rescued Bear Stearns Cos. in March 2008, and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed into bankruptcy that September. Both Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley converted to bank holding companies to access backup funding from the discount window.

Rate Unchanged

U.S. central bankers kept their benchmark lending rate unchanged at their regularly scheduled meeting on Aug. 7, 2007, saying in their statement that “the predominant policy concern remains the risk that inflation will fail to moderate as expected.”

Fed officials did have a legitimate inflation worry in 2007. Revised data shows the personal consumption expenditures price index rising at a 3.5 percent rate for the year ending that December. The unemployment rate hit a low of 4.4 percent in March and May. Still, financial markets were beginning to unravel.

via bloomberg.com

“Sand States” are Still the Wettest | Cross River Real Estate

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Some 10.7 million homeowners, or 22 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage, were in negative equity at the end of the third quarter of 2012, down by 100,000 from the second quarter. But the “sand states”, the states that dominated foreclosures for years, still account for a lion’s share of underwater borrowers.

With the addition of 100,000 borrowers, the total number of borrowers who moved from negative equity to positive equity by September reached 1.4 million year-to-date. An additional 2.3 million borrowers had less than 5 percent equity in their home, referred to as near-negative equity, at the end of the third quarter, according to a new analysis from CoreLogic.

Together, negative equity and near-negative equity mortgages accounted for 26.8 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide in the third quarter of 2012, down from 27 percent at the end of the second quarter in 2012. Nationally, negative equity decreased from $689 billion at the end of the second quarter in 2012 to $658 billion at the end of the third quarter, a decrease of $31 billion. This decrease was driven in large part by an improvement in house price levels. This dollar amount represents the total value of all homes currently underwater nationally.

Rising home values also pushed the equity Americans have in their homes higher than at it was at the onset of the housing crash five years ago, according to the December HUD Scorecard. Homeowners’ equity reached $7714.3 billion, a 5.2 percent increase over the second quarter and an 18 percent increase over the level of $6526.9 in the third quarter of 20011. In 2007, homeowners’ equity reached $1.02 trillion, but fell to $7050.9 billion in 2008, according to the quarterly Federal Reserve’s Flow of Funds report.

Negative equity has been a major cause of foreclosures and short sales. Even three years after the height of the foreclosure flood in 2010, a handful of states that were reasonable then for the majority of the foreclosures are the same states that today are home to an overabundance of underwater homes.

Nevada had the highest percentage of mortgaged properties in negative equity at 56.9 percent, followed by Florida (42.1 percent), Arizona (38.6 percent), Georgia (35.6 percent) and Michigan (32 percent). These top five states combined account for 34 percent of the total amount of negative equity in the U.S.

Of the total $658 billion in aggregate negative equity, first liens without home equity loans accounted for $323 billion aggregate negative equity, while first liens with home equity loans accounted for $334 billion.

Third quarter highlights included:

  • 6.6 million upside-down borrowers hold first liens without home equity loans. The average mortgage balance for this group of borrowers is $214,000. The average underwater amount is $49,000.
  • 4.1 million upside-down borrowers possess both first and second liens. The average mortgage balance for this group of borrowers is $298,000.The average underwater amount is $82,000.
  • Approximately 41 percent of borrowers with first liens without home equity loans had loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of 80 percent or higher and approximately 61 percent of borrowers with first liens and home equity loans had combined LTVs of 80 percent or higher.
  • At the end of the third quarter 2012, 17.1 million borrowers possessed qualifying LTVs between 80 and 125 percent for the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) under the original requirements first introduced in March 2009. The lifting of the 125 percent LTV cap via HARP 2.0 opens the door to another 4.6 million borrowers.
via realestateeconomywatch.com

New social search engine focuses on real estate | Cross River Real Estate

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When searching on social media networks, it’s often difficult to decipher what’s legitimate and what isn’t. However, a new search engine is entering the scene, one that is powered entirely by the Facebook API.

Curaytor organized tens of thousand of conversations from various groups on Facebook about topics such as technology products worth investing in, business tips and companies that should be avoided at all costs. The engine also allows web users with an interest in real estate to find conversations related to housing.

The latest search engine also hand picks its favorite discussions, which will be labeled as “staff picks.” Curaytor also uses a simple tagging system to make groups of conversations on the same topic easily findable.

Curaytor will begin by focusing on the real estate industry, but plans to eventually expand to other topics.

To get a better understanding of the search engine, watch the video below.

via housingwire.com