09.14.2009 | 8:55 am | Uncategorized
OK, there was a conversation on another platform that started-off about the increasing mortgage delinquencies as reported by the MBA. Well the conversation transformed a little and started heading down the political road and it inspired me to respond. So, I thought I would share my response with you.
Well…this conversation has gotten deep. Well…deep… LOL! OK, just trying to lighten the mood a little! But obviously the conversation got deep enough for me to come out from under my rock. I tend to try to stay away from conversations when they start to head down the political or religious road. At the same time, I am always as positive as my mind and soul can be. So…Socialism…is a strong political term when speaking of a free-enterprise/Capitalist society. Now I don’t deny that the more the government gets involved with business, the more of a Socialist “drift” we appear to have, but I believe that the government involvement is with good intention. The outcome is yet to be seen, but I do believe the government is acting with good intentions. Maybe I’m a Pollyanna.
What the banks, hedge funds, private investors, etc. do with their money, portfolios, non-performing assets is going to be based on business decisions. These entities are going to try to make the best business decision for themselves. These decisions occur many, many levels above us and by the time ripple that resulted from that decision reaches us, it’s very diluted and it’s difficult to tell what the decision was based on. i.e., “Why would the bank let a property foreclose instead of approving my short-sale?” Maybe it was part of a portfolio they needed to carry over into the next quarter… Who knows, there could be a hundred different reasons.
What it boils down to is that everyone is affected by the same economy. So on our level, we play the hand that is dealt us. Unless we are going to move up the ladder in the decision-making process, then it’s difficult to affect change. If we aren’t, then maybe we should worry less about the why and focus more on the task. Not to say we should bury our heads in the sand, but unless/until we are in a position to affect change, maybe our efforts are best suited towards individual achievement. How we react to what is dealt us is very individual. Individual achievement is what this country is built on, the opportunity for each person as an individual to take their surroundings and their circumstances and use them to the best of their abilities.
So for me, I’m taking what the economy has produced, REOs and I’ve built a team that is very good at selling properties for the banks. The big, slow-moving ship called the economy is very slow to turn and I’m just one of the hundreds of REO agents down in the engine room, keeping the engine running.
I’m not saying that anyone is wrong or right and I enjoy reading about everyone’s thoughts and opinions, something just inspired me to share mine this time.
Well, that was it!
So if you’re going to FiveStar, you CAN be a Piece of the Solution and have fun doing it. The REO Masters Network is sponsoring the Tsunami Party and Charity Event. Proceeds from this event are going to the Foreclosure Angel Foundation. Follow the hyperlinks and check it out!
Comments (6)
07.28.2009 | 11:54 pm | Uncategorized
Again, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but I’ve been up to my ears in “busy”!!
So, last year at this time we had almost 30,000 properties on the market. As of Monday (7/27/09), we had 26,061 properties on the market (including 13,518 contingents and pendings - I include those because they have not sold yet, but that’s another blog entirely). Of those, 8103 were REO (which equates to about 31%) and 11,767 were short-sales (which equates to about 45%). Of 4189 sales in the past 30 days, 3076 were REO and 409 were short-sales.
The majority of the properties on the market are still “distressed”, but the larger percentage are short-sales now, versus REO and prices seem to be creeping upwards. Does this mean the market has turned?
There are a lot more things to consider when making a statement like “the market is turning”. The banks do a lot of “shuffling” and have been considering a lot of things that the government has been offering. Their decisions are complex and take time. What I BELIEVE it boils down to is whether the banks need liquid capital now or a write-off later. If they need or want to accumulate liquid capital for some reason, they’ll facilitate more short-sales. If the need a write-off for the next quarter, they’ll foreclose. The write-off the banks get from the foreclosure process are by far larger than the write-offs they get from short-sales. It just depends on where the banks need the money and when. The banks have always made the rules, we’re just now realizing that we have to play by them.
Of course, that’s just what I think. 
Comments (1)
12.1.2007 | 11:40 pm | News, Real Estate Market, Uncategorized
The REOs are still pulling strong numbers over 17% of the sales over the last 30 days have been REO according to the MLS. But…I think that number is much higher, The only way to discern that a property is an REO is by looking for REPO in the property description. I’ll tell you that just looking through the MLS (a lot) doing my BPOs that probably 30-60% of the time REPO is not indicated in the MLS. Now, I don’t believe it’s “required” to put REPO in the property description if it’s an REO, but it sure would help me get the numbers right! I would definitely say that REO sales are more like 20% and maybe even up to 25% of the total sales occuring now.
Comments (3)
11.15.2007 | 9:49 pm | News, Real Estate Market, Uncategorized
Nevada ranks number one again in the percentage of increase in foreclosures. Foreclosures for the third quarter of the calendar year were up 33.9% from the previous quarter and 212% over the previous year. I say we are NOT going to come out of this by Spring. Anybody care to wager? Just kidding. Nevada is leading the pack with 1 in every 61 homes in foreclosure. But, don’t think this is an isolated trend. There were only three (that’s 3) states that did not report an increase in forclosures for the same quarters. Those are Oklahoma, Louisiana and Utah. Hmmm…Utah’s not so bad, and it’s not far away…NAH, there’s no place like Vegas baby!!!
Comments (2)
11.14.2007 | 12:09 am | News, Real Estate Market, Uncategorized
Here are your Las Vegas numbers for this week. There seem to be a little disagreement on the way I calculate our months of inventory versus they way others do. But, regardless of how you calculate it, the window is open! IT’S TIME TO BUY, BUY, BUY, IN VEGAS AGAIN!!! Prices are almost back to “pre-boom” numbers! I received an email from a new home sales associate that I know. They are selling a 1612sf home for $185,000.00!!! It almost sounds crazy, but I think the buying window will be open for the nex 12-16 months. After that, there will still be good deals, but buyers will be behind the power curve again. Just my speculation.
Weekly MLS Market Snapshot
As of COB: Friday, November 9, 2007 @ 9:00 p.m.
Category Number Totals Vacant Percentages
SFR Inventory 21,978 10,140 46.14%
Condo Townhome Inventory 5,666 3,152 55.63%
Total 27,644 13,292 48.08%
Total Contingent & Pending 2,276 1,655 72.72%
Total 29,920 14,947 49.96%
Short Sales (EA/ER) 3,998 1,668 41.72%
Repos (estimated EA/ER) 1,969 1,889 N/A
Total Distressed 5,967 21.59%
Total Sold in last 30 Days 1,208 809 66.97%
Sold short sales 70 (46) 5.79%
Sold REOs 188 15.56%
Months of inventory at current rate of consumption (29,920 / 1208) 24.768
Lowell Caro, Jr
Your Real Estate Advisor
Comments (10)
10.29.2007 | 8:11 pm | Uncategorized
My team meets every monday morning at 8:00 for our “Focus Group” meeting. We do this to share ideas, set goals and get our week off to a productive start. Among the many topics we discussed this morning was the crystal ball prediction. My friend and one of my fellow teammates is Darrell. Darrell and I always seem to approach things from different points of view, but almost always come to the same conclusion. On this particular topic, I agreed with Larry Murphy and he seemed to agree with the opinion of the other gentleman named in the LVRJ article, Steve Bottfeld. I see the Las Vegas market staying slow with maybe a little upward bump in the summer of ‘08, but full upward trend towards recovery starting in the the first half of ‘09. Darrell feels that our recovery will occur this coming spring. Las Vegas has been touted as the 2nd best city for job growth in the nation. There is a lot of building going on right now and the employment upswing usually occurs BEFORE projects are completed. In Darrell’s opinion, a lot of people are speculating that the market is going to recover, so buying will pick-up and people that have their homes listed will see that the market is bouncing back and withdraw their listings so they can once again reap the benefits of a strong market. With listings being withdrawn and a strong influx of new buyers, Darrell feels that the number of homes on the market will be reduced by half and our consumption will be up enough to create positive appreciation come summer of ‘08. Now, I don’t agree with Darrell, but I respect his insight and understanding of the Las Vegas economy. So, what we do agree on is the fact that now is the time we need to position ourselves in front of the coming trend. If it happens in spring ‘08 we’ll be ready. If it doesn’t happen until spring ‘09, we’ll be that much more ready. Question is, will you be ready?
Comments (1)
10.29.2007 | 8:05 pm | Uncategorized
Well, here are your Las Vegas Market numbers for today, as of October 27, 2007 @ 2:30 pm…
SFR, condos and townhomes on the market - 28,169: Number vacant - 13,445: Number pending or contingent - 2225: Number sold in last 30 days - 1152: Number marked as short sales - 3852: Number marked as REO - 1872: Total number of properties marked as distressed - 5724
This means there is currently a 47.7% vacancy rate. Here’s something that’s interesting, 72% of resales under contract right now were vacant when they went into contract. The number of resales that have closed in the past 30 days is equal to 4% of what is on the market today. You may have wondered why I wrote “Number marked as” on the REOs and short sales. Well, those selections are optional right now. As I have taken buyers around and searched the MLS, I have noticed that only about 75% of the REOs are actually marked as ‘REPO’ in the property description. Going solely by the numbers indicated in the MLS, approximately 20% of our resale inventory are distressed properties. I believe our actual number to be 23 - 25%.
Hope this is useful info for someone out there other than me!
Comments (1)
10.27.2007 | 12:43 pm | News, Real Estate Market
Wow, in my last post, on Oct 26, I gave a prediction on the housing market. Well, you may or may not believe this, but the following article from our local paper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, talks about what Larry Murphy, President of SalesTraq, said at his “Crystal Ball” seminar on Thursda, Oct 26 (just so happens). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend this seminar AND I didn’t talk to anybody who went. But, I was right on the money with my prediction…according to Larry. Steve Bottfeld, an analyst with research firm Marketing Solutions, who wassaid he sees signs that the housing downturn has evened out. I would have to disagree with Steve though. Here’s the article as it was printed in the LVRJ…
Locals who have tired of real estate’s roller-coaster ride will have to hang on a little longer: Southern Nevada is at least several months away from stabilized home prices and sales, two analysts said at a housing-industry outlook Thursday.
Homeowners can expect a sustained slide in property values at least into early 2008, and perhaps into 2009, the 500 or so attendees at SalesTraq’s Crystal Ball seminar learned.
Larry Murphy, president of real estate research firm SalesTraq, said the current market is a reversal of the heady days of early 2004, when buyers lined up by the hundreds outside planned subdivisions to snap up the first few homes in each release.
Sellers who put existing homes on the market had numerous offers within hours, including bids well beyond their asking price.
Today, it’s much easier to buy a home, and much tougher to sell one.
Several builders, including Lennar Corp., Pulte Homes, Astoria Homes and Beazer Homes, have slashed prices on standing inventory.
Builders have offered October price breaks of as much as 20 percent, with up to $250,000 in markdowns on a single home.
New-home sales in September skidded 52 percent, while prices dipped 3.3 percent. Builders have a standing inventory of 2,500 to 3,000 homes.
Nor has the market’s downturn spared existing homes.
September’s median price sagged 8.9 percent when compared with September 2006, and sales tumbled 49.9 percent in the same period. Yet, inventory has swamped the market, jumping tenfold since spring 2004 to September’s supply of 27,417 properties. That inventory means local real estate values will have depreciated 5 percent to 10 percent by the end of 2007, Murphy predicted.
So, when will the market come back to life?
Give it 12 months to 18 months, Murphy said.
Based on September’s inventories and sales rates, Southern Nevada has about a 19-month supply of existing homes and a three-month supply of new homes.
The market will have hit bottom when supplies stop rising and prices stop declining, Murphy said.
Before that happens, expect the median price of a resale home to drop from $263,075 in September to around $240,000 or $250,000.
On the other side of that nadir, though, is another bounce in housing sales and prices, Murphy predicted, as a $33 billion building binge in the city’s resort sector comes online and generates thousands of new jobs.
Murphy said he expects the next market surge to start in the second half of 2009 or the first half of 2010, after the $1.8 billion Palazzo, the $2.2 billion Wynn Encore and the $7.4 billion CityCenter have opened.
“Trust me, there is another real estate boom coming,” Murphy said.
Another local real estate watcher said he expects the Las Vegas housing market to bottom out much sooner than Murphy anticipates, with a new market peak to come on the other side of today’s rough times.
Steve Bottfeld, an analyst with research firm Marketing Solutions, said he sees signs that the housing downturn has evened out. The market could leave the doldrums as soon as the first or second quarter of 2008, Bottfeld said.
Foreclosures fell 8 percent nationwide in September after reaching a 32-month high in August, according to data from California consultant RealtyTrac.
In Las Vegas, the foreclosure rate dropped from one for every 165 households, or 6,197 foreclosures, in August to one for every 185 households, or 5,504 filings, in September.
Countrywide Home Loans’ announcement this week that it would put $16 billion toward refinancing adjustable-rate mortgages scheduled to reset to higher interest rates will present a “strong hold against foreclosures,” Bottfeld said.
Plus, the inventory of existing homes, though historically high at more than 27,000 listings, is stable and hasn’t increased significantly this fall, Bottfeld said.
He noted that today’s softening numbers of closings and prices represent a snapshot of the market as it was 60 days to 120 days ago. September’s data includes sales made before the Federal Reserve added $5 billion in cash to the economy and cut by half a percent the rate banks use to determine the mortgage interest they’ll charge.
Statistics from coming months and quarters should reflect the resulting boost in available credit.
What’s more, an unstable stock market could benefit housing, because uncertainty in financial markets has traditionally pushed investors to trade in paper wealth for the more-tangible asset of real estate, Bottfeld said.
A limited local supply of privately owned land will also push prices upward in the long term, as will construction of megaresorts along the Strip. The first of those new resorts, the Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s Palazzo, is scheduled to open in December.
“A boom in hotel rooms will precede a boom in real estate,” Bottfeld said. “We’re treading on the bottom of the market now.”
Other crystal ball observations:
• Nevada is tied with Hawaii at No. 2 for the share of its residents’ income that goes toward housing. Nevada homeowners spend an average of 46 percent of their wages on housing payments. California is No. 1, with an average of 52 percent of every paycheck going toward mortgages, Bottfeld said.
• The housing slump is generating lean times for sales associates.
The average sales rate per new-home subdivision in 2006 was five houses per month; today, that average is about two houses a month. With a standard two sales people per subdivision sharing the two sales and earning a commission of 1 percent, that means some agents can no longer afford the homes they’re selling, Murphy said.
• Affordable pricing hasn’t inoculated builders and sellers from a down market. Sales volume was down 53 percent in the third quarter among homes priced below $200,000, Murphy said.
By contrast, the number of sales among homes priced at more than $1 million was up 368 percent in the quarter, and some Realtors who specialize in luxury sales are having banner years, he said.
FROM A SELLER’S MARKET TO A BUYER’S MARKET
Both new and existing homes are worth less than they were a year ago thanks to a combination of increasing supplies and fewer buyers. Here are September’s inventory and sales numbers:
| NEW HOMES |
| |
Active
subdivisions |
Closings |
Median price |
| 2007 |
566 |
1,328 |
$312,639 |
| 2006 |
531 |
2,765 |
323,232 |
| EXISTING HOMES |
| |
MLS
Inventory |
Closings |
Median price |
| 2007 |
27,417 |
1,466 |
$263,075 |
| 2006 |
21,409 |
2,926 |
$288,750 |
| Source: SalesTraq |
Comments (5)
10.26.2007 | 7:00 pm | News, Real Estate Market, Uncategorized
Hi Susan, I’m in Las Vegas and my team and I do a number of short sales. I’m going to throw my own personal opinion out there. I would say that in Vegas, most 100% financed homes do NOT have PMI. I believe the majority of the 100% financed homes have 80/20 loans to avoid PMI. Out here, when a home is foreclosed on the second is wiped out completely. With the decline of housing prices out here in Las Vegas (from the peak, when a lot of people pulled the remaining equity out of their homes), taking that 20% off the top doesn’t even touch the amount prices have depreciated. So, when we go to the bank, we end up asking the bank to come down off the 80% portion of the loan and there usually isn’t PMI. The banks are willing to short sell the property because they don’t want to own the property and add to their portfolio of non-performing loans. The lenders do evaluate properties (by sending REO agents out to do BPOs) to determine if they should add PMI, but I think they are behind the power curve on that…and no, the homeowner doesn’t even know sometimes. But to get down to your question, a resounding YES, a call should be made to the lender to determine if they will accept a short sale. Unfortunately, many lenders won’t even talk to you until you have a complete short sale package, complete with an offer. Your other question, on what “loss” PMI will cover and will not cover is a great question. I will have to do some research to find that answer. I would like to know that myself. Of course their are exceptions to everything, and my answers are general answers and do not apply to EVERY single situation.
Comments (0)
10.25.2007 | 10:53 pm | News, Real Estate Market
Well…I believe that time is going to be the remedy for our housing market. But, if we were in any other city, I think the outlook would be far more dismal. The tremendous growth and popularity of Las Vegas has kept us from have a real housing market “crash”. We have so many building cranes in the sky right now, it’s unbelievable! I believe the current growth will strengthen our market in the next 14 - 18 months. We still have far too much inventory to recover this coming summer (’08). Besides that, I believe the media has scared a lot of the people that are moving to Vegas, so they won’t buy until they realize how good the deals are and that Vegas Will recover. And even on top of that, many people don’t buy a house immediately after they move to a new town. So, the demand for housing will follow a little behind the job growth. Speaking of the job growth, I was sent a link to an article in MSN’s Careers and Jobs section that spurred me to write this particular blog. Forbes.com recently released its annual list of the 200 Best Places for Businesses and Careers, and among those places, Las Vegas was ranked the second in the nation for job growth! This result was based on five-year projections from Economy.com. So, the market is feeling a little sluggish right now, but that is to be expected after such explosive appreciation. Las Vegas is still one of the best bets out there…for real estate, AND jobs. Pun intended…”best bets”…you get it? Nevermind…
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