“There’s no need to inflate the value of the home because home prices are rising,” said CoreLogic’s chief economist Mark Fleming.

But new federal regulations forcing lenders to prove that borrowers can repay their loans has some borrowers shifting the focus of their fraud to their personal balance sheets. Lenders are now scouring financial records, unlike during the recent housing boom, in order to make sure they are complying with new rules, so fraudsters are following suit, jacking up the numbers.

(Read more: Forget easing prices, new homes are up, up, up)

That could be more dangerous to the banks, because jacking up a home price only hurts if the home price falls, but inflating income means the borrowers may not be able to pay the loan no matter what.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101062232

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2080 Gough, one of the properties
in the 95% occupied portfolio.

(Mark Your Calendars: RealShare Apartments 2011, October 20 in Los Angeles).

SAN FRANCISCO-AREA Property Partners has acquired a 422-unit multifamily portfolio here for $59.6 million. “Plans for the properties include AREA’s proven strategy of revitalization, rehabilitation and repositioning of this formerly distressed portfolio,” says AREA partner James H. Simmons. 

Simmons points out that the strategy will be accomplished by “implementing building-wide improvement programs that involve working with the City of San Francisco to cure violations and improve the overall physical condition of the assets. It is our primary objective that the residents continue to receive the highest level of service throughout the process.”

The 20-building, 95% occupied portfolio is located predominantly in the Downtown and Tenderloin neighborhoods of San Francisco. A few properties are located in the neighborhoods of Pacific Heights, Russian Hill and Potrero Hill.

The rent-regulated buildings, totaling 278,395 square feet, were built between 1911 and 1965, with the majority constructed in the early 1900’s. The portfolio’s condition is commensurate with rent-regulated properties of similar vintage throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area, according to a prepared release.

The acquisition presents a unique opportunity to capitalize on improving fundamentals, as San Francisco is one of the top performing multifamily markets in the US, according to the release. The acquisition follows AREA’s long term buy-and-hold strategy of creating high-quality affordable workforce housing alternatives for residents of highly supply constrained markets such as the greater Bay Area, Simmons says. 

“We are committed to providing safe and reasonably-priced work force housing for local families,” Simmons says.  “This acquisition fits squarely within our strategy of investing in and creating high-quality living alternatives in major metropolitan cities with significant demand for quality affordable housing.” 

AREA currently owns or controls over 18,000 units under its domestic emerging markets strategy in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Washington DC and Newark, New Jersey.  The brokers on the transaction were Eastdil Secured and Marcus Millichap.

Marcus Millichap did not respond to GlobeSt.com queries by deadline on the seller’s identity. AREA Property Partners tells GlobeSt.com that it cannot disclose the name of the seller due to a confidentially agreement. AREA could not confirm further GlobeSt.com regarding specifics about the properties by deadline.

Categories:

West,
Multifamily,
Acquisitions/Dispositions,
San Francisco

Natalie Dolce Natalie Dolce, editor of the West Coast region for GlobeSt.com and Real Estate Forum, is responsible for coverage of news and information pertaining to that vital real estate region. Prior to moving out to the Southern California office, Natalie was Northeast bureau chief, covering New York City for GlobeSt.com. Dolce?s background includes a stint at InStyle Magazine, and as managing editor with New York Press, an alternative weekly New York City paper. In her career, she has also covered a variety of beats Arthur Frommer?s Budget Travel magazine, FashionLedge.com, Co-Ed magazine, and has also freelanced for a number of publications including MSNBC.com and Museums New York magazine. Contact Natalie Dolce.

Article source: http://www.globest.com/news/1997_1997/sanfrancisco/313855-1.html

Sometimes you hear one thing and don’t think much of it, and then you hear another thing that makes the first thing seem much more important.

This morning the Mortgage Bankers Association put out a report from two UCLA researchers (MBA funded the report) saying that the homeownership rate may have bottomed but could still fall another one to two percentage points.

Then JP Morgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, [ JPM 40.35  +0.73 (+1.84%) ] suggested that his bank could get out of the mortgage ownership business in the future. “Owning consumer assets may be something we don’t want to do,” Dimon said on the earnings conference call. “It may be we’ll originate, securitize, service, but not own” mortgages. He added that they don’t have to make a decision on the mortgage business until rules are set, which could be eight years.

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43756305?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

Foreclosure activity decreased in April for the seventh straight month, bringing total foreclosure activity to a 40-month low, according to a new report from RealtyTrac. This is not to say that default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions aren’t running well above the norms, with one in every 593 US households receiving a foreclosure filing in April. The numbers are actually quite deceptive.

“This slowdown continues to be largely the result of massive delays in processing foreclosures, rather than the result of a housing recovery that is lifting people out of foreclosure,” notes RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio in a statement.

There are currently 3.7 million loans that are 90 days or more delinquent, according to RealtyTrac’s Rick Sharga. Nationwide, completed foreclosures (REOs) took an average of 400 days from initial default notice to REO in the first quarter of this year. That’s up from 340 days a year ago and more than double the 151 days in 2007. At the current rate, it would take three to four years to move those loans through the foreclosure process. In some states, the picture is far worse.

In New York and New Jersey, it takes more than 900 days to get through the foreclosure process from start to finish, in Florida 619 days, and in California 330 days, according to RealtyTrac.

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42994346?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

It’s hard to know what to believe in the housing market today, with so many conflicting data reports, some analysts claiming the market has hit bottom, and others seeing further doom.

The home builders themselves can’t seem to find anything to be optimistic about; their sentiment index has been stuck at the same lackluster level for four straight months.

It’s not as hard, however, to believe in housing. By that I mean that as the economy improves, and consumers start to feel better about their personal finances, they are starting to think about investing in their homes again.

Too much price uncertainty in the market turns them off trading up, so they are looking around their current home instead.

Yesterday I met with an architect in suburban DC who says that in just the past two months the phone has been ringing off the hook.

“It’s ringing with people saying, you know I want the $200,000 addition, which is the family room/kitchen or I can afford my screen porch now,” says Michael Bruckwick of Katinas Bruckwick Architecture.

Just last year, clients told Bruckwick a very different story.

“Their biggest concerns was simply where is the world going ? The world that we live in. Is it to continue going down?”

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/41627543?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS