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Experts say San Francisco approaching housing bubble

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 23:22:49 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) —
Despite rising interest rates, there’s been a frenzy of home buying activity in San Francisco. That has some real estate experts concerned the market could be overheated.

The experts at RealtyTrac told 7 On Your Side that home prices have increased 28 percent in the Bay Area from the time the housing market hit bottom in February 2012. In San Francisco, the prices have risen even more dramatically.

Brian Miller saw first hand how frantic the housing market in San Francisco can be right now.

“I found myself being constantly outbid, putting in offers of 20 percent over asking, getting outbid at 50 percent over asking in cash,” Miller said.

That type of activity didn’t surprise Serena Kokjer Greening of Guarantee Mortgage. She says the small number of homes for sale combined with the improved employment picture is leading to bidding wars.

“You’ll see properties getting six, eight, even 20 offers which, you know, hadn’t happened in four to five years here,” Kokjer Greening said.

All those offers mean rising prices taking us closer to the bubble, the point when homes are considered overpriced.

The Vice President of RealtyTrac Daren Blomquist says we’re still 21 percentage points below the peak of the housing bubble in the Bay Area.

“But then if you focus in on the city, that’s where we’re very close actually to the peak of the housing bubble in San Francisco,” he said.

Blomquist says San Francisco is just 6 percentage points from reaching that bubble stage.

“I think it’s pretty dangerous,” he said.

“Today I received probably my eighth denial of a modification,” San Francisco resident Gale Rosboro said.

Rosboro wrote President Barack Obama and the White House forwarded her case to the Treasury Department to assist her in getting a modification from Wells Fargo. So far, even that hasn’t helped.

“They’ve made no move towards working with me to get a modification,” Rosboro said.

In an email, Wells Fargo told 7 On Your Side, “We have worked with Ms. Rosboro for nearly three years and will continue to try to identify options that are appropriate for her individual financial circumstances. Our foreclosure rate is less than 1 percent.”

Ironically, rising home values could make it even more difficult for struggling homeowners to get modifications.

“I think that people are barely hanging on. There have been a lot of cuts and its been very difficult for families,” Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment spokesperson Grace Martinez said.

Blomquist predicts another round of foreclosures in San Francisco in the coming months.

“Four of the last five months in San Francisco foreclosure starts have increased from the previous month,” he said.

Blomquist advises home buyers to be patient and not feel you have to buy right now.

Miller waited and found something he could afford. “It feels great, I mean I’m very excited, he said.

RealtyTrac says the next wave of foreclosures in San Francisco won’t be an overwhelming flood, but it does expect an uptick.

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Article source: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/7_on_your_side&id=9196447

Foreclosures Fall Even as Judges Ramp Up

Thu, 11 Jul 2013 14:49:56 +0000

U.S. foreclosure activity in June fell to the lowest level since December of 2006, but certain states are seeing a rise in activity, as judges work through tremendous backlogs of delinquent loans. Close to 128,000 properties received some kind of foreclosure filing in June, down 35 percent from a year ago, according to a new report from online foreclosure sales and analytics company RealtyTrac. Newly started foreclosures fell 21 percent month-to-month to the lowest level since the end of 2005.

Bank repossessions, the final stage of the foreclosure process, fell 9 percent month-to-month and were down 35 percent from a year ago. Still the numbers are on pace for nearly a half a million properties to be repossessed in 2013. That’s an improvement, but still well above normal levels.

(Read More: Dire Predictions For Housing Recovery)

The picture is also mixed geographically – Arkansas (up 143 percent), Oklahoma (up 103 percent), Maryland (up 74 percent), Washington (up 71 percent), New Jersey (up 33 percent), and New York (up 21 percent) –as states that require a judge in the foreclosure process as well as those with new laws protecting borrowers, are seeing a spike in repossessions.

“The increases in judicial foreclosure auctions demonstrate that these delayed foreclosure cases are now being moved more quickly through to foreclosure completion,” notes RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist in the report.

(Read More: Map: Tracking the US Real Estate Recovery)

“Given the rising home prices in most of these markets, it is an opportune time for lenders to dispose of these distressed properties, either at the foreclosure auction to a third-party buyer, or by repossessing the property at the auction and subsequently selling it as a bank-owned home.”

Judicial foreclosure auctions were up 34 percent from June of 2012, as Realtors report “brisk” sales of these distressed properties. Investors and regular buyers have been competing for a decreasing supply of properties. Nationwide, inventories of all homes are down dramatically, as a large number of underwater borrowers and borrowers with very little home equity are still unable to sell.

(Read More: Apartments Reap Rewards of Rising Rates)

Florida, Nevada, Illinois, Ohio and Georgia posted the top five state foreclosure rates for the first half of the year, according to RealtyTrac.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100877414

Housing Recovery Depends on Slashing Mortgage Debt

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 04:38:27 +0000

(Read More: Mortgage Deduction Is Popular, but Few Claim It)

“The prospect of being taxed on potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income may motivate more distressed homeowners to forgo a short sale and allow the home to be foreclosed,” said RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist in a release. “Additionally, if the mortgage interest deduction is eliminated due to the fiscal cliff quagmire, it would give many underwater and otherwise distressed homeowners one less reason to hang on to their homes.”

Banks completed 13,351 principal reduction loan modifications in November alone, according to a monthly report from Amherst Securities Group. That’s a 62 percent jump from September. Much of it is thanks to the $25 billion mortgage servicing settlement signed by the nation’s five largest banks early this year over so-called “robo-signing” foreclosure practices.

Banks have already given borrowers $6.3 billion in mortgage principal relief under the settlement, according to a report from its monitor, Joseph A. Smith, released last month. Bank of America recently ramped-up its relief, reporting 30,000 customers were approved or had completed first-lien modifications through September 30 providing $4.75 billion in principal reduction. Borrowers received an average $150,000 slash in loan balances.

(Read More: How ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Could Affect Mortgage Interest Deduction)

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100285754

Property Flippers Are Back as Housing’s New Middle Men

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 07:07:26 +0000

Who can forget the heady days of the housing boom when property flippers would follow condo developers around like hungry wolves, waiting to pounce on new projects before one grain of earth had moved?

Property auctions for single family homes weren’t any different, as novice buyers were scooping up multiple properties only to flip them for a profit in a matter of weeks.

Those days are gone; the price appreciation is gone, and the funding is gone…but apparently the flippers are back. Some of them never left. Close to 100,000 properties were flipped in the first six months of this year, according to RealtyTrac, which defines flipping as a home bought and sold within six months. That is a 25 percent jump from a year ago. But flipping is not what it used to be.

“There is this kind of middle man investor who is doing the flipping,” says RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist, who ran a webinar last month titled, “Why Property Flipping is Flying High in 2012.” Blomquist says the difference for today’s flippers is that they must add value to the home before selling, because price appreciation alone won’t net the profit they seek. That means rehabbing, which can be pricey, depending on the condition of the property. Many of the distressed homes now that flippers seek have been either ransacked by former owners or left vacant and untended for years.

(Read More: How to Play the Housing ‘Boom’)

“You don’t see any of that highly speculative flipping where it’s solely reliant on the home prices going up for the flip to work,” says Blomquist, which is why many flippers are middle men. They flip to other investors in order to get the profit they need. “It’s probably easier to flip to another investor because this person is an experienced buyer and should have their ducks in a row in terms of being able to finance the property, if not pay up front in cash.”

Large-scale, big money investors, like hedge funds, have flooded the single family real estate market, looking for rental properties that will produce good yield. While some have their own teams attending foreclosure auctions and doing the rehabilitation and remodeling, many would rather buy turn-key products, even if the price is slightly higher. The “pure” property flip appears to be less popular, although in some stronger markets it is certainly still happening.

(Read More: Cities With the Most Affordable Homes)

“I have seen a return of flipping, but only at the individual or small investor level. In some cases, these investors are targeting larger, institutional investors as potential buyers,” says Rick Sharga of Carrington Mortgage Holdings, a large fund investing in single family rentals. “I haven’t seen institutional investors doing much flipping (although they will occasionally sell off a few properties from a pool if the homes don’t fit their business model).”

Investors planning a REIT would not be flippers, Sharga notes, as what they need is a large pool of rental homes delivering the cash flow a REIT would require. Most of the larger investors are paying market price (sometimes a little less, sometimes more), which makes profitable flipping difficult.

(Read More: A Risky Lifeline for Seniors Is Costing Some Their Homes)

Until the rental market chills and the housing market shows strong price gains, pure property flipping will not be nearly as lucrative as it once was. On the positive side, continued strength in the single family rental market and the ensuing large investors interest offers smaller investors willing to do the dirty work a large pool of cash-heavy buyers.

Sector Watch: Construction General Building Materials

The Home Depot
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Lowe’s Companies
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The Sherwin-Williams Company
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E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
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Apogee Enterprises
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Questions? Comments? And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/49419503?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

US Real Estate News: California

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:54:42 +0000

California leading US out of housing bust

KHB

California, the state that led the US into the housing “Boom and Bust” with some of the most reckless subprime mortgage lending, is now leading the way out.
A fall in new defaults in California helped push US foreclosure filings to the lowest level in almost 5 yrs, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of home-loan data.

Across the country, 531,576 properties received notices of default, auction or repossession in Q-3, down 13% from a year earlier and the lowest since Y 2007, 1 in every 248 households got a filing, RealyTrac said today.

California, the home of subprime mortgage lending, saw a burst of foreclosures thanks to such industry innovations as “no-doc” loans that required no proof of income.

The state’s recovery is mirrored by US home values that rose 1.2% in July from a year earlier, according to the SP/Case Shiller index of property prices in 20 major cities. It was the 2nd straight 12-month advance and the biggest jump for the real estate gauge since August 2010.
.
The gains are moving in tandem with foreclosure declines as lenders control the flow of bank-owned homes that come to market, crimping inventory and pushing up prices, said Daren Blomquist of Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac.

Initial filings in September fell in 31 states, led by California which dropped to a 69-month low. Defaults dropped 45% from a year earlier, 34% in Arizona, 22% in Michigan and 21% in Georgia, RealtyTrac said.
Home sales in California’s biggest population centers rose in August to the highest level since Y 2006, according to real estate research firm DataQuick.

Median house and condominium prices in 6 Southern California counties rose 11% from a year earlier to $309,000, while values in 9 counties in the San Francisco Bay Area gained 11% to $410,000, the San Diego-based company said.

“Much of the pickup reflects a continuation of trends we have seen for months, like the unleashing of pent-up demand in move-up markets and high levels of cash and investor buying,” DataQuick President John Walsh said in a 13 September statement about the Southern California sales surge.

KB Home (NYSE:KBH) is seeing “dramatic improvement” in California, where strength in the coastal markets, including the Bay Area and Orange County, is spreading inland, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Mezger said on a conference call with analysts last month. The West Coast is KB Home’s largest market.

“It’s simply a different market than it was 6 months ago in the Inland areas as inventories have declined significantly and prices are now rising,” Mr. Mezger said.

The Los Angeles-based homebuilder’s shares fell 1.4% today trimming its gain this year to 118%. That compares with the 75% advance for the 11-member Standard Poor’s 1500 Homebuilding index.

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Knightsbridge Law is a boutique law firm in Thailand. The lawyers of our firm have provided legal advice on a variety of areas of the legal practice, including:

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Mergers and Acquisitions;
Establishing Business in Asia;
Corporate and Commercial consultancy;
Asset Management;
Banking, Finance and Securities;
Listing Companies in Asia;
Global Metals and Mining

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Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr.

Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr. writes and publishes The Red Roadmaster’s Technical Report on the US Major Market Indices, a weekly, highly-regarded financial market letter, read by opinion makers, business leaders and organizations around the world.

Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr has studied the global financial and stock markets since 1984, following a successful business career that included investment banking, and market and business analysis. He is a specialist in equities/commodities, and an accomplished chart reader who advises technicians with regard to Major Indices Resistance/Support Levels.

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Article source: http://www.livetradingnews.com/us-real-estate-news-california-89457.htm

US Real Estate News: California

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:54:41 +0000

California leading US out of housing bust

KHB

California, the state that led the US into the housing “Boom and Bust” with some of the most reckless subprime mortgage lending, is now leading the way out.
A fall in new defaults in California helped push US foreclosure filings to the lowest level in almost 5 yrs, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of home-loan data.

Across the country, 531,576 properties received notices of default, auction or repossession in Q-3, down 13% from a year earlier and the lowest since Y 2007, 1 in every 248 households got a filing, RealyTrac said today.

California, the home of subprime mortgage lending, saw a burst of foreclosures thanks to such industry innovations as “no-doc” loans that required no proof of income.

The state’s recovery is mirrored by US home values that rose 1.2% in July from a year earlier, according to the SP/Case Shiller index of property prices in 20 major cities. It was the 2nd straight 12-month advance and the biggest jump for the real estate gauge since August 2010.
.
The gains are moving in tandem with foreclosure declines as lenders control the flow of bank-owned homes that come to market, crimping inventory and pushing up prices, said Daren Blomquist of Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac.

Initial filings in September fell in 31 states, led by California which dropped to a 69-month low. Defaults dropped 45% from a year earlier, 34% in Arizona, 22% in Michigan and 21% in Georgia, RealtyTrac said.
Home sales in California’s biggest population centers rose in August to the highest level since Y 2006, according to real estate research firm DataQuick.

Median house and condominium prices in 6 Southern California counties rose 11% from a year earlier to $309,000, while values in 9 counties in the San Francisco Bay Area gained 11% to $410,000, the San Diego-based company said.

“Much of the pickup reflects a continuation of trends we have seen for months, like the unleashing of pent-up demand in move-up markets and high levels of cash and investor buying,” DataQuick President John Walsh said in a 13 September statement about the Southern California sales surge.

KB Home (NYSE:KBH) is seeing “dramatic improvement” in California, where strength in the coastal markets, including the Bay Area and Orange County, is spreading inland, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Mezger said on a conference call with analysts last month. The West Coast is KB Home’s largest market.

“It’s simply a different market than it was 6 months ago in the Inland areas as inventories have declined significantly and prices are now rising,” Mr. Mezger said.

The Los Angeles-based homebuilder’s shares fell 1.4% today trimming its gain this year to 118%. That compares with the 75% advance for the 11-member Standard Poor’s 1500 Homebuilding index.

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Contact the Author
Share Us

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Knightsbridge Law is a boutique law firm in Thailand. The lawyers of our firm have provided legal advice on a variety of areas of the legal practice, including:

Investment Grade Real Estate;
Mergers and Acquisitions;
Establishing Business in Asia;
Corporate and Commercial consultancy;
Asset Management;
Banking, Finance and Securities;
Listing Companies in Asia;
Global Metals and Mining

Contact the Author

Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr.

Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr. writes and publishes The Red Roadmaster’s Technical Report on the US Major Market Indices, a weekly, highly-regarded financial market letter, read by opinion makers, business leaders and organizations around the world.

Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr has studied the global financial and stock markets since 1984, following a successful business career that included investment banking, and market and business analysis. He is a specialist in equities/commodities, and an accomplished chart reader who advises technicians with regard to Major Indices Resistance/Support Levels.

Read the Terms of Service

Article source: http://www.livetradingnews.com/us-real-estate-news-california-89457.htm

New Foreclosure Numbers: Vallejo-Fairfield Fourth Highest in the Nation

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:43:52 +0000

Real estate signs in front of homes for sale March 23, 2010 in San Francisco. Justin Sullivan/Getty

One out of every 140 housing units in the Vallejo-Fairfield metro area is facing foreclosure, according to the latest numbers from RealtyTrac’s U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for July 2011, making the North Bay region the fourth most-impacted in the country. This is a 33 percent jump for the region since last month.

Statewide, the foreclosure activity rate is one out of every 239 housing units, marking a 4 percent increase for California since last month, but a 16 percent decrease compared with July 2010.

Nationally, the rate of foreclosure has decreased 4 percent since June and 35 percent since last year.

But RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist told KQED intern Nick Fountain that the decrease in foreclosure activity is not necessarily as good as it seems.

“We have to say that there’s no marked improvement in the economy or the jobs market or the housing market that is causing this improvement in the foreclosure picture,” he said.

Blomquist said the national decline, which has been going on for 10 months, is primarily due to a slow down in processing of foreclosures as a result of of the “havoc” created last October when lenders “got into hot water using slopping paperwork and documentation.”

“So, at this point, the decline is more of a short-term fix,” he said.

Locally, San Francisco County showed a 39 percent increase in foreclosure activity since June, which Blomquist attributed to a jump in bank repossessions. Similarly, activity this month in Contra Costa County increased 17 percent and Alameda County 15 percent.

But several regions outside the Bay Area are faring far worse. While the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro area ranks 28th nationally in foreclosure rates and Vallejo-Fairfield ranks fourth, the Stockton area ranks second. There, foreclosure activity increased 57 percent from June to July, to a rate of one in every 124 homes.

Check out the chart below, created by Fountain and online producer Lisa Pickoff-White, to see how some California counties fare in the new report.

For more on the Bay Area housing market, listen to Wednesday’s Forum program.

Article source: http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2011/08/11/new-foreclosure-numbers-vallejo-fairfield-fourth-highest-in-the-nation/

Foreclosures slow sharply in Bay Area in April

Thu, 12 May 2011 11:55:41 +0000

Foreclosure activity for houses in the Bay Area dropped during April, according to a new report set for release Thursday — but that shouldn’t be taken as a sign of an improving market, housing experts said.

Compared with the same month a year ago, foreclosure activity plunged in Alameda County by 27.7 percent, in Contra Costa County by 19.9 percent, in Solano County by 32.9 percent and in San Joaquin County by 32.9 percent, RealtyTrac reported.

“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,” said James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.

In the Bay Area, total foreclosure activity plunged in April by 20.5 percent compared with the same month a year ago. Compared with March of this year, Bay Area foreclosures declined 19.3 percent, RealtyTrac said. The report defines foreclosure activity as the combined totals of notices of default, notices of trustees sale and repossessions by lenders, different stages in the foreclosure process.

Other experts agree that the lull isn’t a case of a thaw in the chilly housing market.

“It’s more a bureaucratic and paperwork slowdown,” said John Holmgren, manager of the Oakland office of Holmgren Associates/Opes Advisors. “A lot of lenders have slowed things down after the controversy over how foreclosures were being handled,” referring to the

so-called robo-signing scandals in which banks failed to follow the rules for processing foreclosure paperwork.
During the January-March quarter of this year, a foreclosure was taking a nationwide average of 400 days to complete. That was up from 340 days in the first quarter of 2010. In the first quarter of 2007, the average processing time was 151 days.

Still, the present lull could be temporary, RealtyTrac warned.

“The foreclosures won’t all flood the market at one time,” Blomquist said. “We do expect a gradual increase in foreclosures in the next few months.”

Santa Clara County foreclosures fell 13.8 percent, San Mateo County was down 28.1 percent compared to April 2010. Foreclosure activity fell 1.1 percent in San Francisco and rose 1.9 percent in Marin County, RealtyTrac reported.

“Unfortunately, most of the forecasts from the real estate associations suggest that the foreclosure problem is expected to continue for a pretty lengthy period,” Holmgren said.

That could keep a lid on any improvement in home prices.

“We won’t see any advance in values until it’s clear that the foreclosure situation has bottomed out,” Holmgren said.

Even worse, if the current slowdown in foreclosures is the result of paperwork issues, that may dash hopes of a housing market rebound.

Ultimately, new owners will be needed to buy homes with delinquent or failed loans.

“The market has to really absorb all of these distressed properties one way or another,” RealtyTrac’s Blomquist said. “Until they are gone, they will continue to weigh down the market and keep housing from truly recovering.”

Contact George Avalos at 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.

Foreclosures decline
Foreclosure activity dwindled in the Bay Area during April compared to April 2010 and March 2011.
Area All foreclosures * % change, one year % change, one month
Bay Area 10,629 -20.5 -19.3
Alameda County 2,422 -27.7 -28.9
Contra Costa County 2,624 -19.9 -15.0
Marin County 209 +1.9 -20.5
Napa County 214 -11.7 -6.0
San Francisco 469 -1.1 +6.2
San Mateo County 814 -28.1 -9.3
Santa Clara County 1,798 -13.8 -22.0
Solano County 1,288 -32.9 -31.6
Sonoma County 791 -7.1 +0.3
San Joaquin 2,111 -21.2 +2.0
California 55,869 -19.9 -7.3
* Combination of notices of default, notices of trustee’s sale, and final foreclosure
Source: RealtyTrac

Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18043751