“Nonagency jumbo lenders began dipping their toes in the water as early as 2011, and even more so into the end of 2012. Strong loan quality due to tight underwriting combined with competition between large banks and securitzers has led to relatively increased demand. Wells and Chase are keen to compete with securitizers like Redwood or Sequoia in order to capture potential income streams from jumbo clients’ bank business.”

(Read more: Higher mortgage rates may mean easier credit)

In addition, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which back and bundle two-thirds of conventional loans, have been raising the fees they charge to banks, so-called guarantee fees, mostly to protect themselves against default. Guarantee fees have nearly doubled in just the past year.

“As G-fees move higher, this increase gets added into conforming mortgage rates,” said Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance. “It’s a factor, but not the biggest one, allowing portfolio jumbo lenders to match or undercut conforming mortgage rates.”

The bigger factor, said Cecala, is that 92 percent of jumbo mortgages are made by banks that fund the loans with their deposits and then hold them in a portfolio. Given that the interest paid on consumer deposits in banks is still incredibly low, lenders can still make a profit on mortgages priced at 4 percent or less if they want to. In fact, jumbo loans, by some lenders, can actually cost less than conforming.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100962728

This year, Los Altos/Los Altos Hills, at an average price of $1,706,688, is the most expensive market in the country when it comes to how much house your dollar will buy, according to Coldwell Banker’s annual Home Listing Report.

By contrast, for an average of $60,490 a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home can be found in Redford, Mich., which is just outside of Detroit. It’s a isting price difference of more than $1.6 million.

Cupertino is 9th in California and 12th in the nation with an average price of $1,151,145 for a similar sized home. It sits just above San Francisco with an average of $1,132,086.

In fact, of the nation’s top five most expensive markets, four are on the lower Peninsula and Santa Clara County, and all are in California. Besides Los Altos, they include Saratoga ($1,582,434), Menlo Park ($1,506,909), and Palo Alto ($1,495,364). Newport Beach, in the No. 2 position ($1,658,000), was the only market outside of the Bay Area in the top five.

Coldwell Banker attributes Los Altos’ ranking to the confluence of tech and desirable locations. Google, Apple, Facebook and Stanford University are all located within 15 minutes of Los Altos, Coldwell Banker observed. And, so are the other top-five cities Saratoga, Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

And Los Altos Hills is the town that brought you the $100 million home, purchased by Russian tech investor Yuri Milner in 2011. 

“The success of many of our native tech companies has shined a spotlight on Silicon Valley and our real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a written statement.

In fact, among the top 20 most expensive markets in the country, 10 of them are on the Peninsula or in Santa Clara Valley. They include the additional cities (in order of price) of Los Gatos, San Carlos, Cupertino, San Francisco and Redwood City.

High demand, low inventory, desirability and population projections all figure into the prices, Turley said.

Conversely, the most affordable was in Redford, Michigan, where the average a four-bedroom, two bath house cost $60,490—or 28 times less than the same house in Los Altos.

Coldwell Banker lists both the top 20 most affordable and the most expensive in the chart below.

For a state-by-state ranking, see this Coldwell Banker link.

Article source: http://cupertino.patch.com/articles/los-altos-the-most-expensive-market-in-country-a35fc8e0