Tim J. Gullicksen is a San Francisco Real Estate Agent at Zephyr Realty.

If this is a bubble, then it cannot last. One sector of the local economy (high tech) may be doing well, but the national and international forecasts are more gloomy

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) June 05, 2012

Tim Gullicksen of Zephyr Realty, a San Francisco real estate agent, is announcing that the high prices of real estate properties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area may only be another “bubble” that will soon go down in this current economic state.

“If this is a bubble, then it cannot last. One sector of the local economy (high tech) may be doing well, but the national and international forecasts are more gloomy. At best, the recovery is going achingly slow and unemployment remains high. At worst, we could have a world-wide double dip to our great recession,” Gullicksen said. “So can the vast increases in sales prices for homes in these highly desirable real estate markets really stay up there in the stratosphere? No one knows for sure, but my money is on ‘not likely.’”

From data and analysis of the current real estate market, this potential bubble is a combination of the Facebook initial public offering, historically low interest rates, the most anemic inventory of homes for sale in memory and the collective realization by the market that real estate values aren’t going any lower.

“When you combine economic confidence with a lot of buyers competing for very few listings, you have a recipe for sky-rocketing prices” Gullicksen said.

Properties are selling for 10 to 20 percent above what the recent comparables justify and often receive multiple offers; however, there is no economic recovery underpinning this massive and sudden increases in value.

For more information about Tim Gullicksen of Zephyr Realty, call 415-655-1588, view him on the Web at http://www.timgullicksen.com or visit 2523 California St. in San Francisco.

About Tim Gullicksen of Zephyr Realty

Tim Gullicksen of Zephyr Realty is a San Francisco real estate agent who specializes in a broad spectrum of San Francisco real estate property types, from affordable units sold through the Mayor’s Office of Housing to multi-million dollar buildings and single-family homes. Gullicksen works with experienced and first-time home buyers in San Francisco to find them the right home.

For more than 30 years, Zephyr Realty has been one of the most respected real estate firms in San Francisco. Its reputation as a highly professional and effective group of agents is recognized by both clients and the entire real estate community. As the most successful independent real estate firm serving San Francisco, with more than $1 billion in gross sales annually, its real estate agents understand the San Francisco market like no one else.

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Article source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/real-estate/san-francisco/prweb9573062.htm

Nationally, residential real estate prices fell 3.9 percent in the three months ended in September compared with the same period last year, according to the SP/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. Compared with a year ago, prices fell in 18 of the 20 metropolitan areas tracked by the index, including the San Francisco area, which was down 5.9 percent in the quarter compared with 2010.

“There is no significant momentum, no signs of the housing market contributing to the economy anytime soon,” said Maureen Maitland, vice president of SP Indices, which produces Case-Shiller. “The fact that so many markets were negative does cause us to pay attention. We are on very shaky ground.”

While some seasonal weakness is to be expected after the prime spring selling season, “weakness and negativity do not have to be synonymous,” she said.

In other words, while flat prices might not stir concern, the continued price declines do.

The San Francisco metropolitan area – which Case-Shiller defines as the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo – is actually among the better-performing regions, despite falling more than the national average.

“San Francisco (metro) has recovered 13 percent from its low in 2009,” Maitland said. “Since then, its prices have been largely increasing, although they have recently fallen down a bit on a year-over-year basis. But two years ago, when there was some recovery, San Francisco was one of the markets that was doing better than others.”

While the nation has undergone a “double dip” in which prices fell, recovered and then fell further, San Francisco has not, she said.

Case-Shiller tracks sales of the same single-family houses over time. It compares changes with a base value of 100, which represents values as of January 2000.

The San Francisco index is now 133.22, meaning that prices here are 33.22 percent above their year 2000 level. The region’s index peaked at 218.37 in May 2006 and hit a low of 117.74 in March 2009.

“Housing is struggling to get up off the mat everywhere,” said Jim Diffley, chief regional economist for IHS Global Insight. “The Bay Area in some ways has been more fortunate than its Sun Belt neighbors. Its economy is doing relatively better.”

IHS predicts that the California market is near bottom and that prices nationally may drop another 7 percent before turning around in mid-2012. “We may have a little further to fall in other parts of the country before we finally get some growth in 2012,” Diffley said.

Patrick Newport, U.S. economist for IHS, said the continued weakness in sales of existing homes bodes poorly for recovery in construction of new homes, typically a major source of job creation. The country is on track to build 600,000 new homes this year, compared with a normal market of 1.4 million new homes.

“This year is probably going to be the worst we’ve ever had for new-home sales and new-home starts,” he said. “Normally, in a recovery, housing is a key sector that gets the economy back on track. Building more homes creates more jobs and has a positive feedback loop.”

The only two regions where prices increased year-over-year were Detroit, where they had tumbled so drastically that they may have hit bottom, and Washington, D.C., where federal jobs buoy the local economy, Maitland said.

Prices nationally rose 0.1 percent in the third quarter compared with the second quarter, which means they were essentially flat.

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/30/BUOG1M5MCG.DTL&type=business

Just as we saw a double dip in home prices, we may be seeing another surge in foreclosures.

And just as the home price scenario was caused by artificial government stimulus, in the form of the home buyer tax credit juicing home sales only briefly, the foreclosure scenario was caused by real negligence, in the form of the “robo-signing” paperwork scandal.

Banks and servicers stopped foreclosures entirely for a time after the malpractice was discovered, and courts delayed the process, picking through papers as foreclosures were resubmitted; that is now turning around.

The system is ramping up again, and foreclosure starts are up dramatically, more than 10 percent in June from the previous month, according to Lender Processing Services (LPS). The good news of the past few months has been that while the end game is quickening, as stalled foreclosures are making their way through the system at a faster pace, new delinquencies were decreasing, leading us all to believe that the crisis is abating.

Well think again.

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It was barely a few months ago, albeit a few thousand degrees ago, that I moderated a panel of mortgage types from the major banks, including the Mortgage Bankers Association’s new president David Stevens, formerly FHA commissioner.

Stevens and I have been talking housing for many years now, so I’m well aware that he is not exactly the ambivalent type.

When I suggested to the panel that the risk of a double-dip in housing was great and that winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now could be detrimental to the housing market, Stevens was adamant that housing was well into recovery, and all those home price and mortgage delinquency reports I was citing were backward looking and not indicative of the current state of the market.

Now Stevens is reversing course.

This morning he put out a statement advocating a continuation of the higher loan limits at the GSE’s (Fannie and Freddie) and the FHA for one more year. “The temporary loan limits authorized by Congress have benefited consumers and the housing market during what has been a turbulent period for our nation’s economy,” Stevens said in the statement. “That decline is not over yet.”

The statement was a little dry for me, knowing the source, so I called Stevens for a little elaboration. He stated right from the get-go that he is still bullish about the future of the housing market, which is not exactly saying he feels great about it right now.

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The share of distressed sales in May, that is foreclosed properties and short sales (when the property is sold for less than the value of the loan), fell to 31 percent of all sales from 37 percent in April. Investors, who purchase a large share of these distressed properties, also represented a smaller share in May. So what’s going on?

We know there is still a huge supply of bank owned (REO) properties, and we also know that banks are pushing short sales on many more properties than ever before. But they are also pushing REO sales, thanks to new sales incentives from lenders and the GSE’s (Government-Sponsored Enterprises).

“Realtors and mortgage loan officers nationwide are driving mid-to-high end organic, short and distressed sales on the fear that buyers will be unable to qualify for loans once the QRM (Qualified Residential Mortgage) rules are in place requiring 20 percent down,” says mortgage market analyst Mark Hanson, describing new rules being considered for risk retention by banks (part of the banking overhaul legislation passed last summer).

Some bloggers though, writing in to me after the existing home sales report, claimed that Fannie and Freddie are holding on to REOs, trying to game home prices. Fannie strongly disputes that.

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I don’t know what the official end of the Spring housing market is, but it seems as if the experts have called the close, and it ain’t great.

Last week, after the folks at the vaunted SP/Case Shiller Indices put a period on the home price double dip, which others had been reporting for months — and The New York Times did a piece on falling home prices — it seemed like suddenly the housing watchers got nervous again.

Over the weekend, JP Morgan Chase’s housing analysts revised their outlook lower for home price recovery, “largely based on existing home sales coming in lower than expected.” While they expect that regional divergences will increase, “Our new base case is down percent from here (Q1 2011) and bottoming in mid-2012. We expect home prices to modestly improve over the summer months.”

Soon after, Credit Suisse’s Monthly Survey of Real Estate Agents announced: “Weak ending to the Spring season.” CS’s Daniel Oppenheim notes, “A lack of urgency continues as does a fear and hesitation of buying if prices still have further to fall.” This, we knew.

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It’s official.

Home prices have double dipped nationwide, now lower than their March 2009 trough, according to a new report from Clear Capital.

It was inevitable, and it was predicted (by me for sure) that a surge in sales of foreclosed properties and a big push by banks to facilitate short sales would force home prices down dramatically.

Sales of bank-owned (REO) properties hit 34.5 percent of the market, according to the survey, resulting in a national price drop of 4.9 percent quarterly and 5 percent year-over-year. National home prices have fallen 11.5 percent in the past nine months, a rate not seen since 2008. Add short sales, where the bank allows the borrower to sell for less than the value of the mortgage, and prices have nowhere to go but down.

“With more than one-third of national home sales being REO (bank owned), market prices are being weighed down as many markets have not regained enough footing to withstand the strain of the high proportion of REO sales,” says Clear Capital’s Alex Villacorta.

You don’t have to tell Los Angeles Realtor Bill Kerbox any of this. LA prices had been improving, and LA is still one of the nation’s best performing metro markets right now. Recently, however, prices took a turn, now down 2.4 percent quarter to quarter thanks to 34 percent REO saturation.

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We’re always looking at indicators to see where the housing market is headed, like today’s reading of the Realtors’ “Pending Home Sales Index,” which measures contracts signed for home purchases, hence an indicator of future closings. We look at consumer confidence, construction permits, even employment numbers to gauge housing’s future, but what about remodeling as an indicator?

Today the National Association of Home Builders put out its quarterly remodeling index, which rose to the highest level since 2006.

What does remodeling say about home buying? I think it says two things.

At the top of a housing bubble, there’s a lot of remodeling because a lot of people are buying a lot of homes, and they naturally want to put their personal touches on those homes. We also saw a lot of remodeling during the housing boom because so many borrowers took all that bloated equity out of their homes to pay for new kitchens and bathrooms and swimming pools and “man caves” (I really really hate that term).

Remodeling plummeted during the housing crash because of negative equity, lack of home buying, and zero confidence in housing as an investment. Not to mention that nobody wanted to spend a dime of whatever cash they had on anything.

So now as we bump along the bottom and anticipate a potential double dip, why would remodeling improve?

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