Applications to refinance are already down nearly 60 percent from a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Mortgage rates on the 30-year fixed rose from 3.5 percent in May to nearly 5 percent in July, settling now around 4.5 percent.

The government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program has been successful, allowing more than 2 million borrowers, some with negative home equity, to take advantage of lower rat, but only borrowers with government-backed mortgages qualify.

That has left millions of borrowers out. Obama has pushed for more refinancing in the private mortgage market and will call for it once again. Senior administration officials, however, admit that “the window is closing given interest rates coming up over the last few months.”

(Read more: Homeownership may be for the few rather than the many)

The president will also push for more community-based assistance to help first-time homebuyers get into vacant, foreclosed homes.

Phoenix perhaps is not the best backdrop for this. The recovery there was driven more by private investors in distressed homes than by any government-backed mortgage rescue. Investors bought these homes in bulk and are now renting them for profit.

These same investors, largely using all-cash, pushed first-time buyers out of the Phoenix market and continue to do so in several other markets across the nation, where lower-income buyers might have been able to take advantage of distressed homes.

Obama will offer “targeted ways to make sure first-time buyers have a fair shot competing,” an administration official said.

—By CNBC’s Diana Olick. Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100940811

Applications to refinance are already down nearly 60 percent from a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Mortgage rates on the 30-year fixed rose from 3.5 percent in May to nearly 5 percent in July, settling now around 4.5 percent.

The government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program has been successful, allowing more than 2 million borrowers, some with negative home equity, to take advantage of lower rat, but only borrowers with government-backed mortgages qualify.

That has left millions of borrowers out. Obama has pushed for more refinancing in the private mortgage market and will call for it once again. Senior administration officials, however, admit that “the window is closing given interest rates coming up over the last few months.”

(Read more: Homeownership may be for the few rather than the many)

The president will also push for more community-based assistance to help first-time homebuyers get into vacant, foreclosed homes.

Phoenix perhaps is not the best backdrop for this. The recovery there was driven more by private investors in distressed homes than by any government-backed mortgage rescue. Investors bought these homes in bulk and are now renting them for profit.

These same investors, largely using all-cash, pushed first-time buyers out of the Phoenix market and continue to do so in several other markets across the nation, where lower-income buyers might have been able to take advantage of distressed homes.

Obama will offer “targeted ways to make sure first-time buyers have a fair shot competing,” an administration official said.

—By CNBC’s Diana Olick. Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100940811

“Sales are subpar, prices mainly flat and I don’t anticipate much change,” said Andrew LePage, an analyst with San Diego’s DataQuick, which produced the report. “Lots of people are stacked up on the sidelines, waiting for a better time to buy or sell when things are more certain.”

The median price for all homes – resale, new and condos – sold across the nine Bay Area counties in November was $363,500, down 4.3 percent from a year ago.

The total number of properties changing hands edged up 3.4 percent to 6,317, compared with last year.

Not much inventory

Low inventory remains an issue as many people are reluctant to sell, said Rick Turley, president of Coldwell Banker’s Bay Area region.

“The home seller who becomes a move-up buyer is almost like a missing generation,” he said. “We have some people out there with an appetite (to buy) who have a down payment and can qualify, but because of the ho-hum market, there isn’t inventory for them.”

Turley said he sees about 4 1/2 months’ worth of inventory for high-end homes and just a few weeks’ worth on the low end.

Cindi Hagley, managing broker at Prudential California Realty in San Ramon, observed similar dynamics.

“We have multiple offers on almost everything we sell for under $400,000,” she said.

But at the other end, “People who could theoretically afford to buy bigger homes are hunkering down a bit,” Hagley said. “People are downsizing” rather than moving up.

High-end sales are also taking a hit from a change in the conforming loan limit, which eliminates most government-backed mortgages between $625,501 and $729,750. Lawmakers restored FHA loans in that bracket, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages are no longer available.

“We don’t know yet to what extent FHA and the private mortgage market can fill that void,” LePage said.

The tighter financing for high-end homes is reflected in declining sales volume.

Low-price purchases

For instance, in Santa Clara County, November sales of homes over $800,000 were down 18.2 percent from a year earlier, while sales of homes under $300,000 rose 22.3 percent compared with November 2010, LePage said.

Throughout the real estate downturn, sales of higher-end homes have declined dramatically. Mortgages above $417,000 accounted for about 29.7 percent of November’s purchase lending, DataQuick said. Before 2007, such “jumbo” mortgages represented almost 60 percent of local purchase loans.

Distressed sales – foreclosures and short sales sold for less than is owed on the mortgage – remain a potent force, accounting for almost half of all resales in the Bay Area in November.

Investor activity remains high, with absentee buyers snapping up 22.6 of all homes sold last month compared with a regular monthly average of 13.9 percent since 2000. All-cash buyers represented 27.9 percent of November sales.

Other national reports out this week underscored the market’s continued malaise:

– Real estate service Zillow.com said values nationwide were down 5.1 percent in October compared with a year earlier. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, it said, values fell 6.3 percent and are now 33.8 percent off their peak.

– Foreclosure service RealtyTrac said November foreclosure filings nationwide were down 14 percent compared with a year ago. But the company said that despite that seasonal slowdown, numbers suggest a new surge of foreclosures in coming months.

California foreclosure auctions hit a 10-month high in November and the state had the nation’s second-highest foreclosure rate (after Nevada) with 1 in every 211 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in the month. Bucking the national trend, California foreclosure filings rose 11 percent in November compared with 2010.

– Move.com, the nation’s largest online collection of for-sale listings, with data from all of the country’s 900-plus multiple listing services, showed national inventory down 21.3 percent in November compared with a year ago and median list prices up 4.05 percent.

In the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin, Move.com showed median list prices basically flat compared with a year ago and inventory down significantly. Homes in those counties sold much faster than those elsewhere in the country, with an average inventory age of 76 days versus 114 days nationwide.

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/2011/12/15/BU6K1MCHQJ.DTL