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Mortgage rate spike finally hits housing market

Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:43:29 +0000

While buyers may be pausing, however, their optimism is not. Americans are increasingly hopeful about housing’s return. Sixty-two percent believe mortgage rates will go up over the next year, according to a new Fannie Mae survey, but 74 percent also say it is now a good time to buy a house, an increase in both from June.

(Read more: What you need to know if Fannie and Freddie go)

“Consumers have taken the interest rate rise in stride. Expectations for continued improvement in housing persist, and sentiment toward the current buying and selling environment is back on track from its dip last month,” said Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae. “These results are consistent with our own analysis of previous housing cycles, which finds that interest rates and home prices are not strongly correlated.”

(Read more: Taking your calls now: Obama sells housing agenda via Zillow)

Another survey from home builder PulteGroup found 43 percent of move-up buyers indicating they are planning to buy a new home within the next five years, with 76 percent saying they believe they can sell their current home within the next two years for enough to move up. Pulte targets the move-up buyer.

Mortgage applications to purchase a newly built home rose 14 percent month to month, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, but new home buyers may be less sensitive to rates, as builders can buy down mortgage rates as part of the deal.

It all prompts the question: With rates still historically low, does a 1 percentage point jump in rates really matter?

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100952350

MOasis moving to Union City from Mountain View

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:29:13 +0000

mOasis Inc. leased 11,000 square feet in the Dowe Business Park in Union City.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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MOasis Inc. is taking its headquarters east to Union City from Mountain View.

The company, a maker of a polymer hydrogel, leased 11,000 square feet in the Dowe Business Park, a 354,000-square foot industrial park owned by Harsch Investment Properties.

The tenant, founded in 2010 at Stanford University, makes a gel used to store and preserve crops throughout California. The company says its product increases crop yields and helps farmers reduce their water and energy use.

“We’ve had the fortunate problem of outgrowing our lab space at Stanford a year ago, and in Mountain View most recently, and we are thrilled to find a new home at Dowe Business Park,” said Susanna Kass, CEO and president of mOasis Inc. “We now have a work space that offers both office and production space, as well as a lab. Dowe’s location is convenient for our East and South Bay-based employees and we look forward to the expansion and growth that the property will allow us.”

The property is now 85 percent occupied. It is close to Interstate 880 and both the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges.

“This is a great time for real estate activity in the East Bay, and our properties here are seeing steady growth,” said Don Little, senior vice president for Harsch Investment Properties in the Bay Area and head of development in three states.

Harsch, based in Portland, Ore., owns and operates 20 million square feet of office, multi-tenant industrial, multi-family and retail properties in five western states and has regional offices in Seattle, the Bay Area, Sacramento, Las Vegas, and San Diego.

Harsch Investment Properties was represented by Joe Yamin and Sean Sabarese of Colliers International.

MOasis Inc. was represented by Rick Keely and Aileen Dolby of Colliers International.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/01/moasis-moving-to-union-city-ditches.html

New Bay Area Target stores coming in 2013

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 05:49:40 +0000

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Target Corp. anticipates opening its first Alameda store and second City Target in San Francisco in October 2013.

It appears as if the Minneapolis-based retailer (NYSE:TGT) is already thinking about next year’s holiday shoppers by opening two Bay Area stores right before the year’s biggest selling season.

“California continues to be a strong market for Target, and we’re excited to expand our presence there in 2013,” said Cary Strouse, Target’s senior vice president of stores in the Western region.

The retailer has expanded aggressively in the past few years with new outposts in Emeryville, Dublin and Fremont. It also expects to open one in Petaluma next summer.

In Alameda, Target started construction on the site, at the intersection of Mariner Square Loop and Stargell Avenue, earlier this year.

The retailer bought a 10-acre parcel in Alameda Landing, a 72-acre former Navy site that master developer Catellus plans to transform into a mixed-use neighborhood with retail, housing and office.

Target’s Alameda store will measure 140,000 square feet and anchor a 291,000-square-foot shopping center. The retailer expects to hire 200 workers for the store.

This past October, Target opened its first of two City Target stores in the Metreon in San Francisco with the second planned at the southwest corner of Geary and Masonic streets. City Target is a smaller format the big box retailer is testing for urban areas. The Geary Masonic store will comprise 119,000 square feet.

Target plans to open 15 stores next year nationwide.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2012/12/new-bay-area-target-stores-in-2013.html

New Bay Area Target stores coming in 2013 – San Francisco Business Times

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:32:25 +0000

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Target Corp. anticipates opening its first Alameda store and second City Target in San Francisco in October 2013.

It appears as if the Minneapolis-based retailer (NYSE:TGT) is already thinking about next year’s holiday shoppers by opening two Bay Area stores right before the year’s biggest selling season.

The retailer has expanded aggressively in the past few years with new outposts in Emeryville, Dublin and Fremont. It also expects to open one in Petaluma next summer.

In Alameda, Target started construction on the site, at the intersection of Mariner Square Loop and Stargell Avenue, earlier this year.

The retailer bought a 10-acre parcel in Alameda Landing, a 72-acre former Navy site that master developer Catellus plans to transform into a mixed-use neighborhood with retail, housing and office.

Target’s Alameda store will measure 140,000 square feet and anchor a 291,000-square-foot shopping center. The retailer expects to hire 200 workers for the store.

Target plans to open 15 stores next year nationwide.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2012/12/new-bay-area-target-stores-in-2013.html

Movers & Shakers: San Rafael executive tapped to lead real estate firm – Marin Independent

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:11:11 +0000

Tom Martindale of San Rafael has been named president of TRI Commercial/CORFAC International, a San Francisco-based real estate brokerage and property management firm with six offices in the Bay Area and Sacramento region.

Martindale was previously a senior vice president and the Bay Area regional manager for TRI, a company he joined in 1988. Prior to commercial real estate he was a vice president of international private banking and office automation for Bank of America.

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Roy Hardiman of Mill Valley has been elected to the board of the UC Santa Barbara Foundation, an advisory committee that supports the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Hardiman spent nearly 20 years with Genentech Inc., where he served as vice president of alliance management and vice president of corporate law. He is chairman of the Science Dean’s Cabinet at UC Santa Barbara.

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Margot Enbom and three other preschool teachers from Ross Valley Nursery School have launched Sleepy Hollow Nursery School in San Anselmo. They are accepting applications for January 2013.

Movers and Shakers is compiled by Will Jason and appears weekly. Send information to wjason@marinij.com

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Article source: http://www.marinij.com/business/ci_22141700/movers-shakers-san-rafael-executive-tapped-lead-real

City National Bank Hires Charlie McGann and Deven Mays as Senior Vice …

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:18:22 +0000

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 7, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — City National Bank today announced that real estate veterans Charlie McGann and Deven Mays have joined the real estate team in the Bay Area.

McGann is a senior vice president and regional manager of Northern California real estate for the bank, focusing on lending to developers and investors in the region. McGann will work closely with the bank’s commercial real estate clients, including home builders and commercial real estate developers, providing them with construction, bridge and permanent financings. McGann will report to Mark Forbes, executive vice president and manager of the Real Estate Division at City National.

“We are pleased to have such veteran real estate bankers join our team in the Bay Area,” said Forbes, who noted that for the third quarter, City National’s average balances for commercial real estate loans were up 27 percent from the previous year. “We are seeing much opportunity in many sectors of the real estate market, and the Bay Area is clearly leading the industry’s recovery in California.”

With more than 15 years of industry experience, Deven Mays is a senior vice president for real estate in the Bay Area and he reports to McGann. He was a senior vice president and team leader of real estate with Wells Fargo’s real estate division and formerly with Greater Bay Bancorp., which was acquired by Wells. Mays received his bachelor’s degree from California State University at San Jose and attended graduate school at the University of Southern California. Mays is active in his local community having served as traffic coordinator for the City of Orinda and as a youth soccer coach.

Prior to joining City National, McGann has spent nearly two decades involved in the real estate industry. He most recently served as regional manager of real estate for Union Bank and before that was with Carr Capital Corp., in Washington, D.C., and with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. McGann earned his bachelor’s degree from Trinity College and his master’s degree in finance from the University of California at Berkeley.

(For an image of McGann: https://www.cnb.com/PublishingImages/Charlie-McGann.jpg)

(For an image of Mays: https://www.cnb.com/PublishingImages/Deven-Mays.jpg)

About City National

City National Bank is the wholly owned subsidiary of City National Corporation (NYSE:CYN). It is backed by $26.3 billion in total assets, and provides banking, investment and trust services through 78 offices, including 16 full-service regional centers, in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Nevada, New York City, Nashville and Atlanta. The company and its investment affiliates manage or administer $56.7 billion in client investment assets, including $38.0 billion under direct management.

The City National Bank logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=3143

CONTACT: Media Contact:
         Debora Vrana, City National Bank, 213.673.7631
         Debora.Vrana@cnb.com

Source: City National Bank

Article source: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/city-national-bank-hires-charlie-mcgann-and-deven-mays-as-senior-vice-presidents-of-real-estate-in--20121107-01131

Is Housing Recovering as Much as Everyone Thinks?

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 06:48:22 +0000

The news is finally good: Consumer sentiment in housing is at the highest level since the recovery began.

Realtors say not only are buyers coming back, but much-needed sellers are too. Inventories of distressed properties are shrinking, and mortgage rates are hitting record lows nearly every week. (Read More: Is Housing Rising From Ashes? ‘Industry Has Come Back’.)

The housing crisis is over, right?

“While we have seen many dramatic headlines touting the housing recovery over the last 3.5 years, these headlines and the analysts who author them have been over- predicting changes in the housing market (versus what actually occurred).” said Laurie Goodman of Amherst Securities in a new report.

“Recoveries, with attendant price increases, were anticipated in the spring and summer of 2009, 2010 and 2011; by the fall and winter the predictions of price changes were amended to reflect further price declines. In actuality, after netting out the seasonal factors, home prices have been little changed in the past few years.”

Does that mean that we’re headed for yet another housing scare come Halloween time? Is housing’s winter chill just around the corner? Not according to the bulk of Americans surveyed in yet another new report:

“Consumers are showing increasing faith in the nascent housing recovery,” said Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist of Fannie Mae. “Home price change expectations have remained positive for 11 straight months, and the share expecting home price declines has stabilized at a survey low of only 11 percent.”

The expectation is now that home prices will increase an average of 1.5 percent in the next year, according to the survey, and that has sellers coming back to the market. Of those surveyed, 19 percent said now is a good time to sell. That’s the highest since the survey began in June 2010. But wait, 19 percent? That’s still not a lot.

These national surveys seek overall trends and tout big headlines, but real estate is and always will be local, and this recovery is becoming increasingly local. That is clear in the latest numbers on supplies of distressed homes.

The so-called “shadow inventory” of homes that either have seriously delinquent mortgages, are in the foreclosure process or are bank-owned but not yet listed for sale, fell to 2.3 million units in July according to CoreLogic. That’s a 10 percent year-over-year drop, and puts the supply at about six months by the current sales pace.

“The decline in shadow inventory has recently moderated reflecting the lower outflow of distressed sales over the past year,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “While a lower outflow of distressed sales helps alleviate downward home price pressure, long foreclosure timelines in some parts of the country causes these pools of shadow inventory to remain in limbo for an extended period of time.”

And that’s the problem. In states where a judge is required in the foreclosure process, like New York, Florida and New Jersey, foreclosure timelines are still marked in years, not months. That will keep home prices from recovering as quickly there. Prices could in fact deteriorate. (Read More: Housing Alert: Short Sales may Be in Big Trouble.)

“Market participants have become too accustomed to speaking about a national housing market and national home price appreciation. Going forward, we expect price behavior to vary by price range and location. To over-generalize — we anticipate that the judicial states, those in which a court order is necessary to proceeds with the foreclosure process, will take much longer to clear the distressed inventory than the non-judicial states, and higher-priced homes will take longer to clear than lower priced,” noted Goodman.

Much of the latest optimism in housing is due to record low mortgage rates. The Federal Reserve’s latest action to buy $40 billion in agency mortgage-backed securities sent rates plunging and mortgage applications rising.

The applications, however, were largely for refinances, not home purchases. The Fed’s move gave more Americans confidence that mortgage rates will not increase in the next year, according to Fannie Mae’s survey, but those consumers may be wrong. (Read More: Will Fed’s Mortgage Buying Juice the Housing Recovery?)

“More recently, MBS yields have made up nearly all of their initial drop. If sustained, that suggests that mortgage rates may not fall much further, and could even rise,” notes Paul Diggle of Capital Economics.

Home buying and selling cannot always be qualified and quantified by monthly economic numbers. It is a highly emotional business, which is why sentiment can not only ignore reality, it can effect reality. Going forward, much of the housing recovery will be driven by sentiment. It remains to be seen if that sentiment will hold if this warming recovery hits a new chill.

—By CNBC’s Diana Olick

Sector Watch: US Home Builders

—Toll Brothers
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—DR Horton
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—Hovnanian Enterprises
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—PulteGroup
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—Ryland Group
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—Lennar Corp
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—Beazer Homes USA
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—Meritage Homes
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—KB Home
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Questions? Comments? And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/49343717?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

Kidder Mathews Adds 7 Brokers to its Bay Area Offices – Virtual

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 06:02:35 +0000

Kidder Mathews continues to grow its Bay Area commercial real estate group, and recently added 5 brokers to its downtown San Jose office, and 1 each to its San Francisco and Redwood Shores offices, bringing the firm’s Bay Area roster to 73 agents.

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) May 30, 2012

Kidder Mathews continues to grow its Bay Area commercial real estate group, and recently added 5 brokers to its downtown San Jose office, and 1 each to its San Francisco and Redwood Shores offices, bringing the firm’s Bay Area roster to 73 agents. All 7 brokers joined from Grubb Ellis, which is being purchased by BGC Partners.

“The agents we’ve hired bring a varied mix of specialties to enrich and expand our service lines in each of our offices,” said Reed Payne, Executive Vice President of Brokerage Services for Kidder Mathews.

Joining Kidder Mathews San Jose office are veteran brokers Joe Scuncio, an office/RD specialist, Nigel Keep, investment properties, Kristopher Blais, a retail specialist, along with James Viso and Shaun Enferadi, both industrial brokers. Mike McCormac, an office specialist, joins the firm’s San Francisco office and has been named Vice President, and Bill Kurfess, an office/RD specialist joins the firm’s Redwood Shores office and has been named Senior Vice President. “We are thrilled to have this caliber of brokers join our group,” says Payne.

Kidder Mathews is one of the fastest growing commercial real estate firms on the West Coast with over 400 real estate professionals and staff in 9 offices in California, Washington, and Oregon. We offer a complete range of brokerage, appraisal, property management, and consulting services for all property types. For more information go to http://www.kiddermathews.com.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebkidder-mathews/adds-bay-area-brokers/prweb9554108.htm

Article source: http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/05/30/kidder-mathews-adds-7-brokers-its-bay-area-offices

New FHA Foreclosures Spike

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 05:43:25 +0000

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As lenders continue to try to modify delinquent mortgages or offer foreclosure alternatives, like short sales or deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure, the number of loans entering the foreclosure process are falling.

So-called “foreclosure starts” were down 2.6 percent in April from the previous month, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services.

But it’s not all good news.

FHA loans, those insured by the federal government, saw a huge spike in foreclosure starts, up 73 percent during the month, according to the LPS report. Loans originated in 2008 and 2009 are primarily to blame, although all FHA vintages did see some, albeit far smaller, increases.

“In 2008, when the loan origination market virtually dried up, the FHA stepped in to fill the void,” explained Herb Blecher, senior vice president for LPS Applied Analytics. “FHA originations tripled that year, and increased to five times historical averages in 2009. High volumes like that, even with low default rates, can produce larger numbers of foreclosure starts.”

Still the numbers mean a big hit to the FHA, which is already operating at well below its congressionally mandated two percent capital reserve ratio. “The 2008 vintage alone represents some $14 billion of unpaid balances in foreclosure, and the overall FHA foreclosure inventory continues to rise,” adds Blecher.

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Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/47634203?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

Kidder Mathews Adds 7 Brokers to its Bay Area Offices

Wed, 30 May 2012 17:34:10 +0000

Kidder Mathews continues to grow its Bay Area commercial real estate group, and recently added 5 brokers to its downtown San Jose office, and 1 each to its San Francisco and Redwood Shores offices, bringing the firm’s Bay Area roster to 73 agents.

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) May 30, 2012

Kidder Mathews continues to grow its Bay Area commercial real estate group, and recently added 5 brokers to its downtown San Jose office, and 1 each to its San Francisco and Redwood Shores offices, bringing the firm’s Bay Area roster to 73 agents. All 7 brokers joined from Grubb Ellis, which is being purchased by BGC Partners.

“The agents we’ve hired bring a varied mix of specialties to enrich and expand our service lines in each of our offices,” said Reed Payne, Executive Vice President of Brokerage Services for Kidder Mathews.

Joining Kidder Mathews San Jose office are veteran brokers Joe Scuncio, an office/RD specialist, Nigel Keep, investment properties, Kristopher Blais, a retail specialist, along with James Viso and Shaun Enferadi, both industrial brokers. Mike McCormac, an office specialist, joins the firm’s San Francisco office and has been named Vice President, and Bill Kurfess, an office/RD specialist joins the firm’s Redwood Shores office and has been named Senior Vice President. “We are thrilled to have this caliber of brokers join our group,” says Payne.

Kidder Mathews is one of the fastest growing commercial real estate firms on the West Coast with over 400 real estate professionals and staff in 9 offices in California, Washington, and Oregon. We offer a complete range of brokerage, appraisal, property management, and consulting services for all property types. For more information go to www.kiddermathews.com.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: www.prweb.com/releases/prwebkidder-mathews/adds-bay-area-brokers/prweb9554108.htm

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/30/prweb9554108.DTL