Fannie Mae offering cash incentives to some home buyers

To reduce its inventory of foreclosed homes, Fannie offers qualified owner-occupant purchasers cash incentives toward closing costs of 3.5% of the purchase price.

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By Kenneth R. Harney

February 23, 2014, 5:00 a.m.

WASHINGTON — If you're planning to shop for a home in the next few weeks, here's an early spring buying season come-on that just might save you some money if you qualify.

Fannie Mae, the largest mortgage investor in the country, has a bulging portfolio of houses acquired through foreclosures nationwide. About 31,000 of these properties are listed on its HomePath (www.homepath.com) resale marketing site. To move them quickly out of inventory, Fannie temporarily is offering qualified owner-occupant purchasers — but not investors — cash incentives toward closing costs of 3.5% of the purchase price. But you have to submit your initial offer no later than March 31 and close by May 31.

What sort of houses are we talking about? Visit the site and you'll see. They run the gamut — from a one-bedroom condo in San Diego to a four-bedroom, four-bath single-family home in suburban Montgomery Village, Md. Some states have thousands of HomePath listings online: Florida has nearly 12,000; Illinois, 4,360; Ohio, 2,800; California, more than 2,300; Washington state, nearly 1,800; and Nevada, about 1,400. Asking prices range from $30,000 to $600,000 or more. On a $400,000 house, the 3.5% closing cost incentive would amount to $14,000.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-harney-20140223,0,7587308.story#ixzz2uRDMCBKB

Luxury home sales up 63.5%

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Highlights:

• Kentwood releases July luxury report.
• Sales up 63.5%, YOY in July
• YTD sales up 43.3%

John Fitzpatrick and Sean Larkin of Kentwood Co.-DTC office are listing this 17,437-square-foot house in Parker for $3.95 million.

The luxury home market in the Denver area in July experienced a 63.5 percent year-over-year gain, the second biggest percentage gain of any month this year, according to a report by Kentwood Real Estate.
The percentage gain for homes that closed at $1 million or more was only bested by April, in which luxury home sales catapulted by an incredible 140.7 percent.
The July year-over-year percentage gain was almost twice the 32.2 percent gain in closings for the entire market. However, as always, the number of people buying homes that cost at least $1 million represents a small percent of the overall market.
Buyers purchased 85 luxury homes in the core Denver-area counties of Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Elbert counties, according to the Kentwood report.
In July 2012, buyers purchased 52 homes.
The closed sales value, on a year-over-year basis in July, was commensurate with the number of sales.
The total sales volume for luxury homes last month rose 61.6 percent to $134.5 million, compared with $83.2 million in July 2012.
Every month this year, so far, has improved when compared with the same month in 2012.
On a year-over-year, monthly basis sales have risen:

• 12 percent in January.
• 7 percent in February.
• 20 percent in March.
• 140.7 percent in April.
• 23.6 percent in June.
• 63.5 percent in July.

Year-to-date, the number of luxury transactions increased 43.3 percent to 417 compared with 291 in the first seven months of 2012, while the dollar volume is up 42.5 percent to $634.3 million, compared with $445.1 million.

Read More:  http://insiderealestatenews.com/2013/08/09/luxury-home-sales-up-63-5/?goback=%2Egde_4069128_member_268664703#%21

Do We Need a Government Guarantee For Mortgages?

Jun 17

Posted by fleetwoodwalker

Earlier, I wrote about the various proposals circulating through Washington DC on the future of housing finance in the USA. Virtually every one had a government guarantee in their proposal, as if the mortgage market would collapse without Uncle Sam.
As Nancy Pelosi once famously stated, we need to look at government guarantee “away from the fog of the controversy.”
Several economists at The Federal Reserve produced a nice graphic on prime versus subprime borrowers. Essentially any loan with a down payment of less than 20% is considered subprime and credit scores of 660 are prime if the down payment is more than 20%.

Here is the performance (as measured by delinquency of 90 days) for subprime (white) and prime (red) loans (although not the same definition of prime and subprime as The Fed’s definition, but close).

Read More:  http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/do-we-need-a-government-guarantee-for-mortgages/

Wholesale Foreclosure Sales Planned

by MIKE COLPITTS • FEBRUARY 13, 2013 • PRINT-FRIENDLY

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The U.S. federal government is making plans to sell more than 250,000 foreclosure homes at wholesale prices in bulk to a series of investor-backed firms in an effort to speed up the recovery of the housing market and artificially push home prices higher.
The plan comes on the heals of a pilot program that sold homes to investor led groups in a half a dozen states, most seriously damaged by the real estate collapse. The government has made a series of efforts to aid the housing market, including efforts to refinance underwater homeowners without regard to loan to value levels, but few of the programs has actually shown much success to aid the market, which has seen home prices decline for seven years in most areas of the country until recently.

The Fannie Mae program will be implemented to sell off assets in the form of either pool sales or joint ventures. Realtors are criticizing the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in its quiet effort to sell foreclosed homes in package deals. The REO properties, like those that have already been sold to investor groups, will have to be rented and not resold for a period of time and may not be immediately “flipped” for a profit.

A large scale sell-off of foreclosures held by Fannie Mae would reduce the number of vacant and foreclosed homes waiting to be sold throughout the country, and could also act to artificially push home values higher as a result of fewer homes listed for consumers in the general marketplace. However, it would come at an expensive price as the Federal Reserve buys home mortgages that have defaulted.

Read More:  http://www.moneyjournal.com/mass-foreclosure-sales/

Home prices finally returning to normal

By Les Christie @CNNMoney March 5, 2013: 9:25 AM ET

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

After years of wild swings, the U.S. housing market is slowly returning to normal.

The latest forecast from Fiserv (FISV) Case-Shiller predicts home prices will increase by an average of 3.3% annually over the five years ending September, 2017.

Home prices: Biggest winners and losers

These cities will see the biggest swings in home prices through the 12 months ending September 30, according to Fiserv's estimates.

City	Forecast change
Medford, Ore.	9.7%
Santa Fe	8.1%
Billings, Mont.	5.5%
Syracuse, N.Y.	5%
Yuma, Ariz.	4.8%
Orlando, Fla.	-8.3
Merced, Calif.	-8.5%
Riverside, Calif.	-8.6%
Warren, Mich.	-9%
Miami	-10.7%

Source: Fiserv

"2012 was the first year since 1997 that the housing market has resembled something [close to] normal," said David Stiff, Fiserv's chief economist. "For the past 15 years, home price changes and sales volumes have either been boosted by a bubble mentality or crushed by crash psychology."

From 1998 until the housing bubble peaked in 2006,home prices grew by 5% or more a year. But once the bubble burst, home prices plunged, falling 30.5% through the end of September 2012.

Related: Million-dollar foreclosures

Read More: http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/05/real_estate/home-prices/index.html?section=money_realestate&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_realestate+%28Real+Estate%29

Home Prices Post Biggest Gain in Six Years

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By Shanthi Bharatwaj02/05/13 - 09:33 AM EST

Stock quotes in this article: XHB, IYR 

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NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Home prices rose 8.3% in December from a year earlier, the biggest gain since May 2006, according to CoreLogic.

More on XHB

• Government May Stay Involved in the Housing Market After All

• Mortgage Default Rates Are Years Away From 'Normal'

All but four states -- Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois and Delaware -- posted increases.

Prices rose 0.4% in December from November, the 10th consecutive monthly advance.

See if (XHB) is in our portfolio

Excluding foreclosures and short sales, which sell at deep discounts to the market price, home prices were up 7.5% on a year-on-year basis and 0.9% month-on-month.

The states with the highest home-price appreciation in December were Arizona (20%), Nevada (15.3%), Idaho (14.6%), California (12.6%) and Hawaii (12.5%).

"We are heading into 2013 with home prices on the rebound," said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. "All signals point to a continued improvement in the fundamentals underpinning the U.S. housing market recovery."

Is It Safe to Sell Your House Now?

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By RUTH SIMON

It might finally be time to come out of the basement.

Seven years after the housing market began to collapse, rising prices and thinner inventories are presenting new opportunities for home sellers. Some hot markets are even seeing multiple offers for the same property—a phenomenon rarely seen since the boom years—as buyers become more confident and seek to take advantage of today's near-record-low mortgage rates.

Home prices nationally climbed 8.3% in December from the same period a year earlier, according to CoreLogic, CLGX +3.14% a real-estate analytics company. The increase was the largest since May 2006 and the 10th consecutive monthly gain. The CoreLogic figures include foreclosures and other distressed sales.

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A home for sale this month in Larkspur, Calif.

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The gains are good news for would-be sellers who have been stranded on the sidelines since home prices peaked in 2006. Nearly one in four homeowners and renters say now is a good time to sell a home, according to a survey released this month by Fannie Mae,FNMA +0.71% the government-backed mortgage company, up from 11% a year earlier.

"You will unambiguously see more people test the water," says Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist in Leesburg, Va. He expects home prices to rise another 3% this year.

Thinking about selling? You are likely to find a buyer more quickly and at a better price if you factor in local market conditions and recent sales before setting an asking price, burnish your home's Internet profile and plan ahead for a home appraisal.

Read More:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323764804578314550225871358.html