National Realty News

Last week Warren Buffet will rebound in 2011, today Sam Zell (another billionaire) said essentially the same thing. Zell speaking with Bloomberg says the recovery will start at year end and gain strength in the middle of next.

The concern I have is not the financial markets now, it is the relationship between the markets and the government. The unknown regulatory hurdles and expenses are what concern me going into the coming year.

Everyone is basing the real estate recovery on the general economic recovery, but we forget that the economy was driven by real estate growth and development between 2004 and 2006. So now we are back 7 years before the general economy was doing positive things.

Since that time we have added many more challenges from the government in the form of regulations and taxation which will hamper future economic recoveries. Add into that all of the soft landing programs that have kept us from hitting the bottom in residential real estate and it is hard to forecast accurately when the recovery will really start.

Zell made his fortune investing in real estate, and sold Chicago-based Equity Office Properties Trust to Blackstone Group LP in New York for $39 billion in 2007. He said in yesterday’s interview that the U.S. housing market will start recovering toward the end of 2010 and strengthen in the middle of 2011.

Now chairman of Equity Residential, the largest publicly traded U.S. apartment owner, Zell said real estate investment trusts will have enough cash to boost dividends in the future. Almost 70 percent of REITS tracked by Morningstar Inc. have cut or eliminated their payouts since the second quarter of 2008 as commercial real estate values plunged.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Zell Predicts Real Estate Recovery Starts End of 2010

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February was not a good month for new home sales. The weak economy and brutal weather contributed to the moribund numbers on new housing starts. The numbers are expected to drop from last years terrible February and this years weak January.

Expectation that housing development will improve in March are far fetched looking at how bad the weather has been, the weak housing market, and the lack of movement in the marketplace.

Mounting foreclosures are making it harder to clear inventories, keeping pressure on prices and discouraging new construction. The economy has yet to create the sustained job growth that could invigorate housing demand and is one reason Federal Reserve policy makers will probably keep interest rates near zero after their meeting today.
The report definitely reflects the severe weather effect, said Ellen Zentner, senior U.S. macroeconomist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. Housing has now got enough support that it has stabilized. With or without support, the housing recovery will be slow going.
Starts on dwellings were projected to fall after a previously reported 591,000 in January, according to the median forecast of 71 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Estimates ranged from 510,000 to 610,000.

The government officials remind me of the parade scene in Animal House where the Kevin Bacon character is trying to do crowd control? “Remain Calm, All is Well!” Washington and the NAHB are trying to put the best spin possible on the housing market yet is keeps slipping further and further into disarray.

The building permit numbers are looking weak which is a sign on future development. If the snow was keeping everyone from building and the builders were confident they could sell their houses this number would be zooming up. Instead it is drifting down from historic lows.

Yet all we hear is “Remain Calm, All is Well!”

Just tell that to the 64,000 construction workers that were laid off in February.

Building permits, a sign of future construction, decreased 1.6 percent to a 612,000 annual rate after a 4.7 percent drop in January. Permits were forecast to decrease to a 601,000 annual pace, according to the survey median.
Construction of single-family houses dropped 0.6 percent to a 499,000 rate in February.
Work on multifamily homes, such as townhouses and apartment buildings, slumped 30 percent to an annual rate of 76,000, the lowest in four months.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Weather and Economy Hurt New Home Construction in February

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If you are looking to purchase a home in the near future, watch the mortgage rates. Due to the Federal Reserve buying up mortgage paper and a severe recession we have enjoyed historically low mortgage rates recently.

That all might change.

And with this change the cost of housing may rise.

If rates do go up sharply, that will have a big effect on home buyers. Richard Redmond, a mortgage adviser at All California Mortgage in Larkspur, Calif., offers the example of a couple with combined pretax income of $100,000 a year and debt obligations (excluding mortgage) of $500 a month. At a 5% mortgage rate, he figures, the couple could qualify for a loan big enough to buy a $590,000 house, assuming a 20% down payment. At 6%, that would fall to $540,000.

Since late 2008, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages have been available for people with strong credit records at around 5%, near the lowest levels since the 1950s, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s heavy purchases of mortgage securities. At the end of March, the Fed is due to stop buying the securities. Most mortgage analysts think the immediate effect of the Fed’s withdrawal will be modest. via WSJ.com

The net effect will be additional downward pricing pressure on homes. Not the news we want to hear.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Mortgage Rates Rising Could Hurt Real Estate Sales

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If you thought the scams being run on Craigslist were just on ripping off prospective tenants as we talked about before here, you are missing the other side of the coin. Landlords are in just as much danger.

The new scam involves renters sending fake cashiers checks and money orders. The landlord is thrilled to receive the money, deposits it, and then something happens to blow up the deal. It is not until the landlord has refunded the money do they find out that the cashiers check was fake and they are on the hook to return the money.

The scam artist is long gone before the landlord finds this out.

The ICC continues to receive complaints about potential renters who have written counterfeit checks to cover deposits only to back out of the agreements and ask for refunds, investigators say.

In another common ruse, scammers duplicate legitimate real estate postings, often using the brokers’ real names, but re-post the ads using fake e-mail addresses.

When potential renters or buyers request information via e-mail, the owner asks them to send money. Sometimes, the scammers claim they are doing missionary work and the money is sent to destinations in foreign countries, investigators say.

More at  Mlive.com.

If you are a landlord and have come across one of these scams, put the email in the comments. The previous post for tenants has saved many families thousands of dollars and many headaches by helping each other out.

And if you have been ripped off, file a complaint here with the IC3.

Thanks

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Rental Scams on Craigslist – Landlords Beware

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You and I both know that this site has taken a tough look at the real estate market. I think it has been objective, but I am sure that others will disagree.

My perspective has always been from the consumers point of view, not the industries. As such, I am concerned how the real estate industry best serves the consumer and looks out for their needs while providing interesting and pertinent information for the professionals.

On that note…

I found this compendium article at Business Week that is essentially a talking point list for those in the industry that need positive things to say.

Use it as you see fit.

Here are the key points I dredged out that can be used to motivate a buyer…

• “I would bet even odds that we’re at a bottom and that we’re going to see improvement in the coming months,” said Karl Case, co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index and a professor of economics at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
• “When people get jobs, that’s when they move or decide to buy a bigger house,” he said.
• “The underlying trend is turning positive,” said Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York.
• “This is an important step in the right direction,” Peter Hooper, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York, and his colleagues wrote in a report to clients last month. Mortgage originations for the purchase of a home will rise to $745 billion this year and $822 billion next year, the highest since 2008, from $740 billion in 2009, according to forecasts from the Washington-based Mortgage Bankers Association.
• The average household had 177.8 percent of the income needed to purchase a property in January, the highest since a record 184 percent in April 2009, when mortgage rates tumbled to 4.78 percent, according to data from the Realtors’ association.
• “We don’t anticipate a massive widening of spreads once the Fed stops buying,” he said. “It will be a few basis points here and there.” As a result, he sees mortgage rates remaining “about where they are now.”
• “If we get a rebound, you could see excess supply disappear very quickly,” Lawler said.
• “The underlying trend in home sales is for gradual improvement,” Maki of Barclays Capital said. “While activity will remain at low levels for some time, the housing bust is essentially over.”

If you have been looking for positive talking points here they are. All I ask is that you use them for good and not evil.

 Good luck out there in the spring selling season!

You have been armed.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Spring Real Estate Talking Points – An Article Full of Positives

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If you are working in the real estate business this sentence should scare the hell out of you.

About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale.

It scares me. This overhang is so big the rounding error is 2 million homes.

Think about it, the Washington Post where I got this quote from can only pinpoint it to an approximation of 2 million homes.

I hope you are saying phrases in the back of your head you would not want your minister to hear.

This is why I and so many others who follow the industry are scared. We have created an environment where the government, the banking industry, and the real estate cartel have all tried to ignore this problem to stabilize the market.

YET THE PROBLEM HAS NOT GONE AWAY.

It has gotten worse. Much worse.

Until the overhang of potential foreclosures is fixed the real estate market will not fully recover.

We are all blowing smoke until then if we tell people that the recovery is right around the corner.

We need to clean up the mess first, not shove it into a closet where we think no one will see it, and then we can invite people in to look at the house.

That will be the day the real estate industry gets it’s credibility back.

About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale. Some economists project it could take nearly three years before all these homes have been put on the market and purchased by new owners. And the number of pending foreclosures could grow much bigger over the coming year as more distressed borrowers become delinquent and then, if they can’t obtain mortgage relief, wade through the foreclosure process, which often takes more than a year to complete.

As these foreclosed properties add to the supply of homes for sale, they could undercut housing prices, which have increased modestly through December, according to the most recent figures in the S&P/Case-Shiller home prices index. That rise partly reflected a slowdown in the flow of foreclosed homes onto the market. via The Washington Post

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

The Foreclosure Tsunami That No One Is Talking About

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I don’t know about you but I hate tornadoes. Seriously.

So it does not warm my heart to realize I live between the 2nd worst and the 9th worst cities in the country for tornado activity. Ugh…

Give me a hurricane any day of the week. You know you are going to get clobbered with a hurricane but you have time to prepare. But a tornado is like a doberman. You know there is a chance he will turn on you, but you are never sure when or how it will get you.

That being said, here are the

Top 10 Cities For Tornado Activity

RANK

CITY

ACF (%)

DISTURBED LAND AREA (ACRES)

1

Little Rock, AR

0.02453

197

2

Atlanta, GA

0.02369

191

3

Indianapolis, IN

0.01852

149

4

Birmingham, AL

0.01748

141

5

Macon, GA

0.01683

135

6

Jackson, MS

0.01360

109

7

Shreveport, LA

0.01169

  94

8

Montgomery, AL

0.01016

  82

9

Columbus, GA

0.00901

  72

10

Columbia, SC

0.00889

  71

via Raycom Weather

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Top 10 Cities For Tornado Activity

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A sign that the big banks are focusing on core fundamentals and not esoteric investments happened today. Citigroup is selling their Citi Property Investors division to Apollo Management. The reasons for the sale are 2 fold. One, these investments are tanking. They are not performing and are a drag to the company. Better to divest them while the company is underwater and still has government investments in it.

The other reason is that big pappy, the federal government and 27% owner of the company, told them to get rid of assets. And when big pappy speaks, you listen. Of course, this subverts our whole economic system when the political arm directly injects itself into the business of business. But, who cares anymore, right?

All I do know is the timing was right for Apollo to buy. Even if the market still goes down, all the factors in the deal point to a bad deal being made by Citigroup. They were told to sell an asset, they did, and they have cover if the deal is bad.

Such is life in the new America…

The inclusion of Citi Property Investors to Apollo’s portfolio will more than triple the private equity firm’s real estate assets, the agency said. City Property Investors’ portfolio includes 65 investments in 26 countries with a net asset value of $3.5 billion, according to the agency. Apollo signed a letter of intent and the deal may take as long as three months to close, the agency said.

The U.S. government stepped in to prop up Citigroup at the height of the financial crisis in October 2008 when officials at the U.S. Treasury feared the bank’s crumbling financial condition could destabilize financial markets worldwide.

On March 4, Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit told a congressional panel that he had sold off many proprietary trading businesses, including the Phibro energy trading unit, and was focused on trading services for clients. via Reuters

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

CitiGroup Selling Real Estate Division to Apollo

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Another week, another tepid swing of the bat by the White House to fix the housing crisis before the midterm elections.

If you are short of time this is as succinct an analysis as I could offer on the new Federal Short Sale Program offered by the White House to fix the foreclosure problems plaguing the country.

The trillion dollar foreclosure program will not be fixed by any band-aid or government program. The notion that we can fix systemic problems that took years to create overnight by a program or two is crazy, but it seems that Washington thinks this is the way to do it. All this does is perpetuate the problem and draw it out.

Here is the analysis by the NY Times:

The problem is highlighted by a routine case in Phoenix. Chris Paul, a real estate agent, has a house he is trying to sell on behalf of its owner, who owes $150,000. Mr. Paul has an offer for $48,000, but the bank holding the mortgage says it wants at least $90,000. The frustrated owner is now contemplating foreclosure.

To bring the various parties to the table — the homeowner, the lender that services the loan, the investor that owns the loan, the bank that owns the second mortgage on the property — the government intends to spread its cash around.

Under the new program, the servicing bank, as with all modifications, will get $1,000. Another $1,000 can go toward a second loan, if there is one. And for the first time the government would give money to the distressed homeowners themselves. They will get $1,500 in “relocation assistance.”

Now let’s be serious for a brief moment and look at this situation realistically. A bank that is seeing a short sale and is upside down on the offer by $101,000 is now going to throw manpower it does not have to earn an extra $1,000?

Have these folks on Washington not waited on the phone for Bank of America’s mortgage guys to answer? You have to be kidding me.

The difference between reality on the streets and the ideology in Washington is getting further and further apart. And the sad thing is, if Washington had kept out of the process we would have had a market by now. The short term pain would have been greater but there would be hope for the future.

Now all we have is death by a thousand paper cuts.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

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Do my eyes deceive me? Is America slowly climbing out of the debt cycle that has come close to choking it in recent years. (ed. For everyone but the government it has…) The American consumer is shying away from home equity loans and cash out refinancing on their mortgages and are now bringing money to the table when they are refinancing their mortgages.

The deleveraging of America is happening right before our eyes and for some it is welcome news. Of course, there is a consequence to this, the money that was coming out was keeping our economy humming. Think about it for a second. If money is being saved it is not being spent creating jobs and buy “stuff”.

But the irrational purchasing during the past decade may have kept employment high and businesses humming, it was still an artificial bump. The consumers bringing money to the table to refinancing their mortgages is a great example. They will be able to save on costs like Private Mortgage Insurance and have the opportunity to qualify for lower mortgage rates.

The savings on these cost will provide a more disposable income for families, income that will not be predicated on debt that must be re-payed down the line.

America is wising up…

Now the pendulum in consumer psychology appears to be swinging toward reduction of household debt — whether on credit cards or mortgages.

In Freddie Mac’s latest quarterly survey of refinancings, 33% of homeowners put cash into the deal to lower their mortgage balances, the highest percentage ever. By contrast, only 27% of refinancers took cash out — the lowest percentage on record.

Why shift money from savings into your house? Nothaft says a small percentage of refinancers — including himself and his wife — traditionally have preferred to lower their mortgage balances whenever possible.

There are at least two key rationales for doing so, Nothaft says. No. 1: If interest rates are low and you’re getting minuscule returns on your bank savings or money market funds, paying down your home loan may well provide you a better return on your investment. via the LA Times

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Cash-In Refinancing Gaining in Popularity

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There is concern that the residential real estate market could be facing the dreaded double dip. To those who are not stock market mavens this essentially means that the short recovery we have seen will be followed by another downturn.

The idea was brought up by Brian Taylor of the hedge fund Pine River. And it does align with my observations.

We had a slight uptick in the market in the 4th quarter of the year. This coincided with tremendous incentives offered by the Federal Government for new home buyers. Essentially the government subsidized the upturn not the marketplace.

Now that the effects of the government subsidy have run their course, the market is back in control. And the market does not have confidence we have hit a true bottom. Nervous buyers and sellers do not create a great deal of confidence and lower prices are typically the result.

My bet is with the Pine River team. This year will be one of nerves and concern until the marketplace sees the strong potential of profits.

Hedge fund firm Pine River, which makes big bets on housing, is bracing for a double dip in that market, its chief executive officer said on Tuesday.

“There are still issues in the housing markets and it would not surprise us to see the recovery turn down,” Brian Taylor, who founded the $1.6 billion hedge fund eight years ago, said at the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit in New York.via Reuters

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Does Residential Real Estate Market Face a Double Dip?

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If the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, is correct the residential real estate market will rebound in 2011. Buffet, in his letter to Berkshire Hathaway stockholders, thinks that the demand curve will turn at that state and the residential markets will start to improve.

I am sure this news is not what real estate agents are hoping to hear, I tend to agree. The housing market still has way too much overhang from foreclosures and short sales for buyers to have confidence investing in homes. Add to that a nervous economy, it would be foolish to think that all will be okay this summer.

So real estate agents,  tighten that belt and continue to build your systems this year so you are ready for 2011.

“Within a year or so, residential housing problems should largely be behind us,” Buffett wrote Saturday in his annual letter to the shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway. “Prices will remain far below ‘bubble’ levels, of course, but for every seller or lender hurt by this there will be a buyer who benefits. Indeed, many families that couldn’t afford to buy an appropriate home a few years ago now find it well within their means.”

Record foreclosures flooded a U.S. real estate market already glutted with unsold property, causing housing starts to fall.

“People thought it was good news a few years back when housing starts — the supply side of the picture — were running about 2 million annually,” wrote Buffett, 79, chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire. “But household formations — the demand side — only amounted to about 1.2 million.”

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Warren Buffet Predicts Real Estate Rebound — In 2011

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Do these people have a clue?

Are they trying to destroy the market?

Is there nothing that the government thinks that they can not fix?

(No, this is not an old Batman sitcom introduction, I am being dead serious.)

The Obama administration is looking to stop all foreclosures until they go through a review by the Home Affordable Modification Program. That is right, he is willing to destroy the mortgage market to protect a few and employee thousands of bureaucrats.

Guys, government is not always the answer. The markets need to find a footing, not be forever beholden to some faceless bureaucrat. I am dead serious here.

There is a cost everytime the government gets involved. If the housing market does not know the rules it can not correct. It will be stuck until investors and homebuyers have some confidence. All velocity will cease, as we see now with the lowest new home sales in 50 years this January.

Foreclosures are part of the fix. Sure it is a painful fix, but it is a necessary one. The markets need a foundation.

Our present governmental officials think they are the foundation.

They are sadly mistaken.

The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan.

“It is one of the many ideas under consideration in the administration’s ongoing housing stabilization efforts,” Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in an e-mail. “This proposal has not been approved and there are no immediate planned announcements on the issue.”

She confirmed the authenticity of the document, which hasn’t been made public.  via Bloomberg.com.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

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I guess the stimulus extension is not doing it’s job…

Ugh.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that new home sales dropped 11.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 309,000 units, the lowest level on records going back nearly a half century. The big drop was a surprise to economists who had expected sales would rise about 5 percent over December’s pace. via the AJC

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

New Home Sales Drop 11.2 Percent In January

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A combination of weather and low demand has led to a 13 year low in demand for mortgage applications according to The Mortgage Bankers Association. Demand for mortgages has not been this low since 1997.

Hopefully the market slowdown is a statistical blip due to the harsh winter that so much of the country has been dealing with. Unfortunately the uncertainty of the market and economy has all of us scoreboard watching. The demand for new mortgages is the canary in the coal mine for the real estate industry.

If mortgage applications drop typically closing are not on the horizon.

A continued drop in demand for purchase loans, a tentative early indicator of home sales, would not bode well for the hard-hit U.S. housing market, which remains highly vulnerable to setbacks and heavily reliant on government intervention.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported an 8.5 percent decline in its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended February 19.

The four-week moving average of mortgage applications, which smoothes the volatile weekly figures, was up 1.6 percent.

The MBA’s seasonally adjusted purchase index fell 7.3 percent, the lowest level since May 1997.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Demand Hits 13 Year Low For Mortgage Applications

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Short sales of residential real estate, homes typically worth less than the bank is owned, are rising dramatically as a percentage of all real estate transactions. The Federal tax incentive had kept the numbers lower through November but it seems those buyers are now out of the marketplace.

With the overhang of mortgages not being paid on and borrowers upside down I do expect to see more and more news along these lines in the coming months.

Short sales have jumped from about 10 percent of distressed property sales during most of last year to 15.9 percent of home purchase transactions in January.

By contrast damaged real estate owned or bank owned properties accounted for only 13.4 percent and move-in ready bank-owned accounted for 13.8 percent of all sales, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance Monthly Survey of Real Estate Market Conditions.

As recently as November of 2009, short sales accounted for 12.4 percent of the home purchase market, behind move-in ready REO at 12.6 percent and nearly even with damaged REO transactions at 12.3 percent. via UPI

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

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If you are looking for a new home there is a very good chance you are thinking of more than your immediate family. A report from Coldwell Banker shows that 37 percent of new home buyers are looking for a larger home to support multiple generations.

With the economy in rough patch and families not sure of what the future will bring having the extra space to have Mom or Dad move in to help with the bills or give a place for the kids to return if they are out of work is more and more important.

Let’s face it, people are scared. Even if they are confident in their future and are looking to make a move up, they are still worried about their families. If you are selling real estate, especially the larger homes, a great question to ask potential buyers is “Would having some extra space for a family member to move in be of interest?”

If 37 percent of Coldwell Banker agents are seeing this then selling the larger homes in your area may just become a little bit easier.

Thirty-seven percent of the company’s real estate agents polled in January said that in the past year, buyers were increasingly shopping for homes that fit more than one generation. Almost 70 percent of the agents said they expect economic conditions will drive still greater demand for this type of housing over the next year.

“More buyers are pooling investments, considering bringing mom and dad into it,” said Diann Patton, a Coldwell Banker real estate consumer specialist based in Grass Valley, California, in an interview with Reuters.

Buyers were primarily driven by financial concerns when deciding to combine generations in a household, the survey found. Health concerns were the second most common reason and strong family bonds a distant third. via Reuters

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Buyers Looking To Buys Houses To Fit More Than One Generation

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A Moscow, Ohio man, Terry Hoskins, was losing his $350,000 home to foreclosure over a $160,000 debt. After a long fight with the bank, including the bank rejecting a $170,000 sale, he had enough.

So he bulldozed the home. Crushed it. Destroyed it.

Hoskins said he’d gotten a $170,000 offer from someone to pay off the house, but the bank refused, saying they could get more from selling it in foreclosure. Hoskins told News 5’s Courtis Fuller that he issued the bank an ultimatum.

“I’ll tear it down before I let you take it,” Hoskins told them. And that’s exactly what Hoskins did.

The Moscow man used a bulldozer two weeks ago to level the home he’d built, and the sprawling country home is now rubble, buried under a coating of snow.
“As far as what the bank is going to get, I plan on giving them back what was on this hill exactly (as) it was,” Hoskins said. “I brought it out of the ground and I plan on putting it back in the ground.”
Hoskins’ business in Amelia is scheduled to go up for auction on March 2, and he told Fuller he’s considering leveling that building, too.
RiverHills Bank declined to comment on the situation, but Hoskins said his actions were intended to send a message.
“Well, to probably make banks think twice before they try to take someone’s home, and if they are going to take it wrongly, the end result will be them tearing their house down like I did mine,” Hoskins said. via WLWT.com

What is interesting to me is of course the radical action taken by the homeowner. I am not sure of the legality of it, but the emotion sure does hit a cord with a frustrated population.

The banks have been negligent in managing the foreclosure and short sale processes in the past few years. Too many homeowners are living at the whim of an anonymous banker not sure when they will move out and lose their home or if the bank will allow them to sell at a discounted price in a reasonable time frame.

The one thing that does bug me is the bank not letting a sale for more than the mortgage go through thinking they could make a bigger profit off of Hoskin’s misfortune. There are no winners in this situation, but it is an object lesson for everyone to learn from.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Man Bulldozes Home Before Foreclosure Sale

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Now it is no surprise where my politics lean if you read this site regularly, but I promise you I would cast just as much skepticism if a Republican President acted the same way.

President Obama is coming to Las Vegas for the day and is going to fix the housing crisis. With his sycophantic media in tow, our glorious leader has announced that he found an extra 1.5 billion dollars lying around that he will use to fix the housing problem once and for all.

So all of you poor souls living though a foreclosure or facing on, never fear, your president will make it all go away.

Here is how an honest conversation between our President and a Las Vegas resident would go.

Wait you ask, how will you do that?

I am glad you asked. He will give the money to the local housing bureaucracies to use to staff up and analyze your problems. Then after long and careful consideration they will create a maze of forms and interviews to determine who is going to be helped.

But how will that help me, I could lose my house any day now?

Silly people, it is not there to help the individual, it is there to give hope. Right now in the 5 states that will be getting this money, Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and your beloved Nevada, I have politicians that dearly need my support. If I do not do something for them soon, they will vote against Cap and Trade and Healthcare reform.

So, sure you may lose your house. But think of it as you taking it on the chin for the greater good. I need those politicians.

So you are telling me this is just a political stunt to curry favor and it will not make a difference to those of us suffering?

Well, I would not say it that way. Instead, it would be better to think of it as a foundation for hope and change. Through optimism this program might change how the nation thinks about the problem and it will all get better. I promise.

—

And that folks is all that is going on today. A trillion dollar problem that has a 1.5 billion dollar fix for the media to digest and report. They need something to tell us amidst the bad news.

Obama’s move, detailed by aides in advance of his town hall here Friday, is the latest by a White House determined to show it is helping families rebound from a deep recession. The downturn is taking an election-year toll on Obama’s party as voter frustration builds.
Obama was to announce that housing finance agencies in the five hardest-hit states in the housing crisis will receive $1.5 billion to help spur local solutions to the problem. Those five are Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada.
The policy wrinkle comes during a two-day Western trip with different agendas for the president. He will be back in town-hall mode, a venue that aides say allows him to connect with people and distance himself from the messy process of Washington governing.
The president is also out to help vulnerable senators protect their seats and, in turn, gain as much legislative leverage as he can. via myway

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Relief or Pandering – Obama Comes To Vegas To Help With Housing Crisis

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File this one under the heading “That’s The Ticket”, because it will be very hard for me to believe that the Federal Reserve will just dump nearly 1.5 trillion dollars in housing debt.

Yet that is the word coming out of meetings at the Fed. They are setting a long term goal of getting out of the mortgage finance business they fell into when they bought up the loans at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

But they are foolish to think that that much debt will be absorbed by the marketplace unless they take a huge hit. And although they can print the money to take the hit (more madness) they will not find happy buyers of bad paper.

This is the problem with the long term failure of easy money. We have too many homes owned by too many people who can not afford them in an economy that is too fragile. Instead of taking our lumps quickly and painfully and resetting the marketplace, we are slowly unwinding it.

• We have too many empty homes right now.
• We have too many people living in homes not paying a mortgage waiting for the foreclosure notice.
• We have too many foreclosures that are pending because bankers are overwhelmed or want to manage their losses and prolong the agony.

We have no firm footing in real estate folks.

There is no reason for the Federal Reserve to be in the mortgage business. However, that train has left the station. They made the decision to slow down the pain, save the banks, and protect the economy. Understandable.

But, there is still the mess after the storm. We have too many people not knowing when the foreclosure notice is coming, too many people uncertain of what tomorrow will bring, and too many people just plain scared.

The Federal Reserve is stuck with the housing debt until we have answers and people are moving forward. Until then the Federal Reserve will just have to be the biggest housing lender in the country.

Central bankers are planning to eventually remove $1.43 trillion of housing debt from the balance sheet after critics such as Stanford University economist John Taylor accused them of straying beyond monetary policy. Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said yesterday that the Fed’s purchases of housing debt expose it to demands from politicians to support other industries.
Some of the Fed’s emergency actions “blurred the line between monetary policy and fiscal policy, thereby increasing the risk to the Fed’s independence,” Plosser said in a speech. “These policies have veered toward deciding how public money should be allocated across firms and sectors of the economy.”
Policy makers agreed that it “will eventually be appropriate” to “return to holding only securities issued by the U.S. Treasury,” according to minutes of their January 26-27 meeting released yesterday.

Update:

Greg Swann takes a slightly different look on the topic but comes to the same basic conclusion. We are all on welfare now: “The government’s assistance in the housing market now is less about giving us a soft landing than it is about having us furiously flap our arms to stay aloft.”

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Federal Reserve Sets Goal To Get Out Of Mortgage Financing

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