Site blog for forclosures, Broward county properties for sale, and All south florida property listings.

Homeowners were worried they may be disqualified from claiming the first-time or repeat homebuyer tax credit when the original June 30 deadline seemed to be unchanging and, due to closing difficulties, many homeowners believed they would be unable to meet the timeframe given to claim the credit. However, the extension of the tax credit deadline to September 30 gave many homeowners relief since closing on homes that had met the April 30 deadline to be under contract seemed more possible since extra time was available.

However, there was concern over the tax credit and the inability of homeowners to pay for the homes that they had gotten at such an affordable rate. Home prices, mortgage interest rates, and the tax credit all combined to make more homes affordable to a wider variety of potential homeowners. However, there was a drop in home sales after the tax credit expiration date in April and many worried that housing problems would continue since homes were not being purchased.

While there have been more and more homeowners in need of mortgage assistance in their current homes, there was a report that new home sales were up from May. The report stated, “New home sales in June were up from record lows in May” but there are still troubles in certain areas of the country.

New home sales are said to be struggling, however, or for those who have a more positive view, may simply have a tougher road to travel in the future due to the fact that many homeowners are having to leave existing homes, which opens doors to homebuyers. Many builders have seen slow business over the past months due to the fact that many homebuyers, rather than build a new home, are simply looking at existing homes that are open on the market, at affordable prices, and can be obtained with a low mortgage rate.

There are mixed feelings as to where the housing market is headed, as some see negative numbers in the coming months while others believe that only improvements are to come.  There is a consensus, though, that the struggling job market is the cause of many housing market difficulties that are being experienced. While it is obviously hoped that the housing market will continue to grow, many commentators point to the fact that unless more Americans are given a stable income then more homeowners will continue to suffer and unemployed men and women will be unable to either buy or keep a home.

By Lee McFarland

http://www.rwbpress.com/2010/07/30/first-time-homebuyer-tax-credit-extension-helps-homebuyers-and-new-home-sales-rise-in-june

Sure, $2 million is a drop in the bucket for many of the buyers around Miami Beach's swank North Bay Road area, where homes begin in this price range. But for these buyers, many of whom are wealthy foreigners, cash is burning a hole in their pockets. The traditional route of bank financing, down payment and mortgage is foreign to their purchasing process.

"A cash buyer may be someone who is borrowing from somewhere on their own, they may have the money in the bank, they may own the bank, but their purchase is not contingent on a finance deal," Esther Percal, senior vice president of Esslinger Wooten Maxwell in Miami Beach, told Housing Watch.

Percal says that 60 percent of the cash buyers she deals with hail from Europe and several South American countries. Her most recent were an Argentinean family with an unfortunate family incident that has prompted them to make a move to the States, and they chose Miami Beach for putting down roots. There's also the Brazilian businessman who does business in Tampa and Jacksonville, and visits so often that he decided to buy here. "For him, a $2-million purchase was a no-brainer and a $6-million one was a serious consideration," she said. There are also Venezuelan cash buyers, but not at these price ranges.

Europeans are the most prevalent cash buyers, and they're buying with a purpose. Many of them have been wanting to build credit here and when they plan to do business in the United States they want to establish a line of credit, perhaps even attain a visa. They've got the cash and their own way of conducting business which often is not contingent on financing.

One prime example of such a buyer is a French businessman who Percal recently closed a deal for. Although he had the cash for his purchase, he still sought financing from the bank. He was financing through HSBC, known as the world's local bank, and was astounded at how lax the business practices are in the U.S. He had a personal deadline to meet, but with the deal taking a total of two weeks, that did not fit his schedule. He was surprised at how long the surveys took and could not comprehend why the appraisals could not be done jointly. His frustration was so great that he called in a personal friend, the bank's president, and asked him to lean on the folks to speed up the process.

"He personally complained to me and commented that his transaction's lengthy process was probably why U.S. banks are all in trouble, because they are slow and disorganized," Percal said.

This situation is actually very common in this market, in which banks are being overly cautious. They are purposely appraising homes below value for example, a $1 million home is being appraised at $500,000, so non-cash buyers actually need much more of a down payment. In the luxury market, 10 to 20 percent for a down payment just doesn't cut it.

Percal says, "Cash is king. It has been a long time since most of us in luxury real estate have had to deal with financing and, frankly, cash buying relieves stress and alleviates red tape. This has been the case for the past two years."

There's optimism, though, that the market will bounce back, and brokers still say -- not surprisingly -- that real estate is still the most sound investment.

By Josie Gulliksen

http://www.housingwatch.com/2010/07/30/miami-beach-real-estate-market-awash-in-foreign-cash-buyers?icid=sphere_aol_realestate_housingwatch

Despite recent increases in a number of the industry’s home price measurements, and even an uptick in the company’s own index of residential property prices, Fiserv Inc. says the gains will be short-lived. The Wisconsin-based information technology firm is forecasting home prices to fall by nearly 5 percent .

According to the Fiserv Case-Shiller Indexes, which covers trend data in 384 U.S. markets, single-family home prices in the United States rose 2 percent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to a year earlier, Fiserv reported Thursday.

It was the first year-over-year gain recorded by the company since 2006, but Fiserv says the national numbers mask the broad declines seen in most markets. Home prices were actually lower in 303 of the 384 metro areas included in the Q1 study.

Fiserv expects home prices nationally to fall by another 4.9 percent in the year ahead, as unemployment remains high, mortgage rates rise, and markets such as Florida,

Arizona, and Nevada add even more distressed properties to their inventories.

“The stabilization of residential real estate markets will take many years as buyers and sellers try to find price levels that clear large inventories of vacant homes from the market,” said David Stiff, Fiserv’s chief economist.

“Consequently, we expect to see prices bounce up and down around their lows for the next two to three years, especially in markets that experienced the largest home prices bubbles,” Stiff continued. “This will result in alternating bouts of optimism and pessimism regarding the housing market recovery… [and] will make it difficult to know exactly when the housing market has reached its bottom.”

Steep home price declines are expected to continue in markets that have been hurt most by the housing crisis. From the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, Fiserv projects average home prices in Nevada to drop another 11.1 percent. In Arizona the company predicts a decline of 10.8 percent by March of next year, and Florida is likely to see prices fall another 8.8 percent.

According to the Fiserv Case-Shiller Indexes, at the end of the first quarter 2010, the median U.S. home price was $166,000. The median monthly mortgage payment fell slightly to 13 percent of median family income.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released earlier this week showed that prices were up 1.2 percent in May compared to April, and were 4.6 higher than May 2009. But Standard & Poor’s put forth the same prognosis as Fiserv, that the gains were making only a temporary showing.

By: Carrie Bay

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/fiserv-predicts-home-prices-to-drop-another-49-in-year-ahead-2010-07-29

A new report published by RealtyTrac Thursday shows that 75 percent of the nation’s largest metro areas posted increases in foreclosure activity during the first half of 2010.

RealtyTrac says it’s seeing early signs that foreclosures may have peaked in some hard-hit markets, but with three-quarters of the nation’s most populated metros showing continued increases, the numbers illustrate just how fragile the housing recovery really is.

“The fragile stability achieved in many local housing markets hinges on improvements in the underlying economy, specifically job growth,” said James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac’s CEO. “If unemployment remains persistently high and foreclosure prevention efforts only delay the inevitable, then we could continue to see increased foreclosure activity and a corresponding weakness in home prices in many metro areas.”

According to the company’s Midyear 2010 Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report, 154 of the 206 U.S. metro areas with a population of at least 200,000 posted year-over-

year increases in foreclosure activity. Four states – Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona – accounted for all top 10 metro foreclosure rates.

Despite a drop-off in activity, Las Vegas continued to post the nation’s highest metro foreclosure rate in the first half of the year, with 6.60 percent of its homes, or one in 15, receiving a foreclosure filing – more than five times the national average. A total of 53,525 Las Vegas properties received a filing during the six-month period, a decrease of nearly 15 percent from the previous six months and a decrease of nearly 9 percent from the first half of 2009.

Foreclosure activity in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida metro fell nearly 22 percent from the previous six months and was down nearly 30 percent from the first half of 2009, but it still documented the nation’s second highest foreclosure rate. During the first half of this year, 4.98 percent of its housing units, or one in 20, received a foreclosure filing.

Other Florida cities in the top 10 were Orlando-Kissimmee at No. 8 (4.15 percent) and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach at No. 10 (3.89 percent).

Modesto, California saw one in 22 of its homes, or 4.59 percent, slapped with a foreclosure filing in the first half of 2010, giving it the nation’s third highest metro foreclosure rate.

Other California cities in the top 10 were Merced at No. 4 (4.47 percent); Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario at No. 5 (4.37 percent); Stockton at No. 6 (4.37 percent); and Vallejo-Fairfield at No. 9 (3.91 percent).

The Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro area in Arizona posted the nation’s seventh highest foreclosure rate, with 4.28 percent of its housing units, or one in 23, receiving a filing in the first half of 2010.

By: Carrie Bay

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/report-75-of-nations-top-metros-post-foreclosure-increases-2010-07-28

The nation’s foreclosure crisis and economic pressures, such as rising unemployment, continue to batter the U.S. housing market, as evidenced by the latest figures from the Census Bureau on homeownership rates.

Data released by the federal agency Tuesday shows that the U.S. homeownership rate dropped to 66.9 percent during the second quarter of this year, hitting its lowest mark in more than 10 years.

The Census Bureau reports that approximately 85.6 percent of the housing units in the United States last quarter were occupied. Owner-occupied homes made up

57.3 percent of total housing units, while renter-occupied units made up 28.3 percent of the inventory.

The number of homes sitting empty during the second quarter, including foreclosures and residences for sale, as well as vacation homes, claimed 14.4 percent of the nation’s total housing stock. Vacant properties rose from 18.6 million in Q2 2009 to 18.9 million in Q2 2010, according to the Census Bureau’s report.

As the homeownership rate continues its slide and turmoil in the market has many would-be buyers questioning the soundness of sinking their money into a home, apartment landlords are experiencing a surge in rental activity.

A separate report released by the market analytics firm MPF Research shows that 215,000 previously empty apartment units in the largest U.S. markets became occupied during the first half of this year.

The company says that six-month figure is nearly double the number of units that were filled during the full 2009 year, and the highest mid-year tally since MPF began tracking apartment occupancy statistics in 1992.

The firm found that the apartment vacancy rate fell to 6.6 percent as of the end of June, down from 8.2 percent last December

By: Carrie Bay

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/us-homeownership-rate-falls-to-lowest-level-since-1999-2010-07-27

The strides made by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in lowering delinquency numbers are turning into a long-distance marathon run. The federal mortgage insurer’s delinquency rate dropped again in June, marking the fifth straight month of declines.

According to FHA’s latest operations report, as of June 30, 532,757 of the mortgages it guarantees had spent at least 90 days in a delinquent status, which equates to a seriously delinquent rate of 8.3 percent.

That’s down from 8.4 percent in May, and a significant slide from the 9.4 percent serious delinquency rate recorded during the first month of this year.

FHA says so far this fiscal year, it has paid 207,715 claims, of which 124,191 were for loss mitigation and 83,524 were for property conveyances.

New business at the federal agency improved in June compared to the previous month. FHA endorsed 150,911 mortgages for $26.4 billion, up from 124,754 endorsements for $22.3 billion in May.

June’s transactions included 115,831 purchase money mortgages; 29,776 refinanced mortgages; and 5,304 reverse mortgages.

The refinance total consisted of 9,682 former FHA mortgages and 20,095 prior conventional mortgages. The federal agency’s Home for Homeowners (H4H) program, however, still has a poor showing. Last month, seven H4H mortgages were insured, all former conventional loans.

Based on the number of new applications being processed, FHA will likely experience a slight slump in activity next month. In June, the agency received 168,915 applications for insurance, compared to 181,524 new applications submitted in May.

Based on the applications received, FHA says the seasonally adjusted annual rate is estimated to be 1,898,900, down 13 percent from last month and the lowest rate since January, when it was 1,691,500.

As of June 30, FHA had a total of 6,402,527 mortgages in force with an outstanding balance of $865.5 billion.

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/fha-delinquencies-fall-for-fifth-consecutive-month-2010-07-23

By: Carrie Bay

Renters who find themselves indirect victims of foreclosure were not forgotten in the financial reform legislation signed by President Obama on Wednesday.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protections Act will extend the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PTFA) through the end of 2014. PFTA provides renters whose landlords have lost their properties to foreclosure the right to stay in the home for 90 days after the foreclosure or through the term of their lease.

Under PTFA, housing choice voucher holders are offered similar protections. The Dodd-Frank bill also clarifies that any lease or tenancy created prior to the change of title as a result of foreclosure is protected by PTFA.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) is one of many organizations to commend lawmakers for including language that further protects tenants from the perils that accompany foreclosure.

The organization says renters are often the overlooked victims of the mortgage crisis. Because renters tend to have lower incomes than homeowners, their loss of home due to foreclosure is more likely to lead to homelessness, NLIHC notes.

PTFA was enacted in May of 2009, but was originally set to expire on December 31, 2012. NLIHC championed PTFA after the organization’s analysis of foreclosure data showed that as many as 40 percent of the families affected by foreclosure are renters. The nonprofit group says these families often have no idea that their landlord is delinquent on the mortgage, and have usually continued to pay their rent while their landlord has failed to make mortgage payments.

Before PTFA, the rights of tenants at foreclosure were governed by state law. And NLIHC says that in most states, such tenants received little or no notice before they were forced to move.

The Dodd-Frank Reform Act also includes a provision that requires the HUD secretary to develop a program to refinance troubled multifamily mortgages. NLIHC explained that a growing number of multifamily buildings are facing foreclosure, the combined result of inflated mortgage costs and financially strapped renter households, the organization says.

“The extension of PTFA is a critical step in making sure that low-income families who are at risk of ending up on the streets through no fault of their own are able to keep their homes,” said NLIHC President Sheila Crowley. “Further, addressing the growing multifamily foreclosure rate shows a keen understanding that it is not just homeowners who are losing their homes to foreclosure.”

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/dodd-frank-legislation-extends-protecting-tenants-at-foreclosure-act-2010-07-22

 By: Carrie Bay

Saes of existing homes fell further in June but still remained notably higher than year-ago levels, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported Thursday.

According to NAR’s report, existing-home sales came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.37 million units in June, down 5.1 percent from 5.66 million units in May. However, sales were still 9.8 percent higher than the 4.89 million-unit pace of one year ago.

On a regional basis, existing-home sales tumbled 9 percent in the West, dropped 7.5 percent in the Midwest, and fell 6.5 percent in the South from May to June. However, sales in the Northeast soared 7.9 percent from one month to the next.

The overall decline in existing-home sales in June marked the second consecutive month-to-month drop and left sales 7.3 percent below April’s peak, a separate report by Capital Economics noted. The macroeconomic research consultancy said June’s fall was smaller than the consensus forecast of a decline to 5.1 million units and the drop to about 4.2 million units implied by the pending home sales index.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the market showed uncharacteristic yet understandable swings as buyers responded to the homebuyer tax credit. He said June home sales still reflected a tax credit impact, as some sales had still not closed due to delays. Due to the extension of the closing deadline for this government incentive, Yun said these closings will show up in the next two months.

“Broadly speaking, sales closed after the home buyer tax credit will be significantly lower compared to the credit-induced spring surge,” Yun said. “Only when jobs are created at a sufficient pace will home sales return to sustainable healthy levels.”

As sales fell, total housing inventory increased. According to NAR, inventory jumped 2.5 percent to 3.99 million existing homes available for sale. At the current sales pace, this represents an 8.9-month supply, up from an 8.3-month supply in May. However, raw unsold inventory remained 12.7 percent below the record of 4.58 million units in July 2008.

“The supply of homes on the market is higher than we’d like to see,” Yun said. “But home prices are still holding their ground because prices had already overcorrected in many local markets.”

According to NAR, the national median existing-home price for all housing types was $183,700 in June, coming in 1 percent higher than a year ago. Distressed homes were 32 percent of sales last month, compared with 31 percent in May and 31 percent in June 2009.

Regionally, existing-home prices fell 1.2 percent in the Northeast and inched down 0.1 percent in the Midwest from June 2009 to June 2010. During this same period, the median price in the South held steady, and prices in the West edged up 1.5 percent.

 By: Brittany Dunn

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/existing-home-sales-slip-51-in-june-but-levels-remain-elevated-nar-2010-07-22

Earlier this week, the Treasury Department released its monthly progress report on the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). Included in the Treasury’s latest installment is a new section detailing the performance of loans permanently modified through the HAMP initiative.

In commentary published Wednesday, analysts at the research firm Barclays Capital took issue with the Treasury’s calculations of redefault rates, primarily because the numbers appear to be cooked to imply greater success since cancelled modifications – both trial and permanent – are not factored into the equation. This same point was brought up by a number of DSNews.com readers who also perused the data with a discerning eye.

“We find that the data as reported in this table are misleading and fail to capture the full magnitude of redefaults from these modifications,” Barclays said.

According to Treasury’s assessments, the redefault rate (90 or more days past due) for homeowners in permanent modifications for at least six months is 1.7 percent. The report states that fewer than 6 percent of the permanently modified loans at the six-month mark are 60 days past due.

Treasury’s table outlining the performance status of modified loans, on page 3 of the HAMP progress report, shows loans that are 60-plus and 90-plus days delinquent at the end of 3,6, and 9 months by quarter of modification. The report also states that 8,628 loans have been cancelled from the permanent HAMP modification stage due to the borrower’s failure to fulfil payment obligations. Digging farther into the delinquency buckets, Barclays estimates that 8,205 permanently modified loans have fallen behind on the payments by at least 60 days.

“We believe that the total number of loans that have gone bad after the permanent mod stage is probably closer to the 60-plus loans estimated above, plus the cancelled permanent modifications, which more than doubles the absolute number from 8,205 to 16,833 bad loans,” Barclays’ analysts wrote. “The report does not contain enough information to allow us to calculate true redefault rates by quarter of modification, but we would expect them to exceed the level reported” by the Treasury, Barclays said.

The research firm also says it can be argued that to measure redefault rates more accurately and make them comparable with pre-HAMP redefault rates, the Treasury should include trial cancellations related to non-payments.

According to Barclays, adding back in trial failures and redefaults on other alternative mods offered to HAMP applicants could increase the redefault rates by 25-30 percentage points.

Barclays says the reporting of mod performance in the HAMP scorecard takes the tradeoff of mod rates vs. redefault rates to an extreme. Removing 90-plus permanent mods from the delinquency calculation and basing the calculation only on successful modifications makes the redefault rates look too low, the research firm explained.

The analysts at Barclays say their opinion is that the data presented by Treasury continue down the same path by taking deeply delinquent borrowers out of the performance calculation and showing lower delinquency rates as a result.

“Given the nature of reporting available for most HAMP mods in loan performance, where only permanent mods are reported, we find that a more consistent approach is to use mod rates based on permanent mods and redefaults from permanent mods,” Barclays wrote.

“On that definition, we believe that our base case expectation of about 60 percent lifetime redefaults on HAMP are still adequate,” the analysts wrote, although they noted that overall redefaults from HAMP “will be better than from prior mods.”

A recent study by Fitch Ratings makes projections along those same lines. The agency is expecting HAMP-modified loans to redefault at a rate of 55 to 75 percent.

By: Carrie Bay

http://www.dsnews.com/articles/barclays-argues-treasury-report-on-hamp-redefaults-is-misleading-2010-07-21