Regulations killing Atlantic City

Posted on February 5, 2017 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

Casino bureaucracy Revels in red tape instead of fixing past mistakes in A.C.: Mulshine

I was driving across the country a few years ago when I decided to get off the Interstate and try some local roads through Iowa.

This brought me through the town of Waterloo, coincidentally enough the birthplace of Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

Guadagno is now running for governor based on her accomplishments during her seven years as lieutenant governor. The chief – and perhaps only – such accomplishment is her position as head of the Red Tape Review Commission, a nine-member panel that set for itself the task of making it easier to run a business in New Jersey.

Let us consider how the state ranks compared to other states in red tape as it concerns the casino industry.

As I was reaching the western end of Iowa, I saw that if I went north a few miles I’d be in South Dakota. I’d never been there before so it seemed worth the trip.

It was, if only for what I saw when I pulled up to pump some gas.

When I went inside to pay, I found myself in a casino.

Here’s what I saw: slot machines, card games and booze.

Here’s what I didn’t see: A mandatory parking fee, lots of state employees standing around doing nothing and a massive hotel full of vacant rooms.

There’s a lesson in that, but I fear it is lost on Guadagno and the rest of the people who run New Jersey.

In 1976 we made history by becoming only the second state after Nevada to legalize casino gambling.

Over the ensuing years we again made history – by becoming the only state to ever screw up casino gambling.

What happened last week with the former Revel Casino represented just the latest effort by the state to strangle an industry that most people thought could not be killed.
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Then last week the billionaire who bought this white elephant at a bargain-basement price, businessman Glenn Straub, saw his effort to reopen it stalled by the sort of red tape that the woman from Waterloo pledged to eliminate.

Straub told the Casino Control Commission that he wants to open some of the non-gambling sections of the building by Presidents’ Day and then contract the casino and other sections to a firm experienced in running casinos.

No dice, said the commission. Straub would still have to go through the miles of red tape needed to get that license. That’s the law.

It may well be, but that law has been an abject failure. The Casino Control Act was adopted at a time when the only other state to have legal gambling was Nevada. Casino operators would put up with anything to open in Jersey.

Posted in Politics, Shore Real Estate | 22 Comments

Foreclosure auctions beginning to normalize?

Posted on February 2, 2017 by grim

From HousingWire:

Third-party sales at foreclosure auctions now higher than ever

Investors are undaunted by rising home prices and increasing interest rates, and perhaps even encouraged by it, as the share of third-party sales at foreclosure auctions reached a new high.

In fact, third party buyers, those who are not associated with the lender or former owner, made up 28.5% of all completed foreclosure auctions in 2016, according to the Year-End 2016 U.S. Home Sales Report from ATTOM Data Solutions, a fused property database.

The remaining 71.5% went back to the foreclosing lender. This is up from 23.5% in 2015 and the highest point going back to the earliest data available in 2000.
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“The increased competition at the foreclosure auction is resulting in higher sales prices there, which can even result in surplus proceeds going to the distressed homeowner in some cases after other lien holders have been paid,” ATTOM senior vice president Daren Blomquist said.

“Our analysis of sales prices at completed foreclosure auctions in 2016 shows the smallest average loss from the property’s previous sale price since 2007, with 29% of properties nationwide selling for more than the previous sales price at the foreclosure auction,” Blomquist said. “In a handful of markets such as Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco and San Diego, more than 50% of properties sold at foreclosure auctions in 2016 sold for more than their previous sale price.”
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“The housing market hit several important milestones in 2016, with distressed sales at a nine-year low and home prices at a 10-year high, just barely below the pre-recession peak in 2006,” Blomquist said. “This was all good news for home sellers, who realized their biggest average profits since purchase nationwide in 2016.”

“Even distressed property sellers are benefitting from this hot seller’s market, with a record-high share of homes at foreclosure auction being purchased by third-party buyers rather than reverting back to the foreclosing bank,” he said.

Posted in Foreclosures, National Real Estate | 150 Comments

What bubble? What bust?

Posted on February 1, 2017 by grim

From the WSJ:

Home Price Growth Showed No Signs of Slowing in November, Case-Shiller Says

Home prices climbed strongly in November, as price growth showed no signs of slowing even after mortgage rates began to tick up during the month.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices, covering the entire nation rose 5.6% in the 12 months ended in November, up slightly from the revised 5.5% year-over-year increase reported in October.

The 10-city index gained 4.5% over the year, up from 4.3% in October and the 20-city index gained 5.3% year-over-year, up from a 5.1% increase in October.

The rise matched the expectation of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal, who expected the 20-city index to rise 5.3%.

The hottest markets in the country remain concentrated in the Northwest, as many buyers priced out of the Silicon Valley area flee to secondary tech hubs. Seattle led the way with a 10.4% increase, Portland reported a 10.1% year-over-year gain and Denver had an 8.7% annual increase in home prices.

Home prices set a record in September and have continued climbing by more than 5% year-over-year since then.

“One can argue that housing has recovered from the boom-bust cycle that began a dozen years ago,” said David Blitzer, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

The volume of sales has cooled in recent months, as rising mortgage rates have collided with higher prices and a shortage of inventory. Purchases of previously owned homes slid 2.8% in December from a month earlier, the National Association of Realtors said last Tuesday. U.S. new home sales dropped by 10.4% in December, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

Case-Shiller offers a lagging indicator of the housing market and November’s numbers reflect only the beginning of a sharp increase in mortgage rates that began around the U.S. presidential election in November. Average rates for 30-year fixed mortgages rose from roughly 3.5% around Election Day to 4.32% at the end of December, according to mortgage company Freddie Mac. In the past week they averaged 4.19%, Freddie Mac said Thursday.

Posted in Housing Bubble, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 79 Comments

Not a bad December for NJ real estate

Posted on January 31, 2017 by grim

From Otteau Group:

MarketNEWS January 30, 2017 Edition

In December, the number of contract purchases by homebuyers exceeded the same month in the prior year for the 28th consecutive month, reflecting a 4% increase over December 2015. Considering the 28% increase (y-o-y) in December of 2015, home sales have increased by 33% over the past 2 years. This latest gain was the highest number of purchase contracts recorded in the month of December of the past 11 years.

For the full year of 2016, home purchase demand in New Jersey increased by 15%, which follows a 17% increase in 2015. This increase has however been largely concentrated in lower priced homes as first-time ‘Millennial’ buyers begin to transition from rentership to homeownership. By comparison, the number of luxury home sales priced at $2,500,000 and above declined by 4% in 2016. Reasons for this trend include a greater number of younger-age first home buyers, trade-down purchases by older-age empty-nesters, and relaxed mortgage lending standards which have reduced minimum down-payment amounts.

Shifting to the supply side of the equation, the supply of homes being offered for sale remains constricted, which is limiting choices for home buyers. The number of homes being offered for sale today in New Jersey has declined by nearly 6,000 (-13%) compared to one year ago. This is also about 35,000 (-48%) fewer homes on the market compared to the cyclical high in 2011. Today’s unsold inventory equates to 5.8 months of sales (non-seasonally adjusted), which is lower than one year ago when it was 6.9 months.

Currently, the majority (81%) of New Jersey’s 21 counties have less than 8.0 months of supply, which is a balance point for home prices. Hudson County is presently experiencing the strongest market conditions in the state with just 3.2 months of supply, followed by Essex, Union, Middlesex, Bergen, Passaic and Somerset Counties, which all have fewer than 5 months of supply. All of the counties with an unsold inventory level equivalent to a supply of 12 months or greater are concentrated in the southern portion of the state including Atlantic (12.5) and Cumberland (12.9).
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Demand for rental apartments remains strong in NJ with statewide occupancy rates being amongst the highest in the US. The statewide vacancy rate fell to 3.2% in Q4, which was 20 basis points less than in the prior quarter. The continued strength in occupancy has allowed for asking rents to continue to rise, reaching $1,462 monthly, which is an 8-year high in the state. This is a 3.8% increase over the past year, and a 0.7% increase from the prior quarter.

Regionally, the northern part of the state continues to have the highest asking rent, due to its proximity to Manhattan and the accelerating pace of new construction offerings, which typically command higher rental rates. In 2016, asking rents in the region saw an increase of 3.8%. The Central and Southern/Philadelphia regions have lower asking rents, $1,333 and $1,236, respectively. However, these regions also experienced impressive price increases as it relates to asking rents in 2016 with a 3.6% increase in the Central region, and 3.9% in the Southern/Philadelphia region.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, New Jersey Real Estate | 105 Comments

Luring millennials with sushi

Posted on January 30, 2017 by grim

From the WSJ:

Suburban Offices Woo Millennials With Food, Fitness and Fun

Suburban landlords trying to compete with sleek urban office settings are finding new ways to step up their game.

Property owners in New York’s suburbs are investing heavily to remake bucolic corporate campuses built during the 1980s and 1990s, adding glass facades for natural light-filled offices and retail space for restaurants, cafes and, in at least one case, a supermarket with specialty services.

They also are rolling out features such as modern fitness centers, bike-share programs, walking trails and spacious lobbies as spaces to socialize.

“It’s all about landlords trying to attract tenants, and tenants trying to attract millennial recruitment,” said Daniel Loughlin, broker lead of real-estate services firm JLL’s New Jersey office.

The suburban office market has lagged behind the New York City office market during this expansion, as preferences shifted to urban settings with restaurants, shops, nightlife and mass transportation, brokers and executives said.

But the suburbs continue to have a larger share of the region’s jobs than the city, noted Kenneth McCarthy, principal economist for real-estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. As of December, 54.6% of the jobs in the New York metropolitan area were in the suburbs, according to his analysis.

As companies consolidate offices and look to take less space, landlords and investors are betting that overhauled, amenity-laden suburban office properties will attract large tenants already in the suburbs.
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Simply being near a hip urban setting isn’t enough, said Michael J. DeMarco, president of real estate investment trust Mack-Cali Realty Corp. The Mack-Cali Business Center in Parsippany, N.J., has two hotels and a restaurant and is near downtown Morristown. Wegmans Food Markets Inc., a supermarket chain known for specialty services, is set to open a location on the edge of the office park this year.

Mack-Cali, which owns about 1.9 million square feet of space in the park, is planning to bring in a 70,000-square-foot fitness club, another hotel and four or five restaurants nearby.

“Food has become an incredibly big thing for millennials,” Mr. DeMarco said. “When you were younger, you’d go out and get a sandwich. Now you get sushi.”

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Housing Recovery, New Development, New Jersey Real Estate | 69 Comments

Rates scaring off buyers?

Posted on January 27, 2017 by grim

From the WSJ:

U.S. New Home Sales Drop Sharply in December

New home sales posted a steep decline in December, an indication that affordability challenges are beginning to cut into demand.

Purchases of newly built, single-family houses, which account for a small share of overall U.S. home sales, decreased 10.4% from November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 536,000 last month, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

That was the slowest monthly sales pace since February and the steepest one-month drop since March 2015.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected new home sales to decline 1.5%, to 583,000 sales.

The drop “was a shocker,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Insurance. He said home sales are often volatile in the winter months because of weather, however, and he still expects new-home sales to rise in 2017.

Data on new-home sales generally can be imprecise from month to month. December’s 10.4% sales decrease came with a margin of error of 12 percentage points.

In all, an estimated 563,000 new homes were sold in 2016, up 12.2% from a year earlier and the fifth straight year of sales growth. The annual figure indicates broad improvement in the market, even if sales of new homes remain well below where they were during the housing boom of the 2000s, when they topped 1 million a year for four years running.
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“Home buyers are facing headwinds from higher mortgage rates and uncertainty about tax policy, but low existing inventory, near full employment, and rising wages are tailwinds that will continue to push new home sales higher in the year ahead,” Mr. McLaughlin said.

Posted in Mortgages, National Real Estate, New Development | 148 Comments

The Foreclosure State

Posted on January 26, 2017 by grim

From NJ Spotlight:

New Jersey Still Bogged Down in Foreclosures While Rest of Country Recovering

Housing markets have improved and foreclosure numbers dropped across the country since the Great Recession, but a decade on, New Jersey remains mired in a deep foreclosure swamp.

Statewide figures are significantly better than in 2009, the depth of the economic downturn. Yet some analyses cite Atlantic City as the worst housing market in the country, with Trenton not far behind. Overall, New Jersey continues to have the highest foreclosure rate in the country, according to real-estate data firms.

While many factors contribute to the problem, housing advocates point to a lack of leadership from state government as significant. Gov. Chris Christie, who used $75 million from national foreclosure-prevention aid to plug a budget gap in 2012, seldom mentions the issue.

“In the other states where we work, we have governors who have welcomed us and networked us to their housing agencies and counselors,” said a relative newcomer to the state scene, Jessica Brooks, a vice president at Boston Community Capital.

Nonprofit housing organizations like BCC work with lenders and borrowers to prevent foreclosures. Some for-profit groups also have sprung up, like Community Champions of Melbourne, Florida to fight the effects of foreclosure blight. But as the major federal foreclosure relief ends, a lack of state leadership in New Jersey means municipalities must find such partners themselves. Meanwhile, borrowers must remain alert to police their own mortgages, according to a top foreclosure defense lawyer.
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Some other nonprofit groups, notably New Jersey Community Capital of New Brunswick and Newark, have bought troubled mortgages directly from federal agencies. BCC works differently, negotiating with banks to get better terms for borrowers whose job situation has improved but whose mortgages are still onerous.
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“In New Jersey, no one from the state stepped up… and many of the community-based housing counselors here are struggling just to keep the lights on,” Brooks said.

Nationwide, foreclosures dropped under 1 million in 2016, the lowest figure in 10 years, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, formerly RealtyTrac, of Irvine, California. Yet that firm found New Jersey has the highest rate in the nation. And in December, when foreclosure starts were dropping 17 percent nationwide, they rose 13 percent here as the state’s economy continued to flounder, the firm found.

New Jersey has the highest inventory of homes in foreclosure at 2.8 percent, according to CoreLogic, another Irvine, California, real-estate analytics firm. That is greatly improved since the recession, but New York is the only other state above 2 percent, the firm reported.

New Jersey’s underlying economics are weak. While the U.S. Census Bureau found median household incomes rose 5.2 percent in 2015, the last year for which complete data are available, New Jersey was treading water with a 0.3 percent gain.

Home prices rose 7.1 percent nationally from November 2016 to November 2017 — or 4.7 percent when weighted for owner-occupied units as opposed to those being acquired by real-estate investors — but just 1.7 percent in New Jersey, according to CoreLogic.
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Just like the other numbers, New Jersey’s trend in new foreclosure cases offers a mix of good news and bad. Fewer than 35,000 new cases were posted in the state courts’ public access system last year, half the amount of 2009 in the depths of the Great Recession. But that remains well above the 20,253 filed in 2005, itself on the high end historically.

That continued stream of new foreclosures, plus the lingering effects of Hurricane Sandy, provided reason for BCC to expand its efforts to New Jersey, according to Brooks. While the organization’s SUN program is “a drop in the bucket” compared to the problem, it provides a template of what can be done if lenders and borrowers work together on mortgages that are “underwater,” meaning they cost consumers more than the house’s current value, she said.

Throughout the foreclosure crisis, New Jersey consistently has had a high rate of troubled home loans, even as many borrowers got back on their feet financially after layoffs or business losses, Brooks noted. But the lack of state attention to the issue has contributed to low interest here in SUN, which currently is working with only about 60 New Jersey families, she said.

“New Jersey is the hardest place for us to work, and I feel it’s because there isn’t one state (leader) but many locally driven efforts,” Brooks said.

Posted in Foreclosures, New Jersey Real Estate | 43 Comments

So much for that FHA cut

Posted on January 22, 2017 by grim

From MarketWatch:

Trump already suspends Obama-era FHA mortgage insurance cut

The Federal Housing Administration will roll back a cut in mortgage insurance premiums announced just days earlier under outgoing Housing and Urban Development head Julian Castro, the government said Friday.

The reduction in insurance premiums “has been suspended indefinitely,” according to a release. “FHA will issue a subsequent Mortgagee Letter at a later date should this policy change.”

The reduction of 25 basis points, or a quarter percentage point, was meant to help more borrowers gain access to the mortgage market. It came after a surge in mortgage rates.

Castro said FHA’s reserves, which premiums help bolster, were healthy enough to withstand lower revenues. In 2013, FHA required a bailout of $1.7 billion when its reserves fell short.

Congressional Republicans had largely opposed the cut. House Financial Services Chair Jeb Hensarling of Texas issued a statement saying, “the Obama administration’s parting gift to hardworking taxpayers is to put them at greater risk for footing the bill for another bailout.”

And Alabama Senator Richard Shelby announced his opposition to the cut during the confirmation hearing of Dr. Ben Carson, the nominee as next head of HUD. Carson agreed that the cut was worth examining.

Many housing analysts had expected the cut to be challenged. “A delay in the [mortgage insurance premium] cut is probable at this point, but we caution that a delay does not necessarily signal a reversal,” wrote Compass Point analysts on Thursday. “If a delay does materialize, we would likely increase our published odds of a full reversal from 40% to 70%.”

While some progressive groups hailed the cut as a means of helping more borrowers access mortgage credit, it wasn’t universally seen as a big game-changer. For one thing, it was too small to mean big savings for borrowers: FHA estimated it at an average of $500 per year.

And some analysts thought its impact on drawing more borrowers in would be limited. Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, told MarketWatch that there were other steps FHA could take to entice more lenders to make mortgages, such as limiting its legal actions under the False Claims Act.

Posted in Mortgages, National Real Estate, Politics | 142 Comments

NJ to get 200,000 new homes

Posted on January 20, 2017 by grim

From the WSJ:

Court Orders N.J. Towns to Allow Affordable Housing

New Jersey towns and cities must accommodate unmet affordable-housing needs, the state Supreme Court said Wednesday in a unanimous decision that could greatly expand housing options for the state’s low- and moderate-income residents.

In a 6-0 decision written by Justice Jaynee LaVecchia, the Supreme Court ruled that towns and cities are constitutionally required to allow enough affordable housing to be built to satisfy needs that arose during a 16-year period when a state agency charged with enforcing housing laws failed to do its job.

“Municipal responsibility for a fair share of the affordable housing need of low- and moderate-income households formed during that period was not suspended,” Justice LaVecchia wrote.

New Jersey’s Council on Affordable Housing was created in 1985 to monitor and enforce constitutionally mandated affordable-housing requirements, but the agency has been plagued by bureaucratic and legal problems since 1999. In 2015 the state Supreme Court stripped it of its powers after determining that it had failed to enforce state housing laws.

The case was brought by the southern shore town of Barnegat, which had argued that it was unfair to hold towns and cities responsible for affordable-housing requirements that accrued between 1999 and 2015 when the state failed to enforce them. Barnegat was joined by nearly 300 other municipalities.
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Kevin Walsh, executive director for the affordable housing advocacy group Fair Share Housing Center, said his analysis shows that about 200,000 affordable housing units are needed to fulfill obligations spanning from 1999 to 2025, but the exact number likely will be worked out through litigation.

“The municipalities don’t have to build the homes, the municipalities don’t have to fund the homes,” Mr. Walsh said. “All the municipalities have to do is remove the local red tape that prevents starter homes and apartments from being built.

Posted in National Real Estate, New Jersey Real Estate | 139 Comments

“Take a vacation on the house.”

Posted on January 18, 2017 by grim

From CNBC:

Rising home values aren’t enough to shake consumers’ memories of the financial crisis

Consumers still see value in buying and owning homes. Yet with memories of the recession still fresh in their minds, the recent lift in real estate prices hasn’t been enough to persuade them to spend against that growing value.

In a keynote speech at the National Retail Federation’s annual conference in New York on Tuesday, William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said this consumer hesitancy is one reason retail sales have been held back.

“People haven’t actually tapped that housing wealth,” Dudley said, noting that home values have increased 40 percent since 2012.
Dudley’s comments follow what was, on the surface, a solid holiday season. According to the National Retail Federation, retail sales rose 4 percent in November and December, outpacing the prior 10-year average of 2.5 percent growth.

But spending was choppy, and many traditional retailers struggled to capitalize on those gains. Along with a reluctance to spend money backed by the future value of their homes, a shift toward spending on experiences, a desire for deep discounts and an increased penchant for the web weighed on retailers.

Looking forward, Dudley is unsure whether the recent gains in consumer confidence, which hit a 15-year high last month, will translate into elevated levels of spending. However, as the recession moves further into the rearview mirror, he predicts housing equity will once again become a source of consumer spending.

“As time passes, people will forget the financial crisis,” Dudley said.

Posted in Housing Bubble, Mortgages, National Real Estate, Risky Lending | 86 Comments

Bow to your municipal overlords

Posted on January 17, 2017 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

Bamboozled: What’s wrong with some local N.J. governments? This.

New Jersey is bloated with hundreds of little fiefdoms.

Local governments allow red tape to rule the day, and they forget they’re supposed to serve their constituents.

They display no common sense.

Nancy Wells, 57, of Hasbrouck Heights has been drowning in deep bureaucracy for nearly two years.

Her story is simple. She’s been the owner of a two-family home in the 1.5-square-mile, 12,000 resident borough since 1996, when she bought the property with her then-husband. All she wants to do is sell her two-family home as the two-family home it’s been since it was built in 1949.

But the borough won’t let her, saying she lacks the necessary documents to prove her home is a two-family residence.

Why? There was a fire at the municipal building in 1999, and town officials told Wells decades of building permits were destroyed, she said. Among them, she noted, were documents that would prove the home was a two-family and grandfathered in when the area was rezoned for one-families.

And even though the home has always had two entrances, two kitchens, two electric meters, two gas meters and that according to county tax rolls, the home has always been a two-family home and has always been taxed as a two-family home, the zoning board won’t listen to reason.

Or common sense.

Or the 13 long-time local residents who always knew the home as a two-family and put in writing that they’re just fine if it remains a two-family.

“I made an investment in a two-family so I’d like to get my two-family investment back,” Wells said. “Selling as a one-family downgrades the value of the house.”

It all started when Wells put her home on the market in April 2015.

Wells’ real estate agent went to borough hall and spoke to Dorothy Bernice of the borough’s planning board to confirm the property was a two-family.

Bernice looked in a book and confirmed to the real estate agent it was a non-conforming two-family, according to an affidavit later filed with the Superior Court in Bergen County as part of Wells’ lawsuit against the borough. Even though the street later became a single family zone, older two-families were grandfathered in, the real estate agent said she was told.

So the house went on the market, and it sold for the full price that same day.

But while the sale was in attorney review, according to the affidavit, the real estate agent got a call from Bernice’s boss, Nicholas Melfi, who serves as the borough’s construction code and zoning enforcement officer.

He said Wells’ home was not a two-family and that Bernice made a mistake.

Posted in New Jersey Real Estate, Politics | 68 Comments

Blue Horseshoe loves Ben Carson

Posted on January 16, 2017 by grim

From HousingWire:

Housing industry rallies around Ben Carson for HUD secretary

Do you remember that controversy about former presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson being nominated as the next secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development? No? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one.

As it turns out, the conflict about his lack of experience or qualifications for the role seem to have gone down the drain as the industry now rallies in its support for Carson’s nomination.

As a reminder, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for HUD secretary not only shocked the industry, but also divided it. Even Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the House and the current highest ranking Democrat, chimed in on her Twitter account, criticizing the nominee.

However, the division seems to have dissipated as many now begin to stand with Carson. HousingWire Digital Reporter Brena Swanson wrote that Carson’s senate hearing was “all bark and no bite” from the senators.

But the senators aren’t the only ones who seem to now be in favor of Carson. Earlier this week, the Mortgage Bankers Association wrote a letter to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee, urging it to confirm Carson as quickly as possible.

The National Association of Realtors also stepped up in its support of Carson by sending a letter to the committee urging it to quickly confirm Carson as HUD secretary.

“Dr. Carson has shown a clear commitment to ensuring all Americans have access to a safe and affordable place they can call home,” NAR President William Brown stated in his letter. “With that in mind, we’re urging members of the U.S. Senate to swiftly confirm him as Secretary of HUD.”

“It’s no small task setting policies that support homeownership and real estate investment, and Dr. Carson is to be commended for taking on the challenge,” Brown stated. “We look forward to working with Dr. Carson in his new capacity on behalf of that important mission.”

One expert, who worked at HUD for over 15 years, even explained that Carson brings unique experience to the position.

“Something I think he’s uniquely qualified to understand is the connection between the environment people live in and their outcomes,” said Marion McFadden, Enterprise Community Partners vice president of public policy.

Posted in Mortgages, National Real Estate, Politics | 22 Comments

Foreclosure City

Posted on January 14, 2017 by grim

From the Press of Atlantic City:

Foreclosures continue to plague housing market in Atlantic County

To Dan Boddy, a veteran real estate agent based in Galloway Township, mortgage foreclosures aren’t just a key part of the Atlantic County housing market.

“They’re the dominant factor. That’s what’s selling,” says Boddy, of Century 21 Frick Realtors in Galloway. “I was talking to a local title company a few months back, and they said that was about half their business now.”

Atlantic County ended 2016 with the distinction of leading the nation in foreclosure activity, the third straight year the county held that dreaded position, according to ATTOM Data Solution, whose RealtyTrac division publishes national foreclosure figures dating to 2006.

The company reported last week that 3.39 percent of Atlantic County’s housing units were in some stage of foreclosure activity, meaning the owners had received notices of default, auctions were scheduled or banks have taken the properties back.

That translates to one house out of every 30 in the county, according to ATTOM.

Other South Jersey counties have high foreclosure-activity rates of their own, including Cumberland, where almost 2.7 percent of homes are in some stage of the process; Ocean County, at 1.86 percent; and Cape May, at 1.3 percent.

And New Jersey itself had the highest rate in the country last year, at 1.86 percent of all homes with some foreclosure activity.

The state also led the U.S. in the number of “legacy” foreclosures, according to ATTOM, meaning the loans date to between 2004 and 2008. Plus New Jersey had the second-longest average foreclosure process in the country, at an average of 1,383 days, or almost four years from start to finish.

Posted in Foreclosures, New Jersey Real Estate, Shore Real Estate | 17 Comments

Upside for Jersey?

Posted on January 13, 2017 by grim

From Bloomberg:

Brooklyn Home Sales Soar as Buyers Flee Manhattan Price Hype

Home buyers in Brooklyn competed for a record-low number of listings in the fourth quarter, driving up prices in the New York borough that’s historically been seen as a refuge from Manhattan’s high costs.

Purchases in Brooklyn rose 22 percent from a year earlier to 2,582, while the median price of those deals climbed 15 percent to a record $750,000, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The number of homes for sale at the end of December tumbled 31 percent to 2,232, the fewest since the firms started keeping the data in 2008.

The sales market in Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough, is moving in the opposite direction to Manhattan’s, where rising supply is offering buyers more choices and the option to walk away from listings they view as overpriced. Manhattan’s median home price dropped 8.7 percent in the fourth quarter to $1.05 million as sellers awakened to a slowdown after years of holding out for all they could get, the firms said last week.

“You have a disconnect with sellers in Manhattan, and Brooklyn is poaching some of that demand,” Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said in an interview. “Overall, it’s generally a lower price point, and affordability has been a big issue the last couple of years.”

Buyers seeking lower-priced properties also turned to Queens, where deals climbed 14 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier to 3,917, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said Thursday. The median price of those purchases rose 6 percent to $498,000, the second-highest in records dating back to 2003.

With listings in Queens plummeting 22 percent, few sellers needed to accept discounts. An average of 0.7 percent was whittled off the asking price in the quarter, compared with 2 percent a year earlier, the firms said. The absorption rate, or the amount of time it would take to sell all the listed properties at the current pace of deals, was 2.8 months, the fastest in 11 years.
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“In the outer boroughs, the sentiment remains that there’s a lot more upside, that there’s still gas in the tank” for prices to rise, Miller said.

Posted in New Jersey Real Estate, NYC | 64 Comments

It’s not a problem if you ignore it

Posted on January 12, 2017 by grim

From NJ101.5:

Will NJ’s foreclosure mess get cleared in 2017?

Looking at 2016 as a whole, New Jersey performed horribly in the area of foreclosures.

These in-limbo properties can have a drastic effect on the value of your home, and the situation could get even worse in 2017.

According to statistics released Thursday by ATTOM Data Solutions, an online real estate database, New Jersey posted the highest foreclosure rate last year at 1.86 percent. In total, 66,592 properties were in the foreclosure process, from default notices to bank repossessions. More than 27,000 began the process; 19,000 reached the final stage.

But it’s New Jersey’s other worst-in-the-nation statistic that indicates the pain isn’t ending anytime soon, according to ATTOM Senior Vice President Daren Blomquist.

“We do show the state has the biggest backlog of what we call legacy loans that are in foreclosure process that haven’t been dealt with,” Blomquist told New Jersey 101.5. “These are loans that originated back in 2004 to 2008 and are in foreclosure, but have been, for whatever reason, lingering in the foreclosure process, sometimes for years.”

Sixty-four percent of New Jersey’s loans in the foreclosure process originated in the ’04-’08 range, accounting for 32,279 filings.
Properties foreclosed in New Jersey in the fourth quarter of 2016 spent an average of nearly 1,400 days in the entire foreclosure process, according to ATTOM. That lengthy timeline is second only to Utah.

According to Blomquist, New Jersey’s top foreclosure rate is the product of a “perfect storm of poor market conditions,” including economic issues in Atlantic City and foreclosures lingering from the effects of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy.

Posted in Foreclosures, New Jersey Real Estate | 52 Comments