NJ job market kicked in the face in July (or perhaps just an anomaly?)

Posted on August 16, 2013 by grim

From the APP:

NJ lost 11,800 jobs in July; unemployment rate drops to 8.6 percent

This isn’t going to be easy, is it?

New Jersey’s job market lost 11,800 more jobs than it gained in July, the state reported Thursday, the first monthly employment loss since the beginning of the year.

The Christie administration and economists cautioned not to make too much of one monthly survey. But from a broader perspective it showed that despite an influx of billions of dollars in federal aid and insurance money since superstorm Sandy, New Jersey’s economy hasn’t gained traction.

“It’s like a roller coaster,” said Jim Wallace, 59, owner of Matawan Stained Glass. “You get a couple good weeks, and it dies off for a while. There’s, like, no rhyme or reason.”
…
New Jersey’s unemployment rate still managed to fall to 8.6 percent in July from 8.7 percent in June, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said, but the decline could be chalked up to fewer prospective workers actively seeking jobs.
…
The recovery has been slow. While the U.S. has regained more than 80 percent of the private-sector jobs it lost, New Jersey has recovered less than 60 percent, according to a recent study by Rutgers University.

The obstacles are widespread: New Jersey hasn’t benefited from a resurgent manufacturing industry; federal taxes rose in January; upstart economies in China, Brazil and India have slowed; and gasoline prices spiked in July, diverting consumers’ disposable income to their gas tanks, said Patrick J. O’Keefe, director of economic research for CohnReznick, a New York accounting firm.

There are more sweeping changes, too. Workers are emerging from the recession in a new digital age in which they are armed with tablet computers and smartphones, making them so productive that employers don’t need to go on a hiring streak, said Farrohk Hormozi, an economist at Pace University in New York.

“This week I’m on vacation, but believe it or not, I’m working more extensively than if I was in the office,” Hormozi said. “That’s the nature of the job market.”

Posted in Economics, New Jersey Real Estate | 205 Comments

No bubble in NJ – But we could be next to heat up

Posted on August 15, 2013 by grim

GTG Alert –NJRER GTG now scheduled for Thu 8/29 from 6:30 PM ’til whenever; venue — Montecristo Lounge at J&R Cigars, 301 Route 10 East • Whippany, NJ 07981 (973) 887-0800 (http://www.jrwhippany.com/index.cfm?page=lounge).

———————————————
From the Star Ledger:

No sign of a New Jersey housing bubble, according to report

Housing market watchers have been keeping a keen eye on the horizon for a bubble – when homes are selling for far more than they’re worth – to appear. The last time one did was in 2006. When it burst, it sent the economy into a tailspin.

With housing prices on the rise again, the fear of a new bubble has resurfaced.

But a report by Trulia finds prices are still undervalued relative to long-term fundamentals, especially in the New Jersey markets covered in the report.

“During last decade’s housing bubble, prices were as high as 39 percent overvalued,” Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko said in the report. “We estimate that national home prices are (now) 5 percent undervalued,” he said.
…
In the Newark area, home prices are up 3 percent over last year, but still undervalued by 3 percent. In Northern New Jersey and New York, home prices are up 5 percent, but the market is undervalued by 7 percent.
…
In the Edison-New Brunswick market, the market is overvalued by 3 percent – well within a safety range – as prices rose 8 percent.

Camden saw prices climb 3 percent, while homes remain undervalued by 10 percent.

“Even though prices are less undervalued than one quarter ago, our chances of avoiding a bubble have gotten better,” Kolko said in an e-mail. “Price gains are slowing down, and asking prices dropped in July. Unlike in last decade’s bubble, prices today have started to cool before reaching dangerous heights.”

From CNBC:

Housing recovery radar: Where are the next hot spots?

Here are states/cities where real estate pros say could be the next hot spots where the housing recovery heats up. While these markets have seen some recovery, they’re still down significantly from their peak.

TATES – New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida

CITIES
Wilmington, Del.
Tampa, Fla.
Miami
Cape Coral-Ft Myers, Fla.
Orlando, Fla.
Chicago
Indianapolis
Minneapolis
Charlotte, N.C.
Newark, N.J.
Trenton, N.J.
Philadelphia
Reading, Pa.
Nashville, Tenn.
Memphis, Tenn.
Dallas
Houston
Ogden, Utah

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, New Jersey Real Estate | 187 Comments

Parents Just Don’t Understand

Posted on August 14, 2013 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

Parents willing to give grown kids a break in Northeast

Parents of grown children in New Jersey – as well as the rest of the Northeast – tend to be more lenient when it comes to letting their college graduates live at home, according to a new survey by Coldwell Banker Real Estate.

The Coldwell Banker poll of more than 2,000 people found most respondents said four years after college was too long for offspring to be living at home. But in the Northeast, five years was the breaking point.

Northeasterners were more lenient in other ways.

About 23 percent of Northeasterners said there is no time limit for how long grown children can live at home, compared with 17 percent of Southerners.

In the West, 15 percent said young adults should never live at home, while only 9 percent of Northeasterners held the same opinion.
…
“In terms of transitioning into independent adulthood, it’s almost as if 27 is the new 18,” psychotherapist Robi Ludwig, lifestyle correspondent for Madison-based Coldwell Banker Real Estate, said in the report. “Living at home can be a great opportunity for young adults who need some time to get on their feet, but it’s only beneficial if the time is used wisely. Our 20s are a very crucial time because the decisions we make and the lessons we learn then influence who we become as adults.”

A recent Pew report found that 36 percent of young adults between 18 and 31 were living in their parents’ homes – the highest share in four decades and up markedly from before the recession.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Employment, National Real Estate | 109 Comments

Why a private mortgage market might not be a good idea

Posted on August 13, 2013 by grim

From the NYT:

In one bundle of mortgages, the subprime crisis reverberates

A subprime deal came back to haunt Fabrice Tourre, a former Goldman Sachs trader, when a federal jury in Manhattan found him liable for civil securities fraud.

He is not the only one feeling the pain of a subprime transaction six years on.

Hundreds of thousands of subprime borrowers are still struggling. Some of their mortgages ended up in another Goldman deal that was done at the same time as Mr. Tourre was working on his own financial alchemy.

In February 2007, just before everything fell apart, Goldman Sachs bundled thousands of subprime mortgages from across the country and sold them to investors. This bond became toxic as soon as it was completed. The mortgages slid into default at a speed that was staggering even for that era.
…
This is the story of one of those bonds, GSAMP Trust 2007 NC1.

The name is the sort of gobbledygook that is common in the bond market, but it tells a story. The “GS” is derived from Goldman Sachs. The Wall Street firm didn’t actually make mortgages to subprime borrowers that were in the deal. Instead, Goldman bought them from a lender called New Century, the “NC” in the title.

It was New Century that lent to Wendy Fillmore, when she and her husband wanted to buy their house in Las Vegas in 2006. The home cost $276,000. New Century provided two loans, one for a $221,000 loan and a second mortgage for $53,000. Data for the Goldman deal shows that it contains the Fillmores’ larger loan.
…
“I was wondering how we managed to get approved for as much as we did,” she said.
…
A month before Ms. Fillmore got her mortgage, Daniel L. Sparks, Goldman’s head of mortgages, wrote in an e-mail that he was a “bit scared” of New Century and had reservations about Goldman taking more loans from the lender. The e-mail was contained in materials released by Congress as part of an investigation of Wall Street.
…
Ms. Fillmore is still in her Las Vegas home. She estimates that the market value of the house is around half the combined value of her two mortgages.
…
Three-fourths of the borrowers in the deal have fallen well behind on their payments at some point, according to a special analysis of the deal performed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Many of those people have lost their houses or will lose them. Nearly half the loans in the bond have been in foreclosure proceedings since it was issued, according to the Boston Fed.

One of Mr. Sparks’s former Goldman colleagues is Jonathan S. Sobel, who also left Goldman in 2008 and is also a defendant in the federal action. A year ago, Mr. Sobel and his wife acquired a duplex apartment at 740 Park Avenue, one of the city’s most coveted addresses, according to New York property records. They paid $19.3 million.
…
The question today is whether loans like the one made to Mr. Haynes should ever have been put in the Goldman bond. Critics say the banks did not properly portray the full risks of the loans bundled into bonds.
…
One-fourth of the loans in the Goldman bond have been modified, according to the Boston Fed’s analysis. Not all of those succeeded, though. Of the 9,393 loans originally in the deal, 14 percent have been modified and are still current on their payments.

Today, the borrowers whose loans were put in the Goldman bond say they have been chastened by their experiences with debt.

“If I could take everything back, I never would have got involved,” Mr. Haynes, the Brooklyn resident, said.

Posted in Foreclosures, Housing Bubble, Mortgages, Risky Lending | 247 Comments

Has the housing ship sailed?

Posted on August 12, 2013 by grim

From the WSJ:

Did You Miss Your Chance to Make a Real-Estate Killing?

Only a year and a half ago, none other than Warren Buffett told CNBC he would invest in “a couple hundred thousand” single-family homes if it were practical.

But in that short period, the national housing market has gone from the cheapest it has been in a quarter-century to slightly overpriced—at least according to some measures.

Relatively cheap mortgages still make it a great time to buy a home to live in, but anyone hoping to treat it as an “investment” should be wary.

In early 2012, homes did indeed look inexpensive. To measure home values, some researchers divide home prices by rents. The resulting price/rent ratio is similar to the price/earnings ratio commonly used to evaluate stocks.

By that measure, in the fourth quarter of 2011—when the ratio was 19.9—homes were the cheapest they had been since 1987, according to data from Morris Davis, academic director of the James A. Graaskamp Center for Real Estate at the University of Wisconsin.

Since then, though, the housing narrative has done an about-face. Money managers have launched private-equity funds and real-estate investment trusts designed to scoop up homes and rent them out, and real-estate agents once again tell of bidding wars for homes in some areas.
…
In all, between May 2012 and May 2013, the latest month for which data are available, the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city index of home values climbed 12%. Home prices in two of the index’s metro areas—Denver and Dallas, which missed much of the boom—hit all-time records.

Instead of signaling a bargain, the national price/rent ratio in June was at 22.8—already above the historic long-term average of 20.6.

That isn’t to say home prices will start dropping again. Even more so than the stock market, the housing market is a slave to momentum. Prices get out of whack but continue to spiral upward as stories of double-digit gains spread from owner to owner. The last bubble, for example, took many years to inflate before popping.

But for value-seeking investors, the recent brief era of cheap prices is over.

Since 1960, home prices have increased only by about 1.3% annually after inflation, according to Mr. Davis. He says that the current price/rent ratio suggests home prices will increase more slowly than rents over the next five to 10 years.

Based on different data, other researchers have found home prices over long periods merely keep up with inflation.

Other ways of valuing homes are slightly more optimistic but still don’t call for a continuation of last year’s boom.

Instead of comparing prices to rents, some economists prefer to compare prices to average household income for a quick measure of homes’ affordability.

Right now, that ratio stands at about 1.78, according to Moody’s Analytics, compared with 1.92 between 1989 and 2003, before the housing boom started. To get back to average, home prices would have to rise another 8% if incomes stayed constant, says Moody’s Analytics economist Greg Bird.
…
A significant drop in prices is unlikely, says David Blitzer, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, who also tracks the housing market.

“Mortgage rates, even though they’ve popped up a bit, are still close to as low as we’ve ever seen,” he says. “If you’ve been thinking of buying a house, you better get out and do it.”

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 137 Comments

List High – Sell Higher

Posted on August 11, 2013 by grim

From the WSJ – HAT TIP CHIFI:

Should Home Sellers Overprice or Underprice Real-Estate Listings?

“The Price Is Right” isn’t just a game show. It is a mental strategy real-estate agents use to get the most money when listing a home.

When setting an asking price, there are two schools of thought: In one, agents overprice properties in the belief that a higher asking price will draw higher initial offers from potential buyers.

Wendy Jodel, associate broker with Town Residential in New York City, says overpricing works when inventory is low. Ms. Jodel recently listed a two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for $1.35 million—4.5% above the price of similar apartments nearby. “I had no competition,” she says, adding that few comparable apartments are available in the area. The apartment closed this week with multiple offers for $1.32 million.

Other real-estate agents take the opposite approach, pricing homes below nearby properties in hopes of starting a bidding war. Chris McDonnell, senior associate broker with Coldwell Banker Distinctive Properties in Vail, Colo., says he prefers to underprice homes by 5% to 10%. Now, even in a heated market, buyers are looking for a bargain, he says. If sellers start low, they could potentially add 10% to 15% to the sale price. “There’s so much pent-up demand out there right now. Money is just waiting on the sidelines,” he says.

This strategy, however, poses a challenge: “It’s really hard to get your seller to agree to that,” Mr. McDonnell says.

New research tackles this dilemma. A study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization in May found that homeowners who set the initial asking price 10% to 20% higher than similar houses in the neighborhood see a slight increase of $117 to $163, on average, in their sale price. Pricing a home 20% or more than similar houses leads to an impact three to four times as big.

Pricing a home 10% to 20% lower than homes in the neighborhood leads to a decrease of $117 to $187, on average, in the home’s sale price.

The research explores a behavioral trait called “anchoring.” That is a common tendency to rely on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions. Once buyers have an anchor, they typically interpret other information involved in the sale around it.

“Every house is different, and so those qualitative things really matter. Buyers will turn to the good attributes that justify the high price,” says Grace Bucchianeri, former assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
…
The study, “A homeowner’s dilemma: Anchoring in residential real estate transactions” found that “overwhelmingly anchoring is a good strategy,” Prof. Bucchianeri says.
…
Pricing low may speed up the sale, which can save the real-estate agent both time and money spent marketing the property. In the end, agents may get a lower commission, but the difference is usually negligible. “It’s intuitive if you think about it,” she says. “It looks like the realtors are doing what’s best for them, and as homeowners, we need to understand that relationship.”

Posted in Economics, National Real Estate | 16 Comments

Will North Jersey prices be pulled up by NYC?

Posted on August 9, 2013 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

Manhattan homes are harder to buy. Hello, New Jersey?

For Manhattanites, the grass is greener on the Jersey side.

A recent survey by Miller Samuel shows it’s become more difficult to buy a nonluxury home – less than $3 million, and about 90 percent of the inventory in Manhattan – in the past few years. The study found the number of units available dropped by more than 36 percent year-over-year.
…
That’s why places like Hudson and Essex counties, which have easy access to Manhattan, have seen steady growth.

According to the July market report by Otteau Valuations Group, contract sales in Hudson County are up 21 percent year-to-date, and the largest growth sector – 9 percent – is in homes priced at between $1 million and $2.5 million.

In Essex County, sales are also up by 21 percent, and by 5 percent for homes worth more than $2.5 million.

At those prices, the owners can save enough money to pay landscapers to mow the greener grass.

Posted in Economics, North Jersey Real Estate, NYC | 70 Comments

Subprime sausage machine proposed to replace Freddie & Fannie

Posted on August 8, 2013 by grim

At what point did we all forget the “Private Mortgage Market” was the machine that brought on the subprime crisis? Folks, this is the same machine that perfected the NINJA loan (No Income, No Job, No Assets), and whose financial creativity gave us the pick-a-payment loan, option ARMs, and the very impressive Negative Amortization loan. Yet this is the market we expect to provide the solution? This is the market that is going to replace Freddie and Fannie?

Don’t you all remember the constant stream of MBS downgrade news (More than 30,000 tranches downgraded in early 2008)? Moodys? S&P? AAA to Junk in one shot? Billions of dollars in write downs? Bear Stearns? Credit Default Swaps? Structured Finance? ABS? CDOs? No? Nothing? We don’t remember any of that?

You’ve all forgotten the major players in the non-agency (private) market? Should I remind you?

Countrywide
New Century
Option One
Fremont
First Franklin
Lehman Brothers
Bear Stearns
PHH
GMAC
Aurora

Those don’t ring a bell? Good, we’ve all forgotten. Now lets hand this same private market the keys to the entire US mortgage market. It’ll end better this time.

But wait! There’s more! They’ll also get the backing of the full faith and credit of the United States of America (‘s taxpayers)!

From MSNBC:

Obama bets on private market in housing recovery

When another participant asked what “fills the gap” if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government’s mortgage finance companies, are eliminated as proposed, the president endorsed the Corker-Warner plan, a proposal he obliquely referenced in his Tuesday housing speech. Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Mark Warner, D-Va., have proposed that Fannie and Freddie be replaced by a new institution called the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp., which is intended to provide a guarantee against massive losses in the mortgage-backed securities, but play a more a more limited role in the overall housing market.

“We’re confident that the private market can step in, do a good job, and the government can be a backstop … but it’s not the dominant player,” said Obama.

Posted in Mortgages, Risky Lending | 106 Comments

Asking prices start to cool

Posted on August 7, 2013 by grim

From Trulia:

Bubblephobes, Rejoice: Asking Home Prices Declined in July

First Signs of Slowdown: Prices Down 0.3% Month-over-Month

Asking home prices decreased 0.3% in July – the first month-over-month decline since November 2012. Although monthly changes can be volatile, quarter-over-quarter changes – which are less jumpy – confirm the price slowdown: asking prices were up 3.3% quarter-over-quarter in July, down from a peak of 4.2% in April.

What’s driving this slowdown? As we’ve said, rising mortgage rates, more inventory, and declining investor demand all play a role in dampening price gains, but it’s hard to tease out which factor matters most. Inventory has increased 6% since January (even after adjusting for seasonality), and mortgage rates started their sharp rise in early May.

Prices are up 11.0% year-over-year – a new record since the recession – but the year-over-year change is an average over the past 12 months. That’s why the price turndown affects the month-over-month and quarter-over-quarter numbers first, even though the year-over-year change is increasing – for now.
…
Rents Up 3.9%, But Prices are Rising Faster Everywhere

Rents are up 3.9% year-over-year nationally. That’s a big increase compared with inflation or with income growth – but small compared with price gains. Even with the beginning of the price slowdown, prices outpaced rents in all 25 of the largest rental markets, making July the first time that rents aren’t rising faster than prices in any major market. Rents are rising fastest in the artisan coffee belt – Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland – along with Houston.

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 140 Comments

Are we sure eliminating F&F is the best approach to reforming mortgage finance?

Posted on August 6, 2013 by grim

From Reuters:

Obama to back mortgage finance reform to speed housing recovery

President Barack Obama will propose overhauling the U.S. mortgage finance system in a speech on Tuesday, weighing in on a tangled and polarizing problem that was central to the devastating financial crisis in 2007-2009 and that continues to slow the economic recovery, the White House said.

Obama will propose eliminating mortgage finance entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over time, replacing them with a system in which the private market buys home loans from lenders and repackages them as securities for investors, senior administration officials said. The mortgage securitization process is deemed essential to the smooth flow of capital to housing markets and the availability of credit.

The government’s role would be relegated to providing some form of insurance or guarantee, and to providing oversight, according to officials and a White House statement.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, originally chartered by Congress to expand mortgage finance, were taken over by the government in 2008 amid mounting losses in the financial crisis. Propping them up cost taxpayers $187.5 billion, although the firms have now returned to profitability.

“We have to end Fannie and Freddie going forward and replace them with a commitment to the notion that private capital must be wiped out before the government pays on any form of catastrophic guarantee or reinsurance,” a senior administration official told reporters.
…
The president generally agrees with the bipartisan Senate proposal that would replace Fannie and Freddie with a system that would allow private firms to securitize mortgages, a senior administration official told reporters in a conference call. A government reinsurer of mortgage securities could backstop private capital in a crisis, the official said.

Obama would want the Senate measure to go farther in helping first-time home buyers and in making sure affordable rental housing is available, the official added.

The Senate bill, though, remains at odds with the bill advancing in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives that would liquidate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over five years and limit government loan guarantees.

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, Mortgages, Politics, Risky Lending | 204 Comments

New research indicates Gen-Y testicle size rapidly decreasing

Posted on August 5, 2013 by grim

Blame it on the Soy Phytoestrogens and BPA? From MarketWatch:

Women leave nest, men stay with parents

As more adults decide to live with mom and dad, young men appear to be less willing to fly the nest than women, a new study finds. This, experts say, could be an early sign of larger economic problems.

Millions of young Americans are living at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The number of “millennials” — adults aged 18 to 31– living at home rose to 36% last year. That represented the highest percentage in the last four decades, and a significant increase from 32% just five years earlier. In 2012, 56% of adults aged 18 to 24 lived in their parental home, Pew found, as did 16% of adults aged 25 to 31. However, millennial males (40%) were significantly more likely than millennial females (32%) to live with mom and dad.

There are some demographic reasons for the gender gap. On average, men tend to marry later than women, says Zhenchao Qian, chair of sociology at Ohio State University. “There are more single young men than women out there,” he says. “This gives unmarried men more time to live with their parents.” Men marry at around 29 years of age, approximately two years older than the average for women, and both sexes are marrying around two years later in life than two decades ago, according to a 2012 survey by Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research in Ohio.

Perhaps a more controversial theory: Sons may also have an easier time at home. Even in 2013, parents expect their sons to do less housework than their daughters, Qian says. “Parents give their sons more freedom than their daughters,” says Kit Yarrow, chair of the psychology department at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, Calif. and co-author of “Gen Y.” For Americans aged 18 to 24, “it’s easier for a young man to live at home and still feel independent than it would be for a young woman,” she says. An even less flattering reason: “Women tend to mature, emotionally, faster than men.
…
Young women tend to outperform men in post-secondary education. Some 71.3% of female high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college versus 61.3% of males, according to the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The former also appear to be better students. “Females tend to finish college faster than males,” according to the Pew report. What’s more, men who had earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 had an unemployment rate of 16.1% in October 2011, compared with 11.2% among females, a separate Bureau of Labor Statistics report found.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, National Real Estate | 174 Comments

North Jersey Contracts – July 2013

Posted on August 3, 2013 by grim

Here it is! The first look at pending home sales (contracts) for Northern NJ.

(Source GSMLS, except Bergen- NJMLS) – Updated with 2011 Data

July Pending Home Sales (Contracts)
——————————-

Bergen County
July 2011 – 594
July 2012 – 775
July 2013 – 846 (Up 9.2% YOY, Up 42.4% Two Year)

Essex County
July 2011 – 279
July 2012 – 367
July 2013 – 502 (Up 36.8% YOY, Up 79.9% Two Year)

Hunterdon County
July 2011 – 111
July 2012 – 137
July 2013 – 172 (Up 25.5% YOY, Up 55.0% Two Year)

Morris County
July 2011 – 377
July 2012 – 397
July 2013 – 533 (Up 34.3% YOY, Up 41.1% Two Year)

Passaic County
July 2011 – 180
July 2012 – 222
July 2013 – 329 (Up 48.2% YOY, Up 122.8 Two Year)

Somerset County
July 2011 – 253
July 2012 – 280
July 2013 – 366 (Up 30.7% YOY, Up 44.7% Two Year)

Sussex County
July 2011 – 107
July 2012 – 116
July 2013 – 182 (Up 56.9% YOY, Up 70.1% Two Year)

Union County
July 2011 – 249
July 2012 – 293
July 2013 – 376 (Up 28.3% YOY, Up 51.0% Two Year)

Warren County
July 2011 – 58
July 2012 – 83
July 2013 – 119 (Up 43.4% YOY, Up 105.2% Two Year)

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, North Jersey Real Estate | 23 Comments

Richmond, CA moves forward with nuclear option loan mods

Posted on August 2, 2013 by grim

From CNN/Money:

California city’s drastic foreclosure remedy: Seizure

The California city of Richmond said Tuesday that it’s ready to take an extraordinary step in its bid to stop foreclosures — threatening to wrest mortgages from the investors who now control them.

As a first step, the San Francisco Bay city said it will work with an investment firm to try to purchase mortgages of underwater homeowners at a price well below their current balances. It would then try to get those loans restructured to make them affordable.

But if the holders of the loans, who are mostly investors, refuse to sell by Aug. 14, the city said it will invoke eminent domain to seize the mortgages so it has more control over the process of making them affordable.

Eminent domain is the legal principle that lets government entities purchase land or structures, usually from reluctant owners who don’t want to sell. It is typically invoked for public uses such as parks, roads or utilities — not mortgages.

In the case of Richmond, the city argues that eminent domain is in the public interest because it could let people stay in their homes and help keep neighborhoods, especially minority communities and low-income neighborhoods, from fraying.

“After years of waiting for a comprehensive fix, we’re stepping into the void with a local principal reduction program,” said Gayle McLaughlin, mayor of Richmond.

The idea is controversial and reflects the frustration, seven years after the housing market started to collapse, of homeowners and officials in areas that are still reeling.

Posted in Foreclosures, Mortgages, Politics, Risky Lending | 98 Comments

June contracts up 10% year over year

Posted on August 1, 2013 by grim

From the Otteau Group:

June Purchase Activity Slower, But Still Strong

Home purchase demand in New Jersey recorded another double digit-increase in June with a 10% rise in signed purchase-contracts compared to one year ago (YOY). Considering last year’s 17% increase in June-2012, home purchase demand has risen by 28% over the past 2 years. Focusing on 2013, statewide purchase contracts have now risen by 17% YTD.

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

Home prices jump in May

Posted on July 31, 2013 by grim

From Bloomberg:

Home Prices in U.S. Increased by Most Since 2006 in May

Home prices rose in May by the most in more than seven years as the recovery in U.S. residential real estate gained momentum.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values climbed 12.2 percent from May 2012, the biggest 12-month gain since March 2006, after advancing 12.1 percent a month earlier, a report showed today in New York. The median projection of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 12.4 percent advance.
…
Historically low borrowing costs, short supply and improving job market are boosting demand for residential property and driving prices up. The climb in home values is also bolstering household finances, which may spur consumer spending, the largest part of the U.S. economy.

“We continue to look forward to upward momentum” in the housing market, said Anika Khan, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina, a subsidiary of the largest U.S. mortgage lender. “We still have historically low inventory levels.”
…
Home prices adjusted for seasonal variations rose 1 percent in May from the prior month, compared with a 1.7 gain in April. The Bloomberg survey median called for a 1.4 percent advance.

The year-over-year gauge, which includes records going back to 2001, provides a better indication of price trends, the group has said.

All 20 cities in the index showed an increase in year-over-year prices, led by gains of 24.5 percent in San Francisco and 23.3 percent in Las Vegas. New York showed the smallest gain at 3.3 percent.

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 58 Comments