A few weeks ago, Congress extended the higher lending limits for another year. Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview that he planned to introduce legislation next year raising the maximum F.H.A. loan by $100,000, to $839,750. via the NY Times

Now I do not know about you, but this is another level of madness that fits right in the pattern of how are Federal Government has been running lately. They have a program that is losing money hand over fist, the FHA is close to needing a handout in the first time in it’s history, and they are thinking of increasing the risk to the program substantially.

Barney Frank has done this before by forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be an instrument of social change instead of fulfilling it’s mandate to be just a financial institution. Now it is a shell of it’s former self and being run by the government. The FHA is a fully run government entity that now is being used to prop up a fragile housing market in many cities by making loans that banks will not.

Let us hope that it also does not turn into a money pit that is propping up values and distorting the market. Oh wait, I think we are too late for that.

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

Related posts:

1. Federal Reserve Initiates 9.9 Billion Dollar Loan Modification Plan The Federal Reserve has finally issued a plan that is...
2. Federal Reserve Offers TALF To Commercial Lending Is this another indicator that the next wave of bad...
3. Probe of Lend America’s FHA Loan Program If you are dealing with Lend America and looking to...

So while these cities are not the top of most folks hit parade, they do provide the ability to live within ones means.

Top 10 Most Affordable Real Estate Markets in 2009

1. Kokomo, IN                           96.7
2. Springfield, OH                      96.1
3. Bay City, MI                         96.0
4. Mansfield, OH                        95.7
5. Elkhart-Goshen,IN                    95.2
6. Indianapolis-Carmel, IN              94.5
7. Canton-Massillon, OH                 94.4
8. Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA    93.9
9. Lima, OH                             93.8
10.Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IA-IL  93.0

via NAHB

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

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Smart Markets To Purchase A home In For 2009 Are you looking for a deal on a new home....
2. Top 10 Commercial Real Estate Markets For 2010 If you are a commercial investor odds are you are...
3. “Making Home Affordable” Website Now Live – Governments Initiative To Help Homeowners in Trouble The new website for the new federal initiative, “Making Home...

These 7 million foreclosures represent those that are being negotiated, ones lenders are just plain ignoring, ones that are being worked out, or those that because of different moratoriums are not being acted upon.

Now we all know that they will not hit the market at one time, but they are the ticking time-bomb of the housing industry.

These homes largely represent loans that are delinquent but have not yet resulted in foreclosure sales.

About 7 million properties are destined to go into foreclosure, according to a September study by Amherst Securities Group, compared with 1.27 million properties in early 2005.

“There’s a huge supply out there,” says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. “The foreclosure process can take a long time. When it comes to (the housing recovery), we’re not home free.”

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

Related posts:

1. U.S. Foreclosure Index: U.S. Foreclosures About 1 Million in 2008; Fourth Quarter Shows Decline Over Third-Quarter Peak – Yahoo! Finance According to a ForeclosureS.com report, just under 1 million homes...
2. Homeless Groups Organizing Squatters To Take Foreclosures Yes there are a great deal of foreclosures in the...
3. Top 10 States For Foreclosures for February 2009  The list of top states with the highest rate of...

That is why today’s announcement that Lowe’s is seeing a turn around in the hard hit areas of the country shows that people are reinvesting in their home. A small sign maybe, and perhaps an optimistic reading of the tea leaves, but still a hopeful sign.

If people are investing in their homes, odds are they feel that these same homes have value and opportunity for the future.

Even as the hard-hit home improvement industry is beginning to stabilize at home, Lowe’s Cos. will open its first units in Mexico in the fourth quarter, executives said at the company’s third quarter conference call.

The company plans to open 13 new units in the quarter, including two in Monterrey, said Bob Hall, CFO. And despite an overall sales decline, some markets are starting to bounce back somewhat, noted Robert A. Niblock, chairman and CEO.

“Some of the biggest improvements have come in areas hardest hit by the housing downturn,” including California, Florida and the Southwest, he said.

Sales for the quarter declined 3% to $11.4 billion, down from $11.7 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Comparable store sales for the third quarter declined 7.5%. Net earnings were $344 million, down 29.5% from year-ago quarter.

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

Related posts:

1. Lowe’s and Home Depot Struggle in Tough Real Estate Market The real estate community knows all to well that families...
2. Lennar Sees Improving Market As It Posts Wider Losses I am not sure what to believe anymore when reading...
3. Centex Corp. Sells Only 1,080 Homes For Quarter Centex Corp., one of the largest home builders in the...

For the residential market, real estate is home, a major investment, personal, and passionate. Decisions are not logical and are driven by status and desire.

The commercial market is all about the money, with a dash of prestige thrown in to make people stupid at the top end. But these same people know that when the going gets tough, they get out quickly.

That is why the commercial market rose quickly, prestige and the chance to make a profit of the dollars that were chasing real estate, and dropped just as fast. Bad deals were quickly recognized as bad deals and the owners sold, took their loss, and left the table with their tails between their legs.

We see more boom and bust in the commercial market, but the residential folks are jealous that a bottom can be reached quickly and that the market remains moving.

Asked why we’re seeing these institutional players doing deals now as opposed to the first half of the year, Haddigan said, “They’ve gone through the five stages of grieving — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Earlier in the year, there was all this buzz about Obama and TARP and TALF. It’s hard to know how deep and prolonged the downturn would be. So what I’m seeing now is a lot more acceptance from owners. I think there’s just more sobriety out there than there was a while back. People were willing to hold on six months ago, but at this point, they don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel and decide they need out.”  via CoStar

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

Related posts:

1. Vornado Building $1 Billion Dollar Vulture Fund For Commercial Real Estate We are entering the next stage of the commercial real...
2. Commercial Real-Estate Sales Plummet in July, 2009 If you are looking for a deal on a commercial property...
3. Commercial Real Estate Meltdown Keeps Federal Reserve From Raising Interest Rates The economy and the residential real estate markets have started...

And the last piece of good news is that the government has renewed the new home buyers program.

But think for a second. That means that people moving up are not really moving up that much. Only 53% of sales were by current home owners. So if they are not moving up, they are not moving out, and they are not selling their homes.

So we know now that much of the inventory being sold is vacant, either new construction or foreclosures. And the average purchase price would not buy an outhouse in many of the more expensive markets in the country.

So if you are selling in the low end of the market and absorbing young upwardly mobile renters, you probably had a good year. If your trying to sell a mid priced or expensive home you are fighting an uphill battle. The buyers are not looking in your direction yet.

We are still absorbing inventory folks and flushing out the large range of foreclosures on the market. This is not a healthy real estate market yet.

First-time buyers accounted for a record 47 percent of home sales between July 2008 and June this year, up from 41 percent in the prior-year period, according to the survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors.

The annual survey gleans details on everything from how buyers came up with down payments to how long it took sellers to unload their homes. The latest results were derived from more than 9,000 responses, the trade association said.

…

First-time buyers had a median age of 30 and reported a median income of $61,600, the survey shows. The typical first-time buyer paid $156,000 for their home, about $9,000 less than in the Realtors’ 2008 survey.

Repeat buyers were typically a few years older, 48, and earned a bit more than first-timers: $88,100. They also said they planned to stay in the home for 12 years. via Yahoo News

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

Related posts:

1. Where Are The Home Buyers? Remember the big college football programs in the 1980’s. They...
2. Sales Up, Prices Down For December 2008 As the housing market reacts to the recessionary pressures on...
3. Third Quarter Existing Homes Sales Increase 11.4 Percent, Prices Drop 11.2 Percent With stimulus provided by the new homeowners tax credit, we...

Yes, this is the same FHA that has provided loans to those who are unable to come up with the down payments that most banks are requiring or that loans for those with credit blemishes.

The same FHA that has provided some life to the housing market the past year.

Anyone gulping yet?

Now it is not that glum, they have the ability to be bailed out by the government so that pipeline to funding for prospective buyers is not shut off yet, but still it is a bit disconcerting to think that the only lender left in the near term could be banks that would rather not lend to housing unless the loan is guaranteed in blood with a first born as collateral.

The agency, which guarantees loans for many first-time homebuyers, could be hit if housing prices lose ground or if a new wave of mortgage defaults, triggered by double-digit unemployment, crashes into the market in the coming months.

If the FHA runs into financial trouble, it could make it more difficult for borrowers to get loans, particularly first-time buyers.

Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan said while an independent audit showed that the FHA burned through its backup fund as defaults and foreclosures spiked during the mortgage crisis, the analysis also showed that the agency should remain solvent under “most economic scenarios,’’ including higher unemployment and mortgage defaults. via Boston.com

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

Related posts:

1. Why We Might See Another Housing Slowdown if FHA Loans Blow Up When the mortgage companies were writing loans to anyone with a pulse,...
2. Federal Bailout Money Going Straight To Bottom Line, Not To Loans Remember when the politicians were crying out for the 700...
3. Hard Money Real Estate Investor Bilked Investors Out of 20 Million Dollars The real estate scams over the past few years are...

We have domains that can be worth a great deal of money that others may be interested in. We also have information that is crucial to doing business tied up in our email, banking, and other accounts. But the question I have for you is what happens to these assets if you die or are incapacitated?

The question is winding it’s way through the courts and is really not determined. If you do not have a plan where the accounts are identified and the passwords are not recorded in a place where your heirs and executors can get them, you may lose some significant assets that can be passed down to your family.

Here is an example.

You are an agent and own the domain MyCityRealEstate.com. Well you have invested a great deal of time in developing the site, it has a high page rank, and gets a ton of traffic. You run your real estate business through it.

You pass away and the domain sits there till the domain registration runs out. Some yahoo registers it for $9.95 and gets the benefit of your hard work. Well that sucks.

Your heirs could have sold that to another agent for thousands of dollars and that money could have remained in your family. Odds are if you have 1 great domain you have  a dozen pretty good ones. They are all worth good money quickly and easily.

We are in a brave new world. The legal profession is just starting to realize the value of online assets but the old forms and methods are not focused on recovering them. Take the time to make sure it is brought to their attention either in your will or in instructions to protect your assets.

So take the time to record these assets in a safe place and that if something happens to you your family will have the chance to profit from your hard work.

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

Related posts:

1. Who Will Refinance All The Commercial Real Estate Debt One of the questions I am hearing more of is...
2. Top 10 Largest Landowners in United States Land is considered to be one of the best investments...
3. Trillion Dollars of Commercial Real Estate Loans Coming Due? From 2010 to 2013 about 1,000,000,000,000 dollars of commercial real...

In a stunning expose, the Huffington Post laid out how with a slight of hand and a friendly Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel the new entity running Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae was able to get the Inspector General removed and his investigation into fraud at the agencies ended.

Hey, how important is 6 trillion dollars and the primary lending vehicle for a shaky housing industry? Another scandal will not hurt our weak economy, will it?

In September, the Department of Justice ruled that FHFA Inspector General Ed Kelley did not have authority to investigate wrongdoing or other abuses related to the agency, according to an internal DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo signed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Daniel Koffsky.

The ruling was made on complicated technical grounds. The current agency was created by a 2008 act that abolished the Federal Housing Finance Board and replaced it with the FHFA. FHFB employees automatically became FHFA employees and retained their “same status, tenure, grade, and pay.” 

Read the whole article at the Huffington Post

Folks, let me put it plainly, the more we put in the hands of our government officials, the more we open ourselves up to graft, corruption, and incompetence.

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

Related posts:

1. Japan Ditching Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Model The Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae fiasco has moved overseas....
2. Fannie and Freddie Fail To Meet Low Income Lending Goals All I can say is Thank God that Fannie Mae...
3. How Will Fannie and Freddie Deal With The Second Mortgages? The news is inundated with talk of Federal bailouts of...

Prices did rise in 30 of the 153 metro areas so that is a glimmer of hope, but the overall sales were on the lower end of the marketplace and directly related to the stimulus. That is the good news, the okay news is we have a new stimulus. The bad news is many of these sales are ones pulled forward and that we will have a market dip when the government supported gravy train ends.

Of course, inflation may be rampant then so housing prices may increase with the weaker dollar. I know, color me an optimist.

During the third quarter, 123 out of 153 metropolitan statistical areas reported lower median existing single-family home prices in comparison with the third quarter of 2008, while 30 areas had price gains.

The national median existing single-family price was $177,900, which is 11.2 percent below the third quarter of 2008; the median is where half sold for more and half sold for less. Distressed sales – foreclosures and short sales – accounted for 30 percent of transactions in the third quarter, which continued to weigh down median home prices because they sell at a discount relative to traditional homes. via NAR.

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

Related posts:

1. Home Prices Increase In a Number of States in 2008 In the midst of the gloom and doom that has...
2. Sales Up, Prices Down For December 2008 As the housing market reacts to the recessionary pressures on...
3. Centex Corp. Sells Only 1,080 Homes For Quarter Centex Corp., one of the largest home builders in the...