Buyers Offer More For a Staged Home
Helping Potential Buyer View a House as a home is key when selling. staging a home is one way to that And may just earn the homeowener some extra money.

Mortgage Rates Drop Even Lower This Week

Mortgage Rates Drop Even Lower This Week

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2015

"Low mortgage rates are a welcome sign for those in the market to buy a home this spring season and will help to support homebuyer affordability," says Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac. 
Freddie Mac reports the following national averages with mortgage rates for the week ending March 26:

• 30-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.69 percent, with an average 0.6 point, dropping from last week’s 3.78 percent average. Last year at this time, 30-year fixed-rates averaged 4.40 percent.

• 15-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 2.97 percent, with an average 0.6 point, dropping from last week’s 3.06 percent average. A year ago, 15-rates averaged 3.42 percent.

• 5-year hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages: averaged 2.92 percent, with an average 0.4 point, dropping from last week’s 2.97 percent average. Last year at this time, 5-year ARMs averaged 3.10 percent.

• 1-year ARMs: averaged 2.46 percent, with an average 0.4 point, holding the same as last week. A year ago, 1-year ARMs averaged 2.44 percent.

For the second consecutive week, mortgage rates continued to fall, with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage still well below 4 percent and 15-year rates dipping below 3 percent, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey.

x

Most Millennials Unaware of Closing Costs

Most Millennials Unaware of Closing Costs

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2015

What’s more, more than one-third of potential home owners – across all age brackets – say they’re “not very” or “not at all” aware of closing costs. Closing costs can come as a big surprise, which can often amount to 2 to 5 percent of the total purchase price of a home.

"This study emphasizes the need to better educate millennials, and really all consumers in general, on the real estate closing process,” says Brian Benson, CEO of ClosingCorp. “While interest rates are often the driving force in initiating a real estate transaction, the [real estate agent], lender, title and other settlement fees also have a significant impact on the down payment and cash outflow from the borrower perspective. Not understanding how everything is related can be a real impediment for first-time home buyers who want to get into the market."

Most of the adults surveyed say they end up learning about closing costs first from their real estate agent or by doing their own research. Indeed, millennial home owners said they were more likely to learn about closing costs from a real estate agent than a lender by a ratio of nearly 2-to-1, according to the survey.

"We as an industry should be stepping up our proactive education efforts to ensure home buyers are fully prepared to make the most significant financial transaction of their lives,” Benson says.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is implementing several changes to the disclosure process by August that are intended to make buyers more educated about closing costs. In August, the CFPB will require lenders to provide buyers with new closing disclosures at least three business days prior to closing. The disclosures are intended to be easier for borrowers to understand by providing them more time to ask questions and compare costs.

— REALTOR® Magazine Daily NewsClosing costs might come as a surprise to many buyers, especially young adults. Two-thirds of millennials – those between the ages of 18-34 – who plan to buy a home say they were unaware of closing costs, finds a new survey of more than 1,000 adults conducted by ClosingCorp, a provider of residential real estate closing cost data and technology for the mortgage and real estate industries.

More Than Half of Listings Are ‘Affordable

More Than Half of Listings Are ‘Affordable’

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2015

Fifty-four percent of for-sale listings of existing homes are within reach for a median-income household in the U.S., according to a new analysis by realtor.com®. Their analysts used the national median income of $51,801 to determine how many of the site's 1.6 million listings would be affordable to an average family, while also assuming a 20 percent down payment and 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. The monthly payment couldn’t exceed 28 percent of the family’s income.

Affordable homes were mostly centered in inland areas of the U.S., such as Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, as well as other Midwestern states. Affordability was also found to be highest in parts of Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming.

On the other hand, home buyers likely will find homes less affordable in places like the San Luis-Obispo-Paso Robles area -- California's Central Coast wine territory -- where less than 4 percent of February's listings were affordable, according to realtor.com®'s analysis.

Realtor.com® analysts also found that existing homes tended to be much more affordable than new homes. In February, realtor.com® had more than 7,700 actively selling new-home communities listed, with an inventory of nearly 57,000 homes available for sale. Only 21 percent of those new homes, however, were deemed affordable.

Source:

 "Where America’s Affordable Homes Are – and Aren’t – in 2015," realtor.com® (March 19, 2015)

Millennials Striking Out on Their Own DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS

Millennials Striking Out on Their Own
DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | MONDAY, MARCH 16, 2015
Household formation is about to turn a promising corner. The share of young adults living with their parents is projected to decline, according to a client note from Capital Economics.

In 2013, 31 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds still lived with their parents. Prior to the housing crisis, however, that percentage stood at 27 percent. If the number of 18- to 34-year-olds who live with their parents returns to pre-recession levels over the next five years that could mean an extra 400,000 young adults leaving home each year.Household growth has been abnormally low at about a half a million since 2008. But growth is estimated to have risen to 1.7 million in 2014, according to the Census Bureau’s latest Homeownership & Vacancy Survey.

"[A] normalization in the share of young adults living with their parents looks set to provide a boost to household formation, underpinning the recovery in housing starts," says Ed Stansfield, chief property economist for Capital Economics. "But unless it is also accompanied by a marked loosening in lending criteria it is unlikely to trigger a new house price boom, as house price growth will be constrained by income growth."

"The U.S. economy is now growing strongly, with real incomes rising rapidly and mortgage credit conditions loosening," says Stansfield. "That means more young adults will have the means to strike out on their own."
Source: "Is Household Formation Set for a Rebound?" HousingWire (March 12, 2015)  

x

Credit Conditions Still Difficult But Slowly Easing

Credit Conditions Still Difficult But Slowly Easing

Posted in Economist Commentaries, by Jed Smith, Managing Director, Quantitative Research on March 13, 2015
Qualifying for a mortgage is still generally difficult, although becoming easier, according to the January 2015 REALTORS® Confidence Index Survey.  Some respondents in states such as TX, CA, and NY reported that more people are qualifying for credit.  About 4 percent of REALTOR® respondents reported a purchase by a buyer with credit score of less than 620, up from about 1-2 percent in 2012-2014. In a normal market, the share of credit scores below 620 would be closer to 5 percent. Almost half of  REALTORS® providing transaction credit score information reported FICO credit scores of  740 and above; in 2013, the share was hovering at about 60 percent.Potential buyers facing credit limitations might want to consider a mortgage origination by community banks and credit unions.

Help your home buying experience to be a little easier and simple

Help your home buying experience to be a little easier and simple I am providing access to MLS Multiple Listing Service. So you will see what is actually available on the Market, using my ListingBook you will be avoiding those websites that post homes that are no longer available. 


Check out my ListingBook I am sure you will find it to be a great Benefit to you. 
Thanks 
Dj Morris Realtor Lic#00881044619 464-81115640 Baltimore Drive San Diego, CA 91942 

2015: A Big Year for Buyers

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

2015: A Big Year for Buyers

For a host of reasons, 2015 is shaping up to be a good year for homebuyers—particularly younger and first-time buyers.

More inventory, rising rents and changing demographics will all contribute to more balance in the market between buyers and sellers next year, after years in which sellers were largely in the driver’s seat. Below are Zillow’s official predictions for real estate in 2015:

Growth in U.S. rents will outpace growth in home values by the end of the year.

Millennials will overtake Generation X as the largest group of homebuyers.

Builders will begin constructing more, less expensive homes.

Homebuyers will have more negotiating power in 2015.

How will all of this play out? Each prediction ties into the next. Read on for more.

Growth in Rents Will Outpace Home Values

After peaking at an annual pace of 8.3 percent in April, home value growth has slowed in every month since, falling to 6.4 percent by October. This pace is expected to continue to fall, to about 2.5 percent by the end of 2015, much more in line with historical growth rates in home values and a sign the for-sale market is continuing its march back to normal.

But at the same time growth in home values has been slowing, growth in rents has been accelerating. After dipping to a 2014-low of 2.3 percent annual growth in May, the pace of annual rental growth has risen or stayed flat in every month since, up to 3.5 percent in October. We expect rents to continue growing at that pace through 2015.

Rental demand is skyrocketing, thanks to a combination of younger workers staying in rental housing longer and families turning to the rental market after losing their homes to foreclosure during the recession. Builders are doing what they can to keep up, but it can take a while to get large multi-family projects off the ground, and demand is very hot right now.

So what does this mean for buyers? In a word, affordability. In the second-quarter, for-sale homes in the United States were roughly 30 percent less expensive (in terms of the share of income needed to afford the mortgage on a typical home) than they were in the pre-bubble years between 1985 and 2000. But rental homes were almost 20 percent more expensive. Continued growth in rents, combined with a slowdown in home value appreciation, will mean this trend will only continue into 2015.

For current renters that can afford a down payment and can find a home they can afford, buying will look increasingly attractive next year.

Millennials Will Overtake Gen X as the Largest Homebuying Age Group

Contrary to popular opinion, millennials (buyers aged 23 to 34) actually do want to buy homes. And current millennial renters are more optimistic than other generations that they will eventually be able to afford a home. So a lack of desire or confidence is not why these younger potential buyers have not been buying homes. Instead, the answer has much more to do with demographics: Millennials have been delaying getting married and having children, the two main drivers for first-time home purchases.

But life catches up to everyone, and as this group ages, they will begin to settle down and start buying homes en masse. Being the largest generation in the country, millennials also have numbers on their side.

Finally, the rising rents mentioned above will force current young renters—no matter how content they are renting—to consider buying a home, if only to keep their monthly payments fixed. Given lifestyle preferences, it’s possible and maybe even likely that these home purchases could lean more toward condos or townhomes located closer to city centers, and away from suburban subdivisions and single-family cul-de-sac communities.

Whatever the type of home purchased, there will be a shift among this group toward homeownership, and away from renting. In many areas, the gap between the homeownership rate of millennials and older Baby Boomers is already quite narrow relative to other places, including large markets like Las Vegas and Fresno, California.

Builders Will Build More, Less Expensive Homes

In general, home builders appear to have made a tradeoff in recent years: To sell fewer, more expensive homes instead of selling more, less expensive homes.

Currently, newly constructed homes command a roughly $75,000 premium over existing homes, putting a new home out of reach for many would-be first-time buyers. Additionally, even though inventory of for-sale homes is up overall, in many markets inventory at the lower end of the market is far more constrained than at the higher end.

Take Denver, for example. In October, there were almost four times as many homes available for sale in the Denver metro in the upper price tier (priced at $357,900 or more) than there were homes priced in the lowest price tier (less than $219,000). The same pattern held true in many other markets, as well. Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix and Nashville all had at least two times more homes for sale in the top tier than the bottom tier in October.

But we expect more bottom-tier inventory to come on line over the next year, and a lot of that will come from builders turning their attention away from the upper part of the market and toward the lower end, particularly as more millennials enter the market, as noted above. New home sales volume has been stuck around the 450,000 per year mark. In order to break out and get that number above 500,000, builders are going to have to start to build cheaper homes, which will help to narrow the price gap between new and existing homes and contribute to more rapid inventory gains both overall and at the lower end of the market.

And as a Result, Homebuyers Will Have More Leverage Overall in the Market

For all of the reasons outlined above, buyers in general will have more negotiating power in the market.

In many ways, conditions have been ripe for buyers for several years: Home affordability is very high, thanks to home values that remain almost 10 percent off their pre-recession peaks and mortgage interest rates that remain near all-time lows. What’s been missing has been inventory of for-sale homes, both from a lack of sellers and because investors and all-cash buyers scooped up thousands of properties in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, and have not begun selling them off yet at a sufficient pace to keep up with demand.

But inventory is coming back, and will gather even more momentum as builders ramp back up. As a result, instead of buyers feeling the competitive heat and engaging in bidding wars to the benefit of sellers, that pressure will instead shift to sellers competing with the home down the block for offers and attention. This will lead to price cuts, which will help keep homes affordable for more buyers.

We’re already seeing this occur. Roughly 37.4 percent of all U.S. listings on Zillow had at least one price cut in October, up from 34 percent at the same time last year. The median price cut nationwide was about 5.4 percent in October, or more than $9,500 based on the October median home value of $177,500.

More selection, better deals and continued low mortgage rates, coupled with an increasingly difficult rental environment, will help bring balance to 2015 and result in smoother sailing for everyone as they enter the housing market.

Stan Humphries

Stan is Zillow's Chief Economist.

#Mortgage Challenge Many home buyers- both first-time and experienced -work with loan officers. However, first-time home buyers are more likely to report challenges with understanding the mortgage process and the options available to them.

Many home buyers- both first-time and experienced -work with loan officers. However, first-time home buyers are more likely to report challenges with understanding the mortgage process and the options available to them.

FHFA Improves Note Sale Program

 FHFA Improves Note Sale Program

BY CHARLES DAWSON, VIJAY YADLAPATI

On March 2, 2015, The Federal Housing Finance Agency enhanced requirements for sales of non-performing loans by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (the GSEs).  In a letter last year to Director Mel Watt NAR raised concerns that this disposition strategy gives investors an advantage over potential owner occupant buyers.  NAR requested more information on the sale of the notes and asked FHFA to study the cost and impact of bulk note sales to institutional investors.  In January, NAR met with FHFA officials who indicated that coming changes would improve the note sale process.

As part of the changes, borrowers whose loans are sold as part of the program must be considered for other relief such as a short sale. Additionally, if the home should go through the foreclosure process, for the first 20 days after a an REO property is marketed, the property may be sold only to buyers who intend to occupy the property as their primary residence or to non-profits

#ATTENTION #MILITARY PERSONEL

14 AVAILABLE HOMES

IN EAST COUNTY MOVE-IN CONDITION 4 BEDROOMS2 BATHROOMS SQUARE FOOTAGE1300 TO 2200