Carbon Monoxide Detectors Are Required in All CA Homes

Prior to having your home appraised for a home refinance or sale make sure you have working carbon monoxide detectors installed. I found them at Costco for $19. Best to have one on each floor of your home; ie. Laundry room or wherever there may be gas outlets. It’s now the law and appraisers will be looking for them. Call me at 714-478-3153 if you have any questions.

http://casafehomes.org/law.html

                    

Social Media - Be careful - can hurt your Net Worth

Social media can be very dangerous to your pocketbook. This video hits home on what IT and hackers are doing with your 'available' personal information.
Scary

Low Inventories Lift Sellers' Prices

 

Click for interactive

This has been a common theme the last nine months, particulary across Coastal areas in California. The question remains; where is the so called 'shadow' inventory analysts have been talking about that will keep home values low for some time to come. That may be the case in Inland areas across the State, but there is no sign of price errosion in desireable coastal communities. Today building starts were announced to be up 15% this past quarter.

Housing inventory continues to move in one direction: down.
The number of homes for sale in September dropped by 2.2% from August, by 17.8% from last year, and by 34.3% from two years ago, according to data from Realtor.com, a listings website.
Slightly more than 1.8 million homes were listed for sale in September, the third lowest level of the year, behind January and February, which are traditionally the slowest months of the year for home sales.

Inventories have been falling amid stronger demand from home buyers, which is helping to firm up prices. Median asking prices rose by 0.8% in September from August. Inventories are also low because many would-be sellers don’t have enough equity in their homes or aren’t willing to sell at prices that are still down by nearly 30% from their peak six years ago.

What's Pushing Mortgage Rates UP This Week?

The technical picture has changed to bearish, however with the recent volatility it is still too soon to believe that rates have finally bottomed and will continue to increase. This morning it isn’t the stock indexes that are driving rates higher, at 8:45 the DJIA up just 4 points. The push to higher rates is being driven by much better economic reports (retail sales, improvement in the housing market outlook) and relaxation over debt problems in the EU.

HARP Refi's Are Gaining Momentum

HARP accounted for nearly 24% of all refinances during the month, 50% of HARP applications came from the 80-105% LTV bucket, 27% of HARP applications came from greater than 125% LTV bucket, YTD HARP volume stands at 618k; Inception-to-date HARP volume stands at 1.6 million, and more than 70% of the HARP volume in Nevada, Arizona and Florida came from >105% LTV borrowers in August, versus 51% nationwide. Speaking of states, HARP volume as a percent of total refinances for Nevada, Arizona and Florida was at least 50% in August, versus 24% nationwide. Overall, HARP had a much higher market share both in July and August in states that have been particularly hard hit by the housing downturn including Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Utah, Idaho, Michigan, and Georgia. 

California Home Prices are RISING

Good news for many California homeowners, hundreds of thousands of whom have been underwater on their mortgages, prices are increasing. The statewide median price of an existing SFR was $345,000 in September compared to $343,820 in August. The September number was 19.5 percent above the median price of $288,700 in September 2011. This was the seventh consecutive month that median prices increased both year-over-year and month-over month and was the highest since August 2008 when the median price was $352,730

Should You Refinance Your Mortgage? - NASDAQ.com

Should You Refinance Your Mortgage? - NASDAQ.com

Boomerang Home Buyers Are Flooding the Market!

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10000872396390444657804578052892032374094-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwNTAxODU3Wj.html?mod=wsj_valetleft_email

When will Lending Standards Begin to Relax?

I get this question almost daily. When will residential mortgage lending standards loosen up so more American's can refinance their homes?

Very capable, qualified homeowners with Fico scores above 700, have steady jobs, strong income, and are never late on their mortgage payment and can't qualify for a new mortgage so they can lower their current interest rate and payment. When will the Fed's and proponents of Dodd-Frank realize how this bill has prevented credit worthy homeowners from taking advantage to current historically low mortgage interest rates? Can you imagine what a boost it would be to the economy if American families had an extra $400-$700 per month discretionary cash flow to buy more goods and services!?
As 30-year rates hit historic lows, some borrowers are hoping that lenders will be loosening their underwriting standards and that it will be easier to qualify for a mortgage.  They're hoping in vain: industry data shows that controls have gotten even tighter. I don't remember where I saw the stat, but the average credit score on new loans closed in August 2012 was 750, nine points higher than a year prior.  Fannie and Freddie borrowers' scores averaged 763 for that same period, and considering that fewer than 22% of Americans have credit scores over 749, there are a lot of people out there who are highly unlikely to qualify for a loan.  Lenders also appear to be requiring larger down payments, with the average Fannie and Freddie borrower putting down 21% (to put that in context, the median down payment in 2005 was 2%.) Originators hope that eventually lenders probably will relax about upcoming regulation, be less fearful about costly buyback demands from the GSEs, and strip away some of their extra credit-risk fees.  The key word here, though, is "eventually."