Beverly Bayer's (bbayer) Blog

Moreno Valley is a town where aggressive lending and a high percentage of first time 100% financed buyers had a field day - pushing up prices often in the 3 to 4% per month range.  Now those homes are falling into foreclosure and prices have dropped significantly.Per the latest records:614 Notice...

2 brokers disciplined in Colorado:  purchased properties at inflated prices - with the excess funds retuned to the fraudsters under an LLC company - one agent lost his / her license, the other person's RE licensed was suspended for 90 days.  One property in the scheme was listed for sale at $300,...

Andrew Cuomo prior head of HUD, and now the New York State Attorney - has been looking into the mortgage mess and feels that part of the problem is the pressure lenders place on appraisers to help make deals.  He is working with Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac and the Office of Federal Housing Oversite ...

The appraiser's job is to justify the purchase price or value needed . . . . NOT  The appraiser's job is to use the experience, anaylysis of the market data to determine the most probable sales price of the property - as of the valuation date, in the terms of CASH.The borrower is the appraiser's ...

Something I am starting to see in Moreno Valley, CA is a BIG jump in the number of pending sales - and I am hearing that the REO listing agents are getting multiple offers on the lowest priced properties.  Now prices have gone down (since the top of the market: July 2006) about 1/3 (from about $4...

I have been going to the REO auctions in my area of California - actually got a house at one in November: all rehabbed now and ready for a tenant.  I purchased for cash and applied for a loan later - I had a hard time getting a new loan - hard to prove income as an appraiser in a declining market...

End of the year: Moreno Valley, California Real Estate MarketFrom Beverly A. Bayer, SRA - Real Estate AppraiserThere are a total of 2247 single family homes for sale 1093 are vacant - which is 48.6% (almost half)68 of the total number of listings per MLS are owner occupied with a Notice of Defaul...

Story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal connecting Fraud and Foreclosures - one interesting quote on page A14: "A recent review of a sampling of about 100 stated-income loans revealed that almost 60% of the stated amounts were exaggerated by more than 50%".  "Mortgage Fraud 101 How sma...

In the Wall Street Journel today - CEO of Morgan Stanley "was shaken yesterday as the Wall Street giant announced it would write down its morgage assets by $9.4 billion".  "Morgan Stanley is the fourth financial behemoth to announce a massive wirite-down as the crisis arising from the U.S. home-m...

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve are proposing changes to the home mortgage provisions of regulation Z -----set up a new category of higher-priced mortgages  (those that have annual % rates that exceed the Tresury securities of comparable maturity by at least 3% points for firsts and...