Peace in the Neighborhood

$450 Billion Out of the Shadows According to Standard & Poor's, the estimated principal balance of residential properties in foreclosure but not yet on the market is approximately $450 Billion. S&P categorizes the shadow inventory as loans that are at least 90-days delinquent or somewhere in the ...

Percentage of Distressed Homes State by State What's the Bottom Line?   Distressed properties have a major impact on house values in a marketplace. Where there is a large percentage of distressed properties, home prices will continue to soften until we work our way through this inventory.  

Home Sales & Home Values February numbers were released this morning, and there were definitely surprises... According to the NAR (National Association of Realtors) Existing Home Sales were down 9.6% Median Home Prices dropped 5.2%  Most economists had expected a drop of roughly 4% in existing ...

You Want To Be A Renter Many "UnderWater" homeowners are contemplating "Walking Away" and join the ranks of the renters. Those homeowners along with would-be buyers who are having difficulty in qualifying for a mortgage are driving up the rents. It's not just the rising rents that new renters nee...

Should We Care?.... .....that there are over 11 million "Underwater Homeowners"? Approximately 23% of homeowners with a mortgage presently owe more than their home's value. A total of $750 Billion of negative equity. Close to another 2.5 million homeowners have less than 5% equity...and with home...

The Pursuit of Strategic Defaulters   First, exactly what is a "Strategic Default"???   Strategic default is a term used to describe situations where mortgage borrowers stop making their payments they can “afford”. This is a simplistic definition because what you can afford depends on your priori...

Time to Put More Cash Down Since the bubble burst in the housing market, banks have required larger down payments from potential homeowners.  The increase has depleted the potential pool of buyers. The move to force home buyers to lay out more cash is driven mostly by banks.  Most likely a larger...

Love Your Home on "Love Day" & Everyday   The last thing most homeowners want to do is make major upgrades to their homes...since most have lost substanital equity the last few years. Who can blame them? It's all to easy to be discouraged about the incredible amount of lost equity...for many it's...

When Will We Notice the Elephant in the Room?  There has been more frequent discussions recently of renewed interest in housing, slowly increasing sales and supposed stabilization in prices...but the elephant in the room is slowly growing.   That elephant is foreclosures. REO inventory is rising,...

Should You Own a Home? Most people realize that the value of a family owning a home goes far beyond just the financial considerations. Several studies that have been conducted the last 2 months relating to the value of owning a home.   Is Owning a Home Good For a Family? In the AAAH study, 87% of...