Clayton, CA a fabulous small city nestled beneath our gorgeous Mt. Diablo State Park .  So much to offer in Clayton. I know, because it is where I call home myself! 

Just in the last month or so in Clayton we've seen our own Oktoberfest, Labor Day soapbox derby, a weekly Farmer's Market and our bi-weekly Music in the Grove.  Our walking trails are consistently voted TOPS, and Clayton itself is on the list of America's BEST CITIES to live in! Oh, and you'll often horses and riders walking thru town (or tied up behind the local saloon), coyotes roaming around and wild turkeys galore - seemingly unaware Thanksgiving is, oh, but a month away!  For dining, playing, relaxing and living, you couldn't find a better place than Clayton, CA. 

Check out www.CNNMoney.com for more on the Best Places to Live 2009 featuring CLAYTON!

So, now that I've talked about how great Clayton is to live... what about the homes for sale in Clayton? 

There are some really good housing opportunities now.  Prices have come down from the highs a few years ago and you can get a lot of house for your money here in Clayton as compared to neighboring Walnut Creek.   Schools are TOP NOTCH and both the elementary school and middle school in Clayton are California Distinguished Schoools, the best in the area.  The widely respected API score at Mt. Diablo Elementary School is 911.  Huge gains.  Diablo View Middle School is also distinguished with an API score of WELL over 800 and is the newest of middle schools in the entire district.  Beautiful joint use gym, and a campus less than 15 years old offers air conditioning and all the latest technologies.  Parental involvement at our local schools assure the success of our schools.

So, now let's talk housing stats, and market trends.  Take a look, and contact me for more information, the full report on Clayton or other nearby cities, and what it all means:

Search homes for Sale in the Clayton, CA and Concord, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek areas:

Contra Costa County, Clayton Homes for sale, Real Estate Expertise

Fellow REALTORS and industry leaders, please help!

We need SHORT SALE REFORM NOW!  Our banks and servicers are being strangled by their investor guidelines.   We need to jump into action together!  We need to write to our law makers - locally, statewide and nationally - to let them know they must aid in the reform of the Short Sale process.

Homeowners are left in agony when short sales are seemingly arbitrarily denied.  Or a small $$ difference closes the file.  Or a cash contribution requested is impossible.  Worst is the MONTHS it takes to get an answer from most major lenders, only to be told they will now turn your deficiency balance to a collectable debt!  Their systems are broken. Contact with anyone above a clerk level is almost impossible and they are overwhelmed, in part, due to their own ineptness (I mean how many times can you lose the same document?) ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!  Bank of America and Countrywide are two of the WORST offenders! 

Banks make decisions in these short sales that make NO business sense!  These banks ask for impossible terms from their borrowers when in a foreclosure, these same borrowers would walk scot free!  These sellers are very often not even treated with respect from the same banks who gave them the loan in the first place!  These people in many cases are losing everything - and they are up against the impossible to do the "right thing."  If banks would rather just foreclose, please just let us all know so we stop even trying!

I saw just today a blog featured on the Active Rain main page saying to stay away from Short Sales!  The moratorium is going to be lifted on foreclosures soon, and soon these short sales will be competing against even MORE REO's. 

I can track several of my files from the failure of a short sale to the foreclosure and ultimate sale which led to losses of 50k or 100k or MORE for these banks. IT MAKES NO SENSE!

ESPECIALLY for these banks who have benefitted from our tax payer dollars... they are not helping their borrowers and worse, they are contributing to bigger losses for themselves, and in some cases, larger liabilities for deficiency and taxes for their borrowers.  There are class action lawsuits forming.  There will be lawsuits looming.

Banks should be held to a strict , across the board standard of approving short sales.

One major bank, Wachovia, has taken all their portfolio loans and streamlined the process. They're keeping it local, they're approving within a week and we can close in 30 days.  THEY KNOW the losses to their bank will be much greater with a foreclosure - especially in this time of unprecedented decline of values month over month.  Use them as a model! 

PLEASE! Write to your legislators NOW.  Ask your clients to do it.  Tell them they must STREAMLINE the short sale approval process.  Give these banks and servicers permission to ignore investor guidelines in some cases as long as certain basic criteria are met!  Offer the same tax advantages offered as a foreclosure to the write off of bad debt of a short sale.

HELP HOMEOWNERS NOW.  They want to do the right thing!  They want to avoid foreclosure!  They want to buy a house sooner than would be allowed in a foreclosure!  They want to maintain their credit score as much as possible!  They want to help the bank minimize their losses!

BANKS!  Treat short sales like an REO.  Get us a value with a BPO.  Tell us what is acceptable and we'll sell them!!   Let's turn over this short sale inventory as quickly as the REO inventory is selling and we'll be able to turn our housing market around.  There are buyers who want these short sales, but they are not willing to wait the MONTHS it takes for these banks to make decisions.  Sellers need to be rewarded for keeping the liablity on themselves, keeping the maintenance up, doing all the disclosures and aiding the bank in minimizing their losses.  Plus it keeps our neighborhoods cleaner, more stable and in the longer term values up!  Sell now in a short sale vs. months from now in a messy foreclosure!

DO IT PEOPLE!  Please:

http://www.congress.org

You can look up your local, statewide and national lawmakers on the site above.  You can even write a letter to them right on the site, and print and mail, or for a small fee send thru the site and write on the soapbox to get other people involved too!

We can turn this market around if only we could sell the inventory!  Have you had enough?? I have!

This, I noticed today , on a new REO listing that just came up in my town. We all know the problems these days with keys that "walk away," or, doors that get left unlocked, but here is one agent's warning.  Maybe its been a bad day, but I found this hilarious:

"DO NOT LEAVE ANY DOOR UNLOCKED-Do not steal the key from lockbox; Do not forget to replace

lockbox face-- Back door is tricky,so if you are not good at problem solving, don't open it!

Yup, they did.  19,000 denial letters in error.

I thought it was strange when one client got a denial letter a MONTH AFTER we closed escrow!  Of course I got worried they used some fine print and denied it after close, refused funds and refused to reconvey.  But then, another client got the letter dated the same date, and then another...  so what's up?

Countrywide admits over 19,000 denial letters were sent out in error. 

How does such a thing happen?  Is there a single "button" one pushes to deny over 19,000 customers the help they are desperate to receive.  Heck, now they've got some emotional distress.  Think of all those customers frantically calling realtors this week, and frantically calling Countrywide this week. 

And they say "ooops."  Well I guess that's par for the course huh?

Remember that Do No Call list "thing?" Well I do!

The reason I bring this up today is that I listed my own parent's home last fall.  We took it off the market, withdrawn temporarily, and on Saturday it "expired."  Unfortunately for them, I had not taken their phone number out of the MLS so they have been bombarded with phone calls to list their home.  Some blatantly deceptive, some straight forward, either way - people, they are on the DO NOT CALL LIST!

At this point I'm really mulling over whether they should all be turned into to the do not call registry.  I know there are a lot of agents desperate for business (or so it appears from the sheer magnitude of calls and desperation displayed on their answering machine), but do it right!  Do it legally, and remember to check the registry before you call - as you may be unlucky enough to be calling an agent's family member :)

What would you do?  I follow the rules, I really do expect others to do the same, is that too much to ask?

You know, when you want to call a company and register a complaint, most legit companies have a mechanism to do that.  Well I've been trying to call Countrywide all day.  At every number I can find for their "complaint" line, it eventually ends me up to a recording saying they can't help me right now, call later (technical difficulties).  The recording has been saying that all day long.

Do Federal Lawmakers know this? Should we (collectively as an industry) make a complaint to the Office of Thrift Supervision? The FDIC? Who?  Who really looks into company complaints these days? Anyone?  Or is just the wild west and we all just fend for ourselves? 

Countrywide I think makes stuff up everyday.  One day we're waiting to be assigned "Phase One" of their short sale process, the next month we're "assigned an assigner."  And then 2 weeks later we're in "preliminary review."    Here we are 6 weeks after submission and we're still nowhere.  At all. Then they tell me they no longer "escalate" files, but then yesterday they told me it was escalated.

Its not ok.

Anyone have an inside track to Countrywide top management, I can't find a list of their Board or Head Honchos on their site.  Or is it all just Bank of America now.  If you dont' want to post their "special number" publicly, feel free to email me direct.

Here is an email I received this evening.  Unfortunately it is not unusual and I frequently get emails, calls and comments on my blogs from frustrated homeowners seeking HELP from their lenders.  Here's one that clearly wants to keep their home.  I don't know their situation, but surely if Wells Fargo has had their package since December, Wells Fargo would be able to tell them definitively if they can help or not, right?  Well, at least you'd think so.

SO now, intead of saving their home, they want to do a short sale. Unfortunately, they are not in an area I serve, but I will try to help them find someone who can help.

"I am interested in doing a short-sale.  I have talked with my lender, but they are giving us the run around.  Wells Fargo said they had our file in their Loss Mitigation department since December 1st.  Every time I call they say they don't have any information for us.  We are going into the fourth month behind on our payment.  They said they have started the Pre-foreclosure process.  I asked them can we qualify for the Help for homeowners program, or any program that would help us keep our home.  They say we are looking at the situation and leave it at that.  Every time I call they loss mitigation department they never give me any information.  I don't know how to proceed.  I always here the saying, "talk to your lender", but they don't talk to us.   Do lenders talk to you?"

Anyone at Wells Fargo care to comment?

Today, while perusing the www.NACA.com website I came across a couple of areas I thought were interesting enough to pass along.

First of all, NACA is the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.  NACA is a HUD certified counseling agency and provide non-profit advocacy. For those who have not heard of NACA before, here is a brief description of what they do from their overview page: 

The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America ("NACA") is a non-profit, community advocacy and homeownership organization. NACA's primary goal is to build strong, healthy neighborhoods in urban and rural areas nationwide through affordable homeownership. NACA has made the dream of homeownership a reality for thousands of working people by counseling them honestly and effectively, enabling even those with poor credit to purchase a home or refinance a predatory loan with far better terms than those provided even in the prime market.

They also have some interesting things on their website.

1. Their main page has a list of lending executives who have refused to cooperate with them in structuring agreements to help homeowners.  If you're curious how the CEO of JP Morgan Chase lives, how much he makes and his contact info - check www.NACA.com
2. They encourage speaking out to your local politicians and they have a page on their site for you to look up your local lawmaker contacts:  POLITICIAN SEARCH
3. They fight against predatory lenders and ask you to provide your story so that they may track trends and identify companies who have been preying on consumers: PREDATOR WATCH
4. See their CALL TO ACTION.  They want banks to stop foreclosures and help homeowners by modifying their predatory and subprime loans.  JOIN THEIR CALL TO ACTION

I've had some clients have good luck with NACA and it might be solution for your clients, or for you as a borrower if you're experiencing difficulties keeping up on a sub-prime loan. 

NACA's call to action:

". . . NACA calls upon these companies to follow NACA's lead - the lead of a non-profit company that is dwarfed by their size and reserves. Do the right thing. Here, the right thing is to modify these loans - before families lose their homes - to rates that borrowers can afford. The right thing for these lenders to do is to modify these loans so that borrowers pay the rate at which they were qualified because this will allow them to stay in their homes. The right thing is for these lenders to throw away their predatory re-set rates, that force borrowers to pay abusive interest rates and force them to take multiple jobs to keep a home. Stop this greed and profit, and keep people in their homes. Modify every loan back to the rate at which these borrowers were or should have been qualified, and everyone wins. People can keep their homes and avoid financial ruin, and lenders can still receive payments on mortgages that borrowers can actually afford."

For Wachovia customers in danger of losing their homes, Wells Fargo is announcing a new program to help Wachovia customers in danger of losing their homes in foreclosure.   As outlined in an article today in Forbes,  it is noted they will provide a reprieve thru the end of February for almost 500,000 borrowers possibly eligible for a modification program.

"Wells Fargo said 478,000 Wachovia customers, with loans totaling about $120 billion, will have access to the program, though San Francisco-based Wells Fargo said it was unsure how many customers would take part.

The customers within this portfolio that are being referred to foreclosure or are in foreclosure will receive an extension until Feb. 28 so they can apply for the modification program."

Believe it or not, as a REALTOR, I want nothing more than for homeowners to KEEP their homes.  I have been begging these companies to help their borrowers so they don't need to do a short sale, and they don't foreclose on their dreams.

Is this a "meaningful" loan modification program from Wachovia?  Only time will tell. I hope that if you hear of any success stories, you'll come back and tell them, I think we've all had enough bad news, I want to hear a success story!

If they do what they say:

"The modifications can include extending loan terms to 40 years, reducing interest rates, charging no interest on a portion of the principal for a set period of time or even permanently reducing the principal of loans in areas where housing prices have significantly declined."

It sounds promising...

I have access to some fabulous Contra Costa County statistics and beautiful visual charts, so thought I'd share some local Contra Costa cities and their median pricing by zip code. 

Here is Walnut Creek: