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investor: Foreclosure filings decline - short sales climb - mortgage distress hangs around - 07/19/10 05:31 PM
Real estate market observers have mixed feelings about RealtyTrac's Midyear 2010 Foreclosure Report. It says that 1,654,634 homeowners were sent at least one mortgage foreclosure filing from January through June. That translates to over 3,000,000 by the end of the year and RealtyTrac forecasts that over 1 million of them will eventually become repossessions, or REOs - real estate owned. The number by itself is of course alarming, but the current six month number actually is a drop of 5% from the second half of last year. Ordinarily in any housing enterprise that would be something to feel upbeat about.
On … (4 comments)

investor: HAMP improving subprime mortgage performance - 06/17/10 09:04 PM
Subprime home loans became a noteworthy ingredient in the recent real estate frenzy. Large pools of them were sold on the secondary mortgage market as RMBS, or residential mortgage-backed securities, to supply additional liquidity for more loans. When the air suddenly escaped from the tremendous housing bubble the first mortgage product to absorb its swift and devastating effects was the subprime kind, leaving scores of investors wondering what had whacked them.
Moody's Investors Service details that subprime RMBS issued from 2005 to 2008 reached a delinquency level of 54.4% in January of 2010, an all-time high. From there on, though, the … (19 comments)

investor: HOA fees going increasingly unpaid - creative legal remedy to help - 03/12/10 03:03 PM
Home Owners Associations are as vulnerable to the mortgage and real estate meltdown as banks, property owners and investors are. There is no escaping the wrath of the marketplace. Homeowners finding themselves in mortgage payment trouble often stop meeting their HOA responsibilities even before letting the loan itself go delinquent. That can spawn an unrelenting downward spiral where the HOA falls short on its fee collections and has to cut back on services and maintenance, while affected homeowners later on go into foreclosure and abandon their properties, leaving vacancies subject to blight and all sorts of ugly stuff. The end result … (8 comments)

investor: Southern Nevada real estate prices firming up in February - 03/10/10 04:42 PM
Las Vegas homeowners should be mildly encouraged about the direction housing prices are going nowadays. Well, they aren't actually going much of anywhere, and that's what's good about it. They have put the breaks on the slide that seemed to go on forever and are seemingly stabilizing. Mortgage borrowers whose property is underwater can now hope that values will soon start heading in the other direction, up that is. And eventually lift them from the painful, wallet-busting submersion, whenever that'll be.
GLVAR, or Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, just released its latest stats for February to show that the median … (2 comments)

investor: Mortgage securities rating agency Moody's and the whole system under fire - 10/19/09 09:26 PM
Mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, played a pivotal part in the recent galloping real estate market and in its eventual and memorable collapse. These bonds get rated based on risk before they are offered for sale so that potential investors - pension funds, university endowments, international investors, among others - know what they are fiddling with. Moody's is one of the top three in U.S. to do that, the others being Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's.
When Moody's was spun off from Dun & Bradstreet early in the decade, the long-time corporate philosophy of honest and quality ratings was supplanted with … (4 comments)

investor: Is the mortgage industry on the mend? - 06/16/09 11:14 PM
Maybe it is if the focus is on the mortgage-backed securities market. More specifically on privately-issued mortgage bonds. Just a few months ago there was hardly any market for them at all, and if there were one, the prices of them were on life support.
But now this particular sector is stirring. At least a little bit. Mortgage bonds secured by 30-year fixed-rate prime paper issued in 2006-07 traded for 55 cents on the dollar in March, reports Amherst Securities Group, a dealer and market maker in mortgage-backed securities. That was then, now the same paper is going for almost 80 … (8 comments)

investor: Las Vegas new single-family house market draws recovery prediction - 05/26/09 09:19 PM
A lot of time and money is spent annually in foreseeing the future in a variety of areas. From the familiar to the strange. As expected, the mortgage and real estate markets have seen their fair share of this. Some of these studies are more accurate than others, after they are later independently checked for accuracy. But overall, the results of these novel exercises appear to be off the mark, sometimes way off.
In any case, here is the latest for Las Vegas. According to a new housing market study completed by the Concord Group, Southern Nevada can expect its new … (14 comments)

investor: Washington serves up a short sale initiative - 05/15/09 05:38 PM
The Obama administration came up with a new plan that is aimed at trying to breathe some more life into the morbid real estate market. It still needs quite a bit of help from wherever it can get it. This time the focus is on short sales, and why not. Anyone - real estate agents, mortgage consultants, buyers, sellers - who has been involved in one of them, has some real life horror stories to tell.
The initiative has two parts to it. One attempts to streamline the paperwork requirements for everyone, from mortgage lenders to servicers to investors to distressed … (8 comments)

investor: Vegas housing market getting demand help, from vulture funds - 04/21/09 04:42 PM
The numbers are still too high. Southern Nevada existing home inventory, according to the local MLS, continues to hover up there where no one wants to see it. It has been over 20,000 for months. Much of it has to do with the high mortgage foreclosure rates here that seem to be marching along unabated, month after month.
Bottom line is, demand is still too weak. Low home loan interest rates have been a big help and the various government incentives are also weighing positively in. But that's not enough. To change the real estate market dynamics in Las Vegas more qualified … (8 comments)

investor: Summerlin luxury condominium development back on track - 04/18/09 05:55 PM
These types of news items are rare today. Las Vegas real estate has been wallowing in a slump for a while, longer than many would like to admit. Lately, though, it has shown some encouraging signs that it still does have a pulse. Record-low mortgage rates have kept it in the game, as have steadily declining home values. The best action right now is in the lower end of the market segment where many first-time buyers and smart investors are having a field day.
And then there is a surprise announcement that a mid-rise luxury condo project in Summerlin is back … (2 comments)

investor: LV existing home sales increase in March - 04/09/09 06:48 PM
The spring real estate season kicked off nicely last month, with resales again showing strong numbers. That has been the direction of this segment of the market for a good stretch now.  
All in all, 2,980 single-family houses were closed then that translates to a serious jump of 30% from February, as was reported by Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, or GLVAR. The figure is double of that from March of 2008. As has been the pattern recently, distressed sales dominated the statistics and most of them were in the lower end of the market where first-time buyers and … (4 comments)

investor: Canadians drawn to Las Vegas real estate - 03/30/09 08:07 AM
Southern Nevada housing market has recently been through plenty of agony. Despite low mortgage interest rates sales of single-family houses, condominiums and townhomes have been slow, especially in the middle and upper ends of the price scale. Sinking values have attracted first-time buyers and real estate investors to rummage through the bulging inventory in the lower end of the marketplace and grab property, often foreclosures, at huge discounts. Sin City's housing supply is still way too high and needs to come down further to give the market a chance for recovery.
One group that has been moderately active in the past … (6 comments)

investor: Real estate market perking up in troubled areas - 03/07/09 10:26 PM
Anyone can live with these types of headlines. The other kind - like those about mortgage approvals being hard to get, price declines, foreclosures - have been dominant for too long. Yes, the positive ones give consumers a dose of optimism that the housing market isn't dead after all. That it has the capacity to work thorough its imbalances and eventually start on the road to recovery.  
Let's throw in some interesting stats. First American CoreLogic put together a bunch of numbers on home sales at ZIP codes in metropolitan areas with at least 10,000 households. Each city only got one … (4 comments)

investor: Fannie Mae update to boost housing demand - 02/21/09 09:35 PM
That's good news. One of the main barriers to getting the residential real estate market to change direction is the lack of demand. Well, there is some demand, it's true, thanks to very low mortgage interest rates and affordable prices. But they alone won't cut it because the underwriting guidelines remain rather strict and keep many qualified borrowers from getting a home loan. And then there is the poor economy.
But help is on the way. A revised Fannie Mae policy is going to give the demand function a nice shot in the arm. The change involves how many mortgages the … (14 comments)

investor: Buyers concerned about many challenges - 02/05/09 10:49 PM
The real estate market is still in a deep sleep, by many accounts. Yes, it's true that there are pockets across the land where severely-reduced home prices are attracting brave buyers and well-heeled investors to venture out to make purchase offers. That is encouraging and Las Vegas happens to be one of them. Overall, though, a solid turnaround appears to be at least a few more months away.
A January study by the National Association of Home Builders, or NAHB, tells us that the main reason prospective buyers shy away from the marketplace today is because they can't sell their existing … (12 comments)

investor: Fannie Mae to tighten condo finance guidelines - 01/03/09 08:12 PM
Some savvy industry observers could've foreseen it. Anyway, the new underwriting standards go into effect January 15 but the good news is that they only apply in Florida for investors and second home buyers. Fannie Mae has determined that Florida condominium segment will continue sliding for the foreseeable future and is taking steps to avoid buying risky mortgages from lenders operating in the Sunshine State. This will affect both existing and new condominium developments.
Up to now mortgage lenders have been doing the necessary project reviews on buildings, their financial standing and also on the health of the area's real estate … (4 comments)

investor: Developers already planning future projects in Southern Nevada - 11/08/08 10:36 PM
Las Vegas real estate is in a slump, a description that is widely accepted throughout the community. It started with the residential sector and has now spread over to the commercial and resort sides as well. There are some cautious signs that the housing market is beginning to make some noise as resales, specifically in the lower end of the price scale, are attracting homeowner-candidates and long-term investors. To some it's an early indication that a turnaround is already visible on the horizon and they are busy drafting plans for future developments.
GSG Development is one of them, a valley firm … (2 comments)

investor: Mortgage foreclosure rescue plans ineffective - 10/28/08 10:01 PM
The government has tried over the last year or so quite a few different ways to stem the flood of new foreclosures. The rework idea hasn't fared too well, however, as the numbers keep going up at a steady pace. The programs that have come out of Washington have been voluntary on the mortgage industry with some financial incentives thrown in but that evidently hasn't been enough to make a meaningful impact on the problem. The previous belief that a foreclosure is very expensive to the mortgage holder doesn't seem to be valid any more. If it were then these plans … (6 comments)

investor: Las Vegas housing experts discuss their wobbly marketplace - 10/25/08 07:42 PM
Every quarter Southern Nevada real estate insiders meet up to talk about pressing issues in the industry and as is well-known now there are a lot of them to get into. It's aptly called the Crystal Ball housing outlook. Couple of items in the last meeting stand out for further comment and deliberation.
One of them is new home construction. The market boom in Las Vegas was at its hottest roughly from 2004 to 2006. Right in the middle of that, or 2005, local builders produced 38,000 new homes when consumer demand then justified only 25,000, reports SalesTraq, a real estate … (8 comments)

investor: Mortgage industry undermined by rating agencies? - 09/23/08 05:21 PM
They are a little known piece of the puzzle in the huge U.S. mortgage lending arena but credit agencies definitely play a crucial role in it. The big players in the field are Moody's, S & P and Fitch. Historically they were rating corporate bonds so that investors would know where to put their money at what return and risk.
In the late ‘90s, though, they began looking at residential real estate finance and learn how to rate mortgage-backed securities. And they liked what they saw and jumped into it feet first. The boom years came and they kept giving ratings … (8 comments)