short sale: As of April 5 - HAFA is Here - 04/08/10 05:48 AM
The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program debuted April 5. Lenders have been ramping up for a deluge of Short Sales for the past several months and the government’s latest program will probably boost the numbers even though there are flaws in the program. HAFA may help individuals who qualified for a trial loan modification, but didn’t make the final cut for a permanent loan change. The same paperwork prepared for HAMP will apply to HAFA as well.
Bank of America and other servicers have more than doubled the number of Short Sales they are handling in recent months. There is real … (4 comments)
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short sale: Mortgages to Exceed Value until 2015 to 2020 - 04/06/10 05:31 PM
First American CoreLogic has estimated that even in the healthier markets that are now beginning to heal from the steep price drops of the last three years, homeowners currently with underwater mortgages will continue to have mortgages that exceed value until late 2015.
By the 4th quarter of 2009 First American CoreLogic estimated that over 11.3 million residences with mortgages had negative equity. That’s 24% of all U.S. mortgages.
By using a subset of mortgage holders, CoreLogic was able to project the length of time it will take for the average homeowner to again reach positive equity. The typical borrower will … (26 comments)
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short sale: Government’s New Foreclosure Prevention Plan - 04/01/10 05:55 AM
The Obama Administration revealed on Friday a new plan to stem foreclosure. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Herbert M. Allison contends that the nature of the foreclosure crisis has shifted from one of sub-prime mortgages to one of helping the unemployed and under-water to survive bad times.
For loans above 115% of market value mortgage write-downs will be considered in order to bring the homeowner’s payment to 31% of income. In response to concerns that the mortgage write-down program would encourage people to default who might have otherwise continued to pay, the government has held firm that this program will impact … (1 comments)
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short sale: Housing Prices Continue Decline - 03/19/10 05:31 AM
Integrated Asset Services (IAS) Housing Price Index (HPI) declined for a sixth straight month in January, a 2.3% decline overall.
IAS speculated that the decline was made worse by extreme weather in the Midwest. Illinois saw a decline of 4.9%, Missouri 4.4% and Minnesota 3.5%. The Northeast saw a drop of .5%, the South a drop of 2.2% and the West a price decline of 2.6%, just like the average decline of the Midwestern states.
The HPI is now down 30% from its high in mid-2007.
The shadow supply of foreclosed houses continues to be a concern to the economists at … (2 comments)
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short sale: Heat Turns Up on Second Lien Write-downs - 03/18/10 05:29 AM
Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has called for second mortgage holders to write down these loans in order to relieve pressure on the problem of underwater mortgages. Once second mortgages are written down it becomes possible for more first mortgages to be restructured into safer conventional plans at current market value.
Frank’s letter of concern has gone to the major second mortgage underwriters, Bank of America, JPMorganChase, CitiGroup, and Wells Fargo. Frank argues that homeowners are often eager to save their homes, but complex negotiations between mortgage holders often lead to frustration and failure. The result is … (2 comments)
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short sale: Appraisers Oppose Use of BPOs for Short Sale Valuation - 03/16/10 05:34 AM
Three national appraisal groups led by the Appraisal Institute have written to the Treasury Department in opposition to the HAFA guidelines that allow use of BPOs to price Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program short sales. The coalition of appraisers believe that BPOs make fraud more likely in HAFA short sale deals and puts consumers and lenders at greater risk of receiving inaccurate valuations.
The Appraisal Institute and its peer groups believe all short sale valuations should conform to the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice. The brokers and real estate agents who complete BPOs are generally not specially trained to meet … (3 comments)
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short sale: Foreclosure Overhang Inhibits Home Appreciation - 03/13/10 08:08 AM
Barclays Bank has weighed in on the crystal ball gazing activity of predicting how much further the housing market will decline. The bank believes as long as there is a large stockpile of bank-owned and pre-foreclosure property, the values cannot rise appreciably in most markets, although the risk of a steep decline goes away with each passing month of housing sales growth.
Nationally, Barclays says that home prices will drop another 4 to 5% before hitting bottom. The benefit of the home modification program has been that it has slowed the number of homes going into foreclosure so that the remainder … (1 comments)
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short sale: Thinking about foreclosures, but don't know where to find them? - 03/12/10 05:12 AM
Here’s a list of the free websites that can be used to locate bank-owned property:
American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc https://re.ahmsi3.com/staticBroker/rePropertiesNew.jsp
Bank of America (including Countrywide) http://bankofamerica.reo.com/search/propertysearch.aspx
BB&T http://www.bbt.com/applications/specialassets/search.asp
Chase http://mortgage.chase.com/pages/other/co_properties_landing.jsp
Citi http://www.citimortgage.com/Mortgage/Oreo/SearchListing.do
Compass Bank https://www.compassbank.com/appforms/properties/index.jsp
GMAC and CapMark- Now Berkadia http://www.berkadia.com/Berkadia/REOProperties.aspx
HomePath by Fannie Mae http://www.homepath.com/
HomeSteps by Freddie Mac http://www.homesteps.com/hm01_1featuresearch.htm
HSBC http://www.banking.us.hsbc.com/HICServlet?cmd_PropertySearchDefault=cmd_PropertySearchDefault
HUD - Housing and Urban Development Listings http://www.hud.gov/homes/index.cfm
IndyMac (now OneWestBank) http://apps.indymacbank.com/individuals/realestate/Search.asp
M&T http://services.mandtbank.com/personal/bank_owned_prop.cfm
Ocwen www.ocwen.com/ Regions Bank http://realestate.regions.com/servlet/Ore/ForeclosedPropertySearch.jsp
SunTrust http://suntrust.res.net/
Wachovia http://reo.wachovia.com/
Top Negative Equity States and Cities
Last week we mentioned First American CoreLogic's 4th Quarter 2009 negative equity report. Here’s a list from … (2 comments)
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short sale: Administration Considers Halt to Foreclosures - 03/08/10 05:29 AM
The Obama Administration is considering further sanctions against Lenders who foreclosure before all Home Affordable Modification Program options have been explored. The HAMP guidelines strongly urge Lenders to look at all options before foreclosing, but falls short of requiring Lenders to examine every severely delinquent account one by one before sending out a Notice of Default. If the more stringent requirement is enacted Lenders would need to contact all borrowers who are 60 days or more late in order to determine eligibility for a HAMP modification or HAFA short sale.
The change would also require Lenders to stop all foreclosure activity … (2 comments)
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short sale: Extreme Home Tear Down - 03/07/10 09:31 AM
A news broadcast in southwestern Ohio reported recently about a man who bulldozed his home rather than allow the bank to take his home after the bank failed to accept a Short Sale offer of $170,000 for the $350,000 home.
The homeowner, Terry Hoskins, hoped that his actions would help make banks “think twice” about taking away a person’s home.
The incident seems to have hit a nerve with many agreeing that Lenders must try harder to work with beleaguered homeowners, while others wondered what could possibly be accomplished by such an extreme act.
The incident underscores figures from First American … (3 comments)
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short sale: Homeowners More Pessimistic About Home Value - 02/28/10 05:31 AM
Zillow has completed a survey which shows for the first time that Homeowners are no longer confident that their homes are going up in value. Only 20% believed their home had gone up in value, where, in fact Zillow shows about 28% of homes appreciated in the past year. For the first time since Zillow started surveying homeowner confidence, the level as a -2 showing that homeowners are actually more cynical than reality about the value of their homes.
Half of the surveyed home owners believed their homes had fallen in value, while 30% believed their home had stayed the same … (6 comments)
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short sale: Home Delinquency Rates Exceed 10% - 02/11/10 10:56 AM
The Lender Processing Services (LPS) reports that home loan delinquency rates in the U.S. have now exceeded 10%. This means that for every 10 households nationwide, one has a loan at least 30 days late. Picture it this way: there's a late payment in at least two households on every block in the country!
Taken together with existing pre-foreclosures 13.3% of all mortgages are either delinquent or in default. This rate translates into over 7.2 million mortgages that are behind on payments, and another 1 million properties have already been taken back by Lenders.
The new serious delinquencies (90 days or … (1 comments)
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short sale: Another Disaster in the Making: ARM Resets - 02/05/10 05:31 AM
Many are expecting interest rates to rise quickly very soon by at least a point. This will cause many Homeowners already distressed by job loss or under water mortgage payments to have to pay even more every month. It is expected that the next adjustable rate mortgage reset will lead to another jump in residential defaults.
Specifically, here is what is in the works: Rates are resetting. Currently, interest rates are at historic lows with 30 year fixed mortgages below 5%. As interest rates increase ARMs are likely to readjust by as much as double where they are now. Just … (1 comments)
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short sale: Why you should be leery of HAMP/HAFA - 01/28/10 05:06 PM
The new federal rules for the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program announced November 30 Supplemental Directive 0909, to be effective April 5, but available for Lenders to start as soon as they have a policy in place regarding the new program.
While HAMP (Supplemental guideline 0901), the Home Affordable Modification Program, is designed for those who can fit modified payments into their budget at 31% of their total income or less, the HAFA program is for those who need to give up their primary residence because they fall outside the HAMP guidelines or they fail to make HAMP payments.
Every … (0 comments)
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short sale: Treasury Dept Announces Home Affordable Foreclosures Alternative Program - 01/24/10 07:02 AM
On April 5, 2010, a new Treasury Dept program entitles - Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program (HAFA) goes into effect. HAFA is part of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).
It provides incentives in connection with a short sale or a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure on a loan eligible for modification under the HAMP program. HAFA applies to loans not owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. It is a complex program with 43 pages of guidelines and forms, designed to "simplify" and streamline use of short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosures.
Highlights of the HAFA:
Complements HAMP by providing … (0 comments)
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short sale: HAMP Workouts Double in December - 01/22/10 05:56 AM
Apparently displeased with the lack of modifications completed by the end of November, the feds made house calls to Lenders in December to make sure the people who could be helped with loan modifications were being helped. As a result, completed permanent modifications doubled to 66,465 with another 46,056 final modifications just lacking Homeowner signature. A total of 902,620 Homeowners have applied for HAMP modifications since last March.
In addition to looking over the shoulders of Lenders the government extended the review period for Homeowners until January 31st so that all Homeowners are given a fair amount of time for evaluation.
… (2 comments)
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short sale: Short Sale Contract Language Challenging not just to Foreign-Born Agents - 04/28/08 02:53 PM
If you are a Office Broker, manager or team leader and you have foreign born (English as a 2nd language) agents working short sales or foreclosures, I hope you are working with them carefully as the nightmare addendums and paperwork comes through the office.
I consider myself fortunate to have several really capable native Spanish and Vietnamese Realtors working with me, who are quite fluent with English, but are no match for the addendum language being generated by foreclosing and short-sale lenders of record who are “sort of” trying to divest themselves of a growing and unwanted inventory of properties. … (0 comments)
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short sale: For homeowners facing foreclosure or a short sale, some relief – maybe - 10/04/07 09:03 AM
Our good friends at the IRS are wanting people to know that there are some new guidelines that may help offset any additional tax due as a result of a short sale of foreclosure. Technically, any amount of debt forgiven should result in a 1099 being issued at the end of the year. This happens mostly with short sales. My REO Attorney says that it happens much less frequently with foreclosures, that it’s a different process when the borrower send the keys in as opposed to dragging out the process in obtaining approval for a sale that results in proceeds “short” … (0 comments)
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