Pricing Your Home to Sell

Foreclosure and Credit Score Effects

Steve Poirier's "Northern California Real Estate Tip of The Week"

Staging your home...Properly staging your home is one of the most essential elements of the home selling process.  Not only does it set you apart from the competition but it enables buyers to visualize your homes potential.

Staging can be as simple as a fresh coat of paint to something pricier like purchasing new furniture for a room.  Another component sellers need to utilize is removing clutter..Work with your Realtor and/or Stager to determine the best staging opportunity for your home..

Please call or Email with any questions/comments..925-974-1176..stevepoirier@pacbell.net               

Are you sitting down..You might want to be after reading this!!

So, are you sitting down..Why is there such a fierce debate about whether the housing market is slowly healing or heading for another free fall? Partly because no one (including myself) can estimate with much confidence how many foreclosed homes banks need to sell or how fast they are getting rid of all that property.

Most of today’s supply comes from homes that have been acquired by banks or mortgage investors through foreclosure. The National Association of Realtors estimates that such “distressed” situations accounted for 35% of home sales in February and March, I don't know about you but I think that is a huge Statistic!!

Analysts at Barclays Capital in New York estimate that banks and mortgage investors including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned 480,000 homes at the end of February. That’s far lower than previous estimates.

RealtyTrac Inc., another data provider and one of the few other firms that regularly makes such calculations, estimates that banks and mortgage investors own 758,000 foreclosed homes.

So we have a pretty big gap. Is it 480,000 as Barclays thinks, or 758,000, as per RealtyTrac? Tom Lawler, an independent housing economist who tracks reams of housing data when he isn’t tending the livestock on his farm near Leesburg, Va., figures the total is more than 550,000 but probably less than the RealtyTrac estimate.

Whatever the number of homes that banks, the federal agencies and private mortgage investors own now, it’s likely to increase. Barclays expects the inventory generally to rise over the next 20 months, peaking at 536,000 in January 2012, and then decline gradually.

I have mentioned the following in prior blogs and during my Real Estate Marketing minute Webasode... Be aware of the “shadow inventory,” consisting of homeowners 90 days or more overdue on mortgage payments or already in the foreclosure process. At the end of February, 4.6 million households were in that category.  Check out this very informative Graph..I think you will get the message!!

Barclays expects 1.6 million “distressed sales” of homes – mainly foreclosures or short sales – both this year and in 2011, then a slight decline to 1.5 million in 2012. Last year, Barclays estimates, such sales totaled 1.5 million. Around 30% of all home sales this year and next will be foreclosure-related. Remember that would be only about 6% in a normal housing market.

I expect that U.S. home prices on average to fall another 3% to 5% over the next couple of years, adding to a decline of about 30% already recorded since 2006.

Efforts to avert foreclosures by offering many borrowers lower payments have slowed the flow of homes into bank ownership. In some parts of the country, such as the Las Vegas area and Orange County, Calif., that has left bargain-hunters frustrated by what they see as a shortage of bank-owned properties in attractive neighborhoods.

For up to the minute "Real Time" Real Estate News and Information don't forget to tune in to my "Real Estate Marketing Minute" !  I am also on Face Book!! 

The Weather is not the only thing heating up in..Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Danville, Alamo, Pleasant Hill, Martinez and Concord!

The weather is not the only thing starting to sizzle this spring...Real Estate is starting to heat up in all these towns!!  Inventory is very low, Interest Rates are at Low Time Highs, buyers are out shopping, summer is in the air..

If you have been thinking about buying or selleing now is the time.  What are you waiting for??  If you have equity in your home and were thinking of moving up or moving out of the area don't wait any longer, the time is now..

Check out a few of these "HOT" Buys..

109 Bramblewood Ln 4 bedroom 3 bathroom Home, 2,268 SQFT, Pool and court location.. 

 $545,000.00

  

1432 Stonehedge Drive 3 Bedroom 2 Bathroom Home, 1,641 SQFT, Pool, Totally updated/remodeled, a "10"..$549,950.00 

The Real Story Beyond The Headlines

Should you buy or rent a home?  The cost gap continues to NARROW..

Thinking of buying a home?  Consider the following: The Gap between monthly rents and mortgage payments is the closest/lowest level in roughly 20 years!

In many markets the difference can be less than $100.  Recent studies show years of falling home prices and low interest rates have created a buyers market.  But short inventory has also made it a bit of a sellers market.  I would say, is crazy as this may seem...this inventory level is the closest to Normal as Cali. gets! 

Be aware: Tougher lending standards are making it harder and harder to qualify for a home loan, and unemployment is into the double digits now.  Tax credits for home buyers expires tomorrow!  Interest rates are expected to increase later this year if the economy continues to show small signs of improving.

So get out there and buy that home you have waiting to move on!!

The Lakewood Area

     Go on a private tour in the Lakewood Area with Executive Brokers owner Steve Poirier. Discover the lake, the neighborhood and the great schools in Walnut Creek's finest area. You can learn more about Lakewood and Walnut Creek, Ca by going to his website.

http://stevepoirierrealty.com/

The Steve Poirier Update

Hello Everyone!

Wow where do I begin..there is so much to cover..lets get rolling...

CALIFORNIA WILL NOT TAX "FORGIVEN HOME DEBT".. Governor Schwarzenegger on Monday, signed SB 401 into law. This provides distressed homeowners with a state tax exemption on debt forgiven in a SHORT SALE, FORECLOSURE, or Loan Modification.

MORTGAGE RATES JUMP.. ^ Mortgage have been going up over the past few weeks. There are signs the rates the rates will continue to climb^. This is raising some concerns regarding the recovery of the very fragile housing market..

GETTING A LOAN IS GOING TO BE PRICIER As this economy continues to improve/mend, the cost of borrowing money for a big purchase (Jumbo Money) could start to increase.

FREE CREDIT REPORTS NOT FREE ANT LONGER.. Companies that offered free credit reports (Have you seen the two singing goof balls on that TV Commercial) appear to be skirting a new federal disclosure requirement designed to crack down on misleading advertising..to be continued..

In other news..

FOR SOME CALIFORNIA MARKETS BUBBLE-ERA (OOPS WAS THAT A BUBBLE??) PRICES ARE DECADES AWAY.. Now that the experts have had some time to mull over the data from the past couple of years, indicators are pointing out that bubble-era prices were outrageously overblown!! Home prices in some very hard hit areas wont return to those peak level prices for a long, long time..decades in some extreme cases, according to a recent report provided by; Fiserv, Inc.

LAST BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST IMPORTANT, BUT QUITE DISTURBING: FED-UP HOMEOWNERS WHO CAN'T PAY THEIR MORTGAGE SIMPLY ARE NOT..Here is the story.. There was a time not long ago (2-4 years to be exact) when most Americans would do almost ANYTHING to HANG ON TO THEIR HOMES!! That commitment appears to be fraying as more and more Americans fall behind on their home loans. The general home owner, tax paying citizen is SICK and TIRED of watching the financial institutions that along with our government, triggered this recent WORLD Financial crises return fully back to PROSPERITY while the rest of us are loosing jobs, income ETC and they are still showing record profits/Bonuses using out Federal Tax Money, this is a crime and NOBODY IS DOING A DARN THING ABOUT IT..I don't know about you but we need to ALL go to Capital Hill and DEMAND OUR MONEY BACK!!

Steve Poirier Executive Brokers

Don't miss my "Real Estate Marketing Minute" Stevepoirierrealty.com/Centralhubtv.com