Are you an agent in California?

Have you been avoiding learning how to do short sales and become a REO Listing Agent? WHY? Are you still believing that you can somehow survive in real estate without having these skills?

A simple suggestion for you…don’t wait another moment. Its not too late for you if you take action NOW to learn what this market..what we call, ‘The New Normal’ demands…

Great article from our friends at DNSNews:

Foreclosed homes taken back by lenders and distressed short sales accounted for nearly half of all residential home sales in California in 2009, according to a market report released this week by the California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.). In 2008, such sales made up 38 percent of annual transactions.

WOW! What else can you say? Agents, the question that I have for you is…how many of those short sales did you list and sell? How many home homeowners could you have helped had you known how to easily list and sell short sales? Watch the FREE HREU CDPD Short Sale Secrets video NOW. Learn the new 2010 ways to easily list and sell short sales.

As one of the hardest-hit states by the housing downturn, the Golden State is littered with bank-owned properties and homes facing foreclosure, but the lower prices and increasing buyer appetite for these deals are helping to reduce some of California’s distressed inventory.

The median price of distressed properties declined nearly one quarter to $250,000 in 2009, compared with $330,000 in 2008, C.A.R. reported. Meanwhile, the median price of non-distressed properties decreased only 10.4 percent to $485,000 compared with $541,000 in 2008.

Although one-third of sellers sold their homes for a loss last year – the highest level on record since C.A.R. started tracking net cash losses in 1989 – the lower home prices lured investors. According to the state Realtors association, more than 70 percent of properties purchased by investors were either short sales or REO/foreclosures. The typical investment property had a median price of $232,750.

Lower home prices and a large supply of distressed properties, coupled with federal tax breaks, also encouraged first-time buyers to take the plunge into

homeownership. The percent of first-time buyers increased dramatically to 47 percent in 2009, up from 35.9 percent in 2008, according to the report.

“It is clear that the federal tax credit for homebuyers worked well in 2009 and is continuing to drive home sales,” said C.A.R. President Steve Goddard. “The homebuyers’ tax credit is arguably the most successful strategy employed by the government’s efforts to stimulate the economy.”

…really? More so than the Fed buying MBS to artificially lower the interest rates….?

According to a survey conducted by C.A.R. on the effectiveness of the federal tax credit, nearly 40 percent of homebuyers in the state said they would not have purchased a home if the tax credit was not offered.

C.A.R. also noted that the large number of distressed properties led to more than half of all first-time buyers purchasing an REO/foreclosure or short sale property.

According to C.A.R.’s analysis, California’s median home price hit bottom in February 2009 at $245,170. Since then, the median home price has increased steadily in month-to-month comparisons, but remained below 2008 levels throughout 2009. The annual median price is projected to increase to $280,000 in 2010 from $271,000 in 2009, the association said.

Homes priced $500,000 or less dominated the sales mix throughout 2008 and 2009, but C.A.R. says sales of high-end homes started picking up in late 2009, with the number of closings for homes priced $500,000 or higher rising 3 percent, and sales of homes priced $1 million or more experiencing their first year-to-year increase since July 2007.

A separate study by a local newspaper shows that a growing number of Californians are turning to the courts to fight the foreclosure process and prevent their homes from becoming REOs. According to numbers complied by the San Jose Mercury News, the number of foreclosure lawsuits filed in federal court in California has ballooned from just 29 cases statewide in 2005 to nearly 1,400 in 2009

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2010 IS the year of the Short Sale…..in this market if you aren’t doing short sales…you are out of business. Depending on your market, short sales are the market….

Investors buying homes to rent or sell accounted for only 15 percent of the housing market last month as they competed with large numbers of first-time homebuyers flooding the market to buy in time to qualify for the first-time homebuyer credit. The percentage of first-time buyers closing on homes rose from 42 to 47 percent of all home sales in October, according to an Inside Mortgage Finance/Campbell Communications survey released today.

However short sales—sales for less that the owner owes on the property—soared in October. The shortsale inventory is booming as owners who are underwater on their mortgages seek to dispose of their homes. Short sales nationwide increased from 13 percent in June to 15 percent in October. Some 30 percent of properties sold last month in California were short sales, which were particularly popular with first-time buyers. They accounted for 57 percent of all short sale purchases, at an average price nationwide was $221,414.

UPDATE: Watch the 2 videos we created that explain what massive changes are taking place NOW with short sales. Everything you need to know about the NEW 2010 Treasury Department Guidelines.

Though investor purchases of bank-owned properties is declining, investors still accounted for more than half of the damaged bank-owned foreclosures sold during the month, and more than 72 percent used cash to make their purchases. About 13 percent of all homes sold were damaged REO properties.

Investors paid less on average than first-time and existing homeowners, an average of $186,831. First-time buyers paid $192,884 and existing owners $299,963 on average. Investors concentrated damaged REOs, which have declined from 20 percent to 15 percent of the market supply since July.

Competition is hot for damaged REOs; they attracted an average of four offers each in October. Damaged REOs sold for an average of $129,567, less than move-in ready REOs, short sales and non-distressed properties. However, the average price for damaged REOs has risen more than $30,000 since July while non-distressed property values are falling. Damaged REOs spent the least time on market of any property type, an average of 7.5 weeks.

Short sales, on the other hand, spent the longest on market, 17.5 weeks, and received an average of 3.1 offers. Forty-five percent of short sales were financed by FHA, which reflects their price and their popularity among first-time buyers. Sixty-one percent of first-time buyers used the FHA for their loans.

Agents, as you know we have been offering short sale training for years (and years) now. We were the first national coaching company to teach agents how to do short sales…and we are by far the largest.  Thousands of  agents have received their HREU CDPD* (Certified Distressed Property Designation). We have made it easy for you to learn everything you need to know to easily list and sell short sales. Watch the FREE Short Sale Secrets video and grab your FREE Short Sale Book. If you would like to go ahead and enroll now for only $97 call 1-866-422-9497 or sign up here.

The survey of 1500 real estate agents found that number of first-time buyers was easing as the deadline for the first-time buyer credit neared in October. The credit has since been extended until April 30 and expanded to include move-up buyers as well.

From Real Estate Economy Watch

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Next month, Michelle Augustine plans to walk away from her four-bedroom house in a Sacramento, Calif., subdivision and let the property fall into foreclosure. But before doing so, she hopes to lock in the purchase of another home nearby.

“I can find the same exact house as what I live in right now for half the price,” says Ms. Augustine, 44 years old, who runs a child-care service out of her home. She says she soon will be unable to afford her monthly payments, which will jump to $4,000 from $3,300 in August, and she doesn’t want to continue to own a home that is now worth $200,000 less than what she paid for it two years ago.

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In markets hit hardest by falling home prices and rising foreclosures, lenders and brokers are discovering a new phenomenon: the “buy and bail,” in which borrowers with good credit buy a new home — often at a much lower price — then bail out of the “upside down” mortgage on their first home.

Homeowners are able to pull off this gambit — which some lenders and real-estate agents call mortgage fraud — by taking advantage of mortgage-lending practices that allow them to buy a new primary residence before their existing residence has been sold. And with the lending industry in disarray as it tries to restructure millions of mortgages, some boast they are able to pull off the strategy with ease.

In some cases, homeowners are coached through the buy-and-bail process by real-estate agents and brokers who see nothing wrong with it. Some blame the phenomenon in part on lenders’ unwillingness to cut deals or restructure loans made when home prices were inflated. “It’s just a business decision,” says Linda Caoili, a Sacramento real-estate agent who is working with Ms. Augustine and others who are considering walking away from their mortgages. “If you’re upside-down $250,000, why would you keep it? It just doesn’t make sense.”

The fact is there IS an option. And it’s the overall best option for the home owners, the lenders and the neighborhood where the home is located. Its called a short sale. Agents who know how to do short sales in this market are the agents who are doing the transactions. Free 7 Part Agent Short Sale Secrets Crash Course. Download Now.

To be sure, walking away from a mortgage, even if legal, has plenty of drawbacks: Borrowers lose the ability to take out unsecured loans, since foreclosures can stay on a credit report for seven years. In some states, lenders can sue for assets, including a new house. Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage underwriter, recently revised the amount of time borrowers with a foreclosure must wait to receive a home loan to five years from four. Proposed Fannie Mae guidelines, which could take effect later this month, also would require those borrowers to make a 10% down payment and meet a minimum credit score after the five-year period.

While buy-and-bail is on the rise, the practice doesn’t appear to be widespread. Credit is much tighter now than it was during the real-estate boom, and most families with an upside-down mortgage likely will hold on to their homes and hope the market improves in the future — even though many of them could lose their properties.

Still, with home prices falling rapidly in some parts of the country, a growing number of frustrated consumers are willing to take the risk — especially in so-called nondeficiency states such as California and Arizona, where it is more difficult for a lender to sue consumers who walk away from their mortgages. Borrowers who bought or refinanced their home with a personal line of credit, however, instead of a home-purchase loan — a common practice during the housing boom — could be sued by a lender in those states. Borrowers also could be on the hook if lenders can show that homeowners committed fraud by misrepresenting themselves on their loan application.

Yet even in cases in which a lender could attach a lien on the new home, some homeowners simply assume that lenders are too swamped. “So many people are foreclosing, is it cost effective for lenders to go after all of these people?” says Steve Hawks, a Las Vegas real-estate agent who handles lender-owned properties.

That works in the favor of borrowers such as Blair Morrow. Last year, he rented out his Sacramento home when he moved to Houston for a new job, but he lost those renters in February. He quickly arranged to buy a new home in Houston, fearing that his old residence would be foreclosed and he would take a big hit on his credit.

“I had 30 days to make a decision: Live in a rental house the rest of my life or buy a house and walk away from the one in California,” says Mr. Morrow, 56, who works at a car dealership. He wrestled with the decision for a while, but justified it once Countrywide Financial Corp., the lender for his first home, approved the new home loan. “Countrywide didn’t say peep,” he says. Countrywide didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Ms. Augustine, the Sacramento day-care provider, became a first-time homeowner in November 2006 by taking out two loans with nothing down to cover the $426,000 home purchase. With her home valued at about $220,000 now, she is actively looking in nearby communities for another one to buy before the bank forecloses on her current home.

The mortgage industry is starting to wise up to the practice and is scrambling to fight back. Buy-and-bail is “certainly fraudulent and unfortunately on an uptick,” says Gwen Muse-Evans, vice president for credit policy and controls at Fannie Mae. Although she doesn’t have data to quantify the size and scope of the trend, Ms. Muse-Evans says overwhelming anecdotal reports have prompted the agency to draft tougher regulations aimed at closing one big loophole that allows underwater homeowners to qualify for new home loans.

That loophole currently works like this: Homeowners provide a rental agreement showing that they will rent out their first home, and underwriters allow rental income to cover as much as 75% of the mortgage payments on the first home when determining whether the borrower can make payments on two homes. This allows homeowners to secure a second mortgage that they might not otherwise afford.

Under revised Fannie Mae guidelines, which could take effect next week, loan applicants who claim they will rent out their first home will have to produce supporting evidence, including an executed lease agreement. Borrowers also will have to prove that they can pay the mortgage, property taxes and insurance for both residences. The guidelines will make an exception only for borrowers who have at least 30% equity in their current home.

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Of course, many individuals still can qualify for that second loan because of a strong credit and cash position. If they “have the intention of fraud, then at the end of the day there’s really little you can do to totally prevent that,” says Ms. Muse-Evans.

Some private lenders aren’t waiting for Fannie’s lead. In April, underwriters handling bank-owned properties at IndyMac Bancorp Inc. told brokers they would require borrowers purchasing new homes while retaining their existing home as a rental to prove that they could make full payments on both homes to qualify for a loan. A memo sent to a Southern California broker said the policy change was prompted by “losses from individuals walking away from properties after the acquisition of a new home.”

An IndyMac spokesman said the bank hadn’t changed its policies and had always “underwritten loans with an eye towards insuring that our borrowers could readily rent out their current property and/or reasonably support both payments.”

Realtors say the new guidelines could put further pressure on sales, but Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, says the impact of such guidelines on sales would be marginal. He calls Fannie Mae’s response appropriate because any artificial increase in home sales hurts the average consumer.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hawks, the Las Vegas broker, says he receives one to two dozen inquiries every week from individuals inquiring about a buy-and-bail. “People are starting to ask how much their good credit is worth,” particularly when their home is underwater by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The tactic doesn’t appeal to people such as John Ristuccia, a 48-year-old Buckeye, Ariz., paper-company sales director whose job was moved to Houston in August. He is trying to complete a “short sale” for $425,000 on his five-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot home, which was appraised for $800,000 last year. In a short sale, a lender allows the sale of property for less than the amount due on the outstanding loan and often forgives the remaining debt.

Even though he might be able to qualify for a second home loan, Mr. Ristuccia says he wouldn’t consider sticking his bank with his suburban Phoenix property. “Just personally I’ve got a problem with that,” he says. “I really can’t put it in terms other than it feels wrong.”

Article from WSJ.com

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