SAN DIEGO REAL ESTATE AGENT BLOG » San Diego Real Estate

San Diego County housing prices rebound in February

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:08:28 +0000

San Diego County housing prices bounced back in February to reach a median $322,000 that was in the range of prices for much of last year, MDA DataQuick reported Monday.

The median, the midpoint of all prices, was up 5.6 percent from January’s $305,000 and up 13 percent from February 2009. The January median price had fallen 7.5 percent from December’s $330,000, reflecting an active market in low-cost homes and little activity in moveup properties.

February’s numbers represented the highest year-over-year increase since March 2005, a few months before the median peaked at $517,500 and then fell to a low of $280,000 in January 2009.

But housing experts caution that January and February do not usually set the pace for sales and price trends for the year because of their traditionally low volume of activity.

Single-family resale homes had a median price of $358,500, up 3.9 percent from January’s $345,000 and just about the same as the December median; the figure was 12 percent ahead of year-ago levels. Condo resales stood at $219,500, up 8.9 percent from January’s $201,500 and nearly equal to the median price in December; it was 12.6 percent ahead of February 2009’s $195,000. The new-home median, including condo conversions, was $460,000, up 13.3 percent from January’s $406,000 and the highest since last May; it was 1.8 percent higher than in February 2009.

Sales in February stood at 2,465, up 6.2 percent from January but 8 sales lower than in February 2009. Single-family resales were below year-ago levels, down 4.2 percent, a reflection of the low inventory of homes for sale, especially low-cost distressed properties, as lenders try to modify loans rather than initiate foreclosure proceedings. Many analysts expect foreclosures to increase this year and thus lead to more sales but perhaps lower prices overall.

By Roger Showley

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

Program Will Pay Homeowners to Sell at a Loss

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:56:09 +0000

In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave.

This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions.

More than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some banking industry representatives say much more needs to be done.

For the administration, there is also the concern that millions of foreclosures could delay or even reverse the economy’s tentative recovery — the last thing it wants in an election year.

Taking effect on April 5, the program could encourage hundreds of thousands of delinquent borrowers who have not been rescued by the loan modification program to shed their houses through a process known as a short sale, in which property is sold for less than the balance of the mortgage. Lenders will be compelled to accept that arrangement, forgiving the difference between the market price of the property and what they are owed.

“We want to streamline and standardize the short sale process to make it much easier on the borrower and much easier on the lender,” said Seth Wheeler, a Treasury senior adviser.

The problem is highlighted by a routine case in Phoenix. Chris Paul, a real estate agent, has a house he is trying to sell on behalf of its owner, who owes $150,000. Mr. Paul has an offer for $48,000, but the bank holding the mortgage says it wants at least $90,000. The frustrated owner is now contemplating foreclosure.

To bring the various parties to the table — the homeowner, the lender that services the loan, the investor that owns the loan, the bank that owns the second mortgage on the property — the government intends to spread its cash around.

Under the new program, the servicing bank, as with all modifications, will get $1,000. Another $1,000 can go toward a second loan, if there is one. And for the first time the government would give money to the distressed homeowners themselves. They will get $1,500 in “relocation assistance.”

Should the incentives prove successful, the short sales program could have multiple benefits. For the investment pools that own many home loans, there is the prospect of getting more money with a sale than with a foreclosure.

For the borrowers, there is the likelihood of suffering less damage to credit ratings. And as part of the transaction, they will get the lender’s assurance that they will not later be sued for an unpaid mortgage balance.

For communities, the plan will mean fewer empty foreclosed houses waiting to be sold by banks. By some estimates, as many as half of all foreclosed properties are ransacked by either the former owners or vandals, which depresses the value of the property further and pulls down the value of neighboring homes.

If short sales are about to have their moment, it has been a long time coming. At the beginning of the foreclosure crisis, lenders shunned short sales. They were not equipped to deal with the labor-intensive process and were suspicious of it.

The lenders’ thinking, said the economist Thomas Lawler, went like this: “I lend someone $200,000 to buy a house. Then he says, ‘Look, I have someone willing to pay $150,000 for it; otherwise I think I’m going to default.’ Do I really believe the borrower can’t pay it back? And is $150,000 a reasonable offer for the property?”

Short sales are “tailor-made for fraud,” said Mr. Lawler, a former executive at the mortgage finance company Fannie Mae.

Last year, short sales started to increase, although they remain relatively uncommon. Fannie Mae said preforeclosure deals on loans in its portfolio more than tripled in 2009, to 36,968. But real estate agents say many lenders still seem to disapprove of short sales.

Under the new federal program, a lender will use real estate agents to determine the value of a home and thus the minimum to accept. This figure will not be shared with the owner, but if an offer comes in that is equal to or higher than this amount, the lender must take it.

Mr. Paul, the Phoenix agent, was skeptical. “In a perfect world, this would work,” he said. “But because estimates of value are inherently subjective, it won’t. The banks don’t want to sell at a discount.”

There are myriad other potential conflicts over short sales that may not be solved by the program, which was announced on Nov. 30 but whose details are still being fine-tuned. Many would-be short sellers have second and even third mortgages on their houses. Banks that own these loans are in a position to block any sale unless they get a piece of the deal.

“You have one loan, it’s no sweat to get a short sale,” said Howard Chase, a Miami Beach agent who says he does around 20 short sales a month. “But the second mortgage often is the obstacle.”

Major lenders seem to be taking a cautious approach to the new initiative. In many cases, big banks do not actually own the mortgages; they simply administer them and collect payments. J. K. Huey, a Wells Fargo vice president, said a short sale, like a loan modification, would have to meet the requirements of the investor who owns the loan.

“This is not an opportunity for the customer to just walk away,” Ms. Huey said. “If someone doesn’t come to us saying, ‘I’ve done everything I can, I used all my savings, I borrowed money and, by the way, I’m losing my job and moving to another city, and have all the documentation,’ we’re not going to do a short sale.”

But even if lenders want to treat short sales as a last resort for desperate borrowers, in reality the standards seem to be looser.

Sree Reddy, a lawyer and commercial real estate investor who lives in Miami Beach, bought a one-bedroom condominium in 2005, spent about $30,000 on improvements and ended up owing $540,000. Three years later, the value had fallen by 40 percent.

Mr. Reddy wanted to get out from under his crushing monthly payments. He lost a lot of money in the crash but was not in default. Nevertheless, his bank let him sell the place for $360,000 last summer.

“A short sale provides peace of mind,” said Mr. Reddy, 32. “If you’re in foreclosure, you don’t know when they’re ultimately going to take the place away from you.”

Mr. Reddy still lives in the apartment complex where he bought that condo, but is now a renter paying about half of his old mortgage payment. Another benefit, he said: “The place I’m in now is nicer and a little bigger.”

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

Affordability of housing dips in county

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:26:56 +0000

San Diego County’s housing affordability has again dipped below the 50 percent level, the National Association of Home Builders said yesterday.

The 48.1 score in the Housing Opportunity Index represents the percentage of homes sold in the fourth quarter that a median-income household could afford using standard underwriting guidelines.

The new level positions San Diego as the 13th-most unaffordable market among 227 areas surveyed.

San Diego’s affordability peaked at a record 58.8 percent in the first quarter of last year. The region ranked 31st among least-affordable areas in the third quarter of 2008, its best showing in the 19 years of the survey.

The latest figures were based on a fourth-quarter median price of $319,000 for a single-family resale home, a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage interest rate of 5.1 percent and a down payment of 10 percent. The median household income in the quarter was $74,900, and the survey assumes that a household will spend no more than 28 percent of income on housing.

Nationally, the index stood at 70.8 percent. Eleven of the 20 least-affordable markets were in California. New York ranked first at 19.7 percent and San Francisco was second at 22.3 percent.

By Roger Showley, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

Property Values Fall Again

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:35:27 +0000

U.S. home values declined another 5 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to the previous year. This was the 12th straight quarter of year-over-year declines, reported Zillow.com.

More than 29 percent of homes sold in 2009 in the U.S. went for less than sellers originally paid for them, Zillow said, estimating that more than 20 percent of U.S. home owners owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth.

“While the next few months are likely to bring further home value declines in most markets, we do expect to see a national bottom in home prices by the middle of this year,” Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries said in a statement. “Thereafter, home values are likely to bounce along the bottom with real appreciation remaining negligible for some time.”

Source: Bloomberg, Daniel Taub (02/10/2010)

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

Pending Home Sales Stabilize

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:40:26 +0000

Pending home sales have leveled from a market swing driven by response to the home buyer tax credit, according to the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.

The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in December, increased 1 percent to 96.6 from 95.6 in November, and remains 10.9 percent above December 2008 when it was 87.1.

In November, the monthly index had fallen by 16.4 percent from surging activity in preceding months.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says it’s important to recognize how the tax credit is skewing market data.

“There are easily understood swings in contract activity as buyers respond to a tax credit that was expiring and was then extended and expanded,” he says. “These swings are masking the underlying trend, which is a broad improvement over year-ago levels.”

December activity was the fifth highest monthly tally in two years.

The Tax Credit Impact

Buyers who have a contract in place to purchase a primary residence by April 30, 2010, have until June 30, 2010, to finalize the transaction to qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time buyers and $6,500 for repeat buyers.

Yun projects the extended and expanded tax credit will encourage 2.4 million households to take the credit in 2010.

“While new-home sales will remain low due to a lack of construction, existing-home sales are projected to rise to around 5.6 million in 2010,” Yun says. Last year there were 5.16 million existing-home sales.

He added that one of the greatest benefits of rising sales will be firming home prices.

“For several months now we’ve been seeing stabilization in all of the home price measures as inventory is pulled down,” Yun says. “As a result, the housing wealth for many middle class families has begun to stabilize.”

Regional Data

Here’s a breakdown by region for the PHSI:

Northeast: rose 2.3 percent to 76.1 in December and is 14.9 percent higher than December 2008.
Midwest: increased 5.2 percent to 86.9 and is 8.7 percent above a year ago.
South: rose 2.2 percent to an index of 98.4, and are 5.5 percent higher than December 2008.
West: fell 3.8 percent to 119.9 but is 18.6 percent above a year ago.

NAR

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

SoCal home sales up, prices hold steady

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:29:46 +0000

Southern California home sales rose unexpectedly last month as price declines moderated, MDA DataQuick reported Tuesday.

There were 21,539 sales in the six-county region, including San Diego, up slightly from August’s 21,502, as low rates, federal tax credits and delayed closings reversed usual 9.5 percent August-September downturn. The total was 11 percent higher than in September 2008, the 14th straight year-over-year increase.

As reported Monday, San Diego’s sales rose from 3,306 in August to 3,454 last month.

The overall median for the region stood at $275,000, unchanged from August and 10.9 percent below year-ago levels, the smallest year-over-year decline since November 2007.

San Diego’s September median also was unchanged at $325,000 and just 0.9 percent below September 2008′s $328,000 – the smallest decline since June 2006, when there was a 1 percent annualized increase.

Orange and Ventura counties joined San Diego in seeing the first annual increase in existing-house prices in years.

Orange County’s median price for resale single-family homes rose 4.2 percent, from $480,000 in September 2008 to $500,000 last month, the first year-over-year increase since August 2007. Orange also was the first Southern California county to post an overall increase in median prices, up 0.9 percent to $429,000.

Ventura’s resale house median was up 2.2 percent, from $410,000 to $419,000, the first such year-over-year increase since October 2006.

San Diego, as reported Monday, saw its median house price increase 1.5 percent, from $360,000 in September 2008 to $365,500 last month, the first such gain since August 2007.

However, DataQuick said the increases were not due to increases in values as much as a change in market mix, with fewer low-cost distressed properties selling and more higher-priced homes closing escrow.

Regionwide foreclosure sales – houses and condos that had been foreclosed on at some point in the previous 12 months – represented 40.4 percent of all resales, down slightly from a revised 41.7 percent in August.

San Diego’s foreclosure count was 35.3 percent, up slightly from the revised 34.5 percent in August. It was the first month-to-month increase for San Diego since January, when the all-time high of 55 percent was reached.

The September boost was attributed to a possible delay in closings due to a slowdown in appraisals and the continued flow of short-sale transactions. These involve homes sold for less than the outstanding mortgage balance and usually take much longer to go through escrow because lenders must approve such sales.

Analysts also said buyers were eager to take advantage of the $8,000 federal first-time-homebuyer tax credit, scheduled to expire next month but now being considered for extension in Congress.

Low interest rates also are thought to be drawing in buyers.

Roger Showley

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

Legislation introduced to keep tax credit alive

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:44:07 +0000

WASHINGTON — Will Congress extend the wildly popular $8,000 home-buyer tax credit beyond its Dec. 1 expiration date?

That’s a question generating huge pressure on Capitol Hill, from would-be buyers who haven’t found the right house to realty agents, builders, lenders and squads of lobbyists working on their behalf.

But here’s the first hint of an answer: On Sept. 17, the leadership of Congress’ primary tax legislative committee introduced a tax credit bill that’s likely to zip through the House and move to the Senate rapidly. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, sponsored the bipartisan Service Members Homeownership Tax Act (H.R. 3590), which would extend the credit for another 12 months for thousands of military, Foreign Service and intelligence agency personnel who’ve been posted abroad during 2009.

Rangel’s bill, with 29 co-sponsors, would keep the credit alive through Nov. 30, 2010, for service members who had at least 90 days of overseas duty assignments during 2009 and who otherwise meet the eligibility tests for the credit. The bill would also prohibit the IRS from “recapturing” the $8,000 credit when service members are forced to sell or rent out their houses because they are ordered to deploy to a different duty station, overseas or inside the country.

Under the regular rules of the program, buyers who obtain the credit must use their houses as a principal residence for 36 months or be required to repay the credit to the IRS. As a result of the 36-month rule, many military and diplomatic employees have been hesitant to buy a house and claim the credit, or are worried that their absence from the country could force them to repay the money.

For example, the spouse of a Foreign Service officer posted to the Philippines this summer for a two-year assignment wrote to Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., to alert him to a flaw in the tax credit program. The Oregon couple bought their first home earlier this year, encouraged by affordable prices and the $8,000 credit. But having now been posted abroad, they cannot claim to occupy the house as their principal residence. Under current rules, they even face recapture of the full credit.

Blumenauer, who is a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said “it is absurd that thousands of Americans serving our country, away from friends and family, must choose between their service work and homeownership.” He wrote corrective legislative language that ultimately was incorporated into Rangel’s tax bill.

Though nothing is guaranteed on Capitol Hill, legislation eliminating tax penalties on the military during wartime looks like a good bet for early passage in both houses. Equally significant: It now appears likely that there will be an $8,000 tax credit available a year from now — at least for some purchasers. Which raises the question: Why not leave it in place for all first-time buyers?

There’s growing support for that on both sides of the Capitol, but there are also some complicating issues. In the Senate, the most outspoken advocate for months has been a Republican, Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, a former real estate broker. He wants not only to extend the credit to Dec. 1, 2010, but to raise the maximum to $15,000, and make it available to all home buyers next year.

But recently, key Senate Democrats produced their own version of an extension, limited to six months, retaining the ceiling at $8,000 and targeting only first-time purchasers. The bill’s primary sponsor is Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md. Democratic co-sponsors include Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Republicans John Ensign of Nevada and Isakson have signed on as well.

In a statement, Cardin raised what may prove to be the crucial issue affecting the scope and duration of any credit extension: Cost. “A six-month extension is a fiscally responsible way to provide adequate time to nudge even more prospective home buyers off the sidelines,” he said.

Estimates of the revenue costs of the current credit vary widely, from $3 billion to $8 billion and up. How do you pay for any extension without worsening the budget deficit? The new Rangel bill includes the answer: You raise taxes somewhere else — you “pay as you go.” The Rangel bill pays for most of the servicemen’s credit extension by increasing IRS penalties on taxpayers who fail to file partnership or “S” corporation returns.

This would raise an estimated $327 million over the next 10 years. Where and how to raise taxes to cover the far larger cost of a six-month or 12-month extension of the current tax credit could prove much more controversial.

By Kenneth R. Harney

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

Existing home sales slide unexpectedly

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:31:15 +0000

The report breaks a four-month streak of increases with a dip of 2.7% in August.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Existing home sales fell in August, snapping a four-month streak of increases, according to a report released Thursday.

Sales of previously-owned homes fell 2.7% last month from July, but were up 3.4% from a year ago, said the National Association of Realtors.

Sales had jumped 15.2% in the previous four months.

“This is an unpleasant surprise,” said Ian Shepherdson, economist at High Frequency Economics, in a research note.

The NAR report said August home sales hit a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.1 million units, down from 5.24 million in July. That’s well below the analyst consensus estimate of 5.35 million annual units compiled by Briefing.com.

Shepherdson noted that the July pending sales index, which had been a good predictor of actual sales lately, pointed to sales hitting 5.4 million units or even more.

“The gap between the two numbers is not unprecedented, but we had hoped for better,” he said.

The August numbers fell despite low mortgage rates, as well as home prices that have come down significantly in the past year.

“The decline demonstrates we can’t take a housing rebound for granted,” Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, in a prepared statement.

The median price of homes sold in August was just $177,700, a 12.5% year-over-year drop.

Foreclosures. The NAR report said distressed properties, which include foreclosures and short sales, are pushing down the median price because they typically sell for 15-20% less than traditional homes. Distressed property sales comprised 31% of home resales in August.

But low prices and distressed sales don’t explain the sudden sales dip, said High Frequency Economics analyst Shepherdson. “[The August report] could just be noise; we await the next pending sales index with some trepidation.”

NAR’s Yun said the Obama administration should extend the $8,000 tax credit it made available for qualified first-time home buyers, to help boost sales. That credit is currently slated to expire on December 1.

“With an expected rise in foreclosures over the next 12 months we need to maintain a healthy level of ready buyers to absorb the inventory,” Yun said in a statement.

Despite the decrease in sales, the supply of homes on the market fell significantly in August. Total housing inventory fell by 10.8% to 3.62 million existing homes for sale. That’s an 8.5-month supply, down from a 9.3-month supply in July.

Where homes are selling. Regionally, the Northeast saw the smallest dip in sales, down 2.2% to an annualized rate of 910,000 homes in August. That was 5.8% higher than last year’s rate. The median price of homes sold during the month was $241,100, down 10.5% from last year.

In the West, sales fell by 2.7% to a rate of 1.16 million, which was 7.4% higher year-over-year. Prices there have sunk 12.2% since 2008 to a median of $220,500.

Sales in the South were down 3.1% from July to a rate of 1.89 million. That’s up 1.6% from August 2008. Since that time, home prices have dropped 11% to $157,400.

The Midwest market fared the worst last month, with existing home sales down 6.6% from July to a rate of 1.14 million, unchanged from a year ago. The median price there was $149,900, down 10.4% from last year.

By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com staff reporter

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

High credit scorers more likely to cut losses and halt payments

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:02:32 +0000

WASHINGTON — Who is more likely to walk away from a house and a mortgage — a person with super-prime credit scores or someone with lower scores?

It’s probably not who you think.

New research using 24 million individual credit files has found that homeowners with high scores when they apply for a loan are 50 percent more likely to “strategically default” — abruptly and intentionally pull the plug and abandon the mortgage — compared with lower-scoring mortgage borrowers.

Experian, one of the three national credit bureaus, teamed with consulting company Oliver Wyman to identify the characteristics and debt management behavior of the growing numbers of homeowners who bail out of their mortgages with none of the expected early warning signs, such as nonpayments or late payments on other personal debts.

With foreclosures, delinquencies and loan losses at record levels, strategic defaults and walkaways are among the hottest subjects in residential real estate finance. Unlike earlier academic studies, Experian and Wyman had the ability to tap into credit files over extended periods of years to identify patterns associated with strategic defaults.

Among researchers’ findings are these eye-openers:

The number of strategic defaults is far beyond most industry estimates — 588,000 nationwide during 2008, more than double the total in 2007. They represented 18 percent of all serious delinquencies that extended for more than 60 days during the fourth quarter of last year.

In contrast with most types of mortgage delinquencies, strategic defaulters often go straight from perfect payment histories to no mortgage payments at all. They just suddenly stop. This is in stark contrast with most financially distressed borrowers, who try to keep paying on their mortgage even after they’ve fallen behind on other accounts. They want to save their houses, not dump them.

Strategic defaults are heavily concentrated in negative-equity markets where home values zoomed during the boom and have cratered since 2006. In California last year, the total number of strategic defaults was 68 times higher than it was in 2005. In Florida it was 46 times higher. In most other parts of the country, defaults were about nine times higher in 2008 than in 2005. Loans originated across the country in the pivotal market-turn year of 2006 have produced seven times more walkaways than loans originated during 2004, when property values were still rising.

Two-thirds of strategic defaulters have only one mortgage — the one they’re walking away from on their primary homes. Individuals who have mortgages on multiple houses also have a higher likelihood of strategic default, but researchers believe that many of these walkaways are from investment properties or second homes.

Homeowners with large mortgage balances generally are more likely to pull the plug than those with lower balances. Similarly, people with credit ratings in the two highest categories measured by VantageScore — a joint scoring venture created by Experian and the two other national credit bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion — are far more likely to default strategically than people in lower score categories.

People who default strategically and lose their houses appear to understand the consequences of what they’re doing. According to Piyush Tantia, an Oliver Wyman partner and a principal researcher on the study, strategic defaulters “are clearly sophisticated,” based on the patterns of selective payments observable in their credit files. For example, they tend not to default on home equity lines until after they bail out on their main mortgages, sometimes in order to draw down more cash on the equity line.

While high scorers have lower overall default rates on all their credit activities than people with lower scores, it’s much more likely that when they stop payments on mortgages, the default is intentional and calculated.

Strategic defaulters may know that their credit scores will be severely depressed by their mortgage abandonment, Tantia said in an interview, but they appear to look at it as a business decision: “Well, I’m $200,000 in the hole on my house, and yes, I’ll damage my credit,” he said of defaulters. But they see it as the most practical solution under the circumstances, and they won’t have to deal with their negative equity albatross any further.

The Experian-Wyman study does not attempt to explore the ethical or legal aspects of mortgage walkaways. But it does suggest that lenders and loan servicers take steps to screen and identify strategic defaulters in advance and possibly avoid offering them loan modifications, since they’ll probably just re-default on them anyway.

Kenneth R. Harney

2:00 a.m. September 20, 2009

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774

More Waiting in Store Before Prices Head Up

Michael Carter - San Diego Real Estate Agent — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:07:43 +0000

Real estate forecasting service Local Market Monitor, which predicts housing market trends for investors and banks, forecasts that housing prices will decline an average of 5 percent through 2010. This prediction includes double-digit decreases in Phoenix, Miami, and Las Vegas.

But then the worst could be over, says CEO Ingo Winzer. As the recession eases, “We’ll see good price increases in many markets,” he reports.

In the following markets, home values are expected to remain level this year but increase in value next year:

Baton Rouge, La.
Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Dallas-Plano-Irving, Texas
Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas
Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, Ark.
Omaha-Council Bluffs, Neb.-Iowa
Pittsburgh, Pa.
San Antonio, Texas
Syracuse, N.Y.

Here are the 10 largest markets where prices are expected to continue to decline through 2010:

Fresno, Calif.
Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev.
Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Fla.
Orlando-Kissimmee, Fla.
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.
Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Ore.-Wash.
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
Stockton, Calif.
Tacoma, Wash.
Tucson, Ariz.

Source: Local Market Monitor (09/09/2009)

Michael Carter
San Diego Real Estate Agent
MTC Future Realty
(619) 488-5774