California Is Home to America’s Fastest-Moving Housing Markets

Anyone looking to buy this year has likely already encountered some of the many pitfalls which the California housing market has to offer – tight inventory and high prices to name a few. It would seem that buying in California isn’t about to get any easier this spring, as a new study indicates that homes in California are moving faster than anywhere else in the nation, and the market shows no signs of slowing down – good news if you or your clients are looking to sell.

According to a study released by Trulia earlier in April, California is home to eight of the top ten fastest-moving housing markets in the nation, with all of the top five residing in the Golden State. The list includes San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, San Diego, Orange County, Sacramento, Los Angeles and Ventura County respectively.

In San Francisco, inventory moved at the fastest pace with only 26% of homes remaining for sale after being listed for two months in April. In Los Angeles and Ventura Country, there was a more modest 43% of homes remaining on the market after two months, which is still significantly faster than the 60% average nationwide. The most significant jump between succeeding markets was San Diego and Orange County – placing #4 and #5 on the list respectively – seeing 33% and 41% of homes remaining unsold after two months.

So what’s causing the high turnaround in the California housing? The answer is simple, supply and demand.

“Inventory and new supply is quite tight. That’s driving, on the supply side, the fast-moving markets,” said Ralph McLaughlin, housing economist at Trulia. “And then California is a leading market for job growth, and, especially in the Bay Area, a lot of those are higher-paying jobs that allow people to get mortgages and buy homes. It’s a double-whammy effect.”

The rate at which homes are selling is only getting faster. According to Trulia, three-fourths of the nation’s top 100 housing markets had fewer homes for sale after two months of being listed than one year ago. This includes all of the top ten fastest-selling markets. San Diego saw the biggest drop among the top ten, which declined 11% from the year before.

If buyers want to close a deal this spring, they’ll have to be prepared to move quickly.

Has your business been impacted by the rate at which homes are selling? Do you think this trend will slow down in upcoming months? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

For more information contact.

Jerry Gusman, The Gusman Group

888-213-4208 or by email at jerryggroup@aol.com

Housing Market Has Made ‘Good Enough’ Progress to Buy Now, Analyst Says

The CEO of the largest single private homeowner in the U.S. said that buying a home now is a "good investment" and that the recent gains the housing market has made are "good enough" for a buyer to invest in a home during a recent interview with CNBC.

Speaking from the Milken Institute Conference in Los Angeles, Blackstone Mortgage Trust CEO Steve Schwarzman told CNBC on Monday that the housing market has been "coming back for quite some time" even though inventory is low and prices have not increased as much. For example, Black Knight Financial Services reported earlier this week a year-over-year median price gain of 4.6 percent for single-family homes in February.

"We're finding that that market continues to go up for the value of houses, although not at the same rate as it did, obviously, off the bottom," Schwarzman said.

Blackstone is the largest single private owner of residential homes in the U.S. with approximately 47,000 homes and about $90 billion in real estate assets. Schwarzman said his company is putting money into the housing market, although not as much as it was during the height of the financial crisis.

"We're only building about half of the houses we did at the top of the last cycle," Schwarzman said. "People need to be in houses as immigration continues in the United States."

Schwarzman's assessment of the housing market was similar to that of Tim Rood, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based business advisory firm The Collingwood Group, who said in a recent interview on Westwood One Radio Network that now was a good time to invest in a home because of low interest rates and anticipated home value appreciation.

"The leveraged return if you put down 10 percent on a house, the trajectory of appreciation lately is you’re going to get your money back inside of a year and then after that 5 to 10 percent appreciation rates," Rood said. "It's phenomenal."

The topic of the housing market and whether or not now is a good time to buy will be covered more in depth at the 2015 Five Star Conference and Expo, which will be September 16 through 18 at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas.

For more information contact

Jerry Gusman, The Gusman Group

888-213-4208 or by email at jerryggroup@aol.com

Homeownership Down Below ’90s Levels; Vacancy Rate Little Changed

The nation's homeownership rate dropped to 63.7 percent in Q1, more than a full percentage point below the average rate throughout the 1990s of 64.9 percent, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday.

Q1's homeownership rate represented a decline of 1.1 percentage points from the same quarter in 2014 and 0.3 percentage points from Q4 2014. The homeowner housing vacancy rate for Q1 was reported at 1.9 percent, which was a year-over-year decline of only 0.1 percentage points and virtually the same as the rate reported for Q4.

The homeownership rates declined by at least 0.6 percentage points year-over-year in all age categories (under 35; 35 to 44; 45 to 54; 55 to 64; and 65 and older), with the largest decline coming in the 35 to 44 age group (2.3 percentage points, from 60.7 down to 58.4 percent.

The 65 and older group had the highest homeownership rate in Q1 2015 at 79 percent, while the under 35 group had the lowest rate for the quarter at 34.6 percent. The rates increased as the groups got older: age 35 to 44 was at 58.4 percent, age 45 to 54 was at 70.1 percent, and age 55 to 64 was at 75.8 percent.

"[O]ver the last year, the homeownership rate for households headed by an individual younger than 35 declined by 1.6 percentage points," wrote NAHB economist Robert Dietz on the Eye on Housing blog. "While the decline for those aged 35 to 44 was larger (and larger among all age cohorts with a drop of 2.3 percentage points), the percentage decline (4.4 percent from the level of the first quarter of 2014) was largest for this younger than 35 class."

The vacancy rate for owned homes of 1.9 percent, though little changed year-over-year and from the previous quarter, has been slowly but steadily declining since hitting a peak of 2.89 percent in 2008 at the height of the recession, according to the Census Bureau.

The percentage of homes with a mortgage and a family income equal to or greater than the nation's median family income in Q1 was 78.4, while the percentage of households with a mortgage and a family income less than the nation's median income was reported to be 48.9 percent, according to the Census Bureau.

The year-over-year gain in households, which was reported at slightly less than 1.5 million, marks good news as far as housing demand goes, according to Dietz.

For more information contact

Jerry Gusman, The Gusman Group

888-213-4208 or by email at jerryggroup@aol.com

HUD’s Distressed Asset Program Give Borrowers More Protection Against Foreclosure

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Friday announced significant changes to its Distressed Asset Stabilization (DASP) program meant to offer more protections to borrowers facing foreclosure and increase non-profit participation in purchasing distressed loans.

Under the new rules, loan servicers are required to delay foreclosure on a home for a year and evaluate all borrowers facing foreclosure for participation in the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) or a similar loss mitigation program. Loan servicers could previously foreclose on a home six months after they received the loan and were not required to evaluate borrowers for loss mitigation programs, though they were encouraged to do so.

The improvements to the Neighborhood Stabilization Outcome (NSO) sales portion of DASP include giving non-profits a first look at vacant properties, allowing purchasers to re-sell notes to non-profits, and offering a pool of loans for non-profits only.

"These changes reflect our desire to make improvements that encourage investors to work with delinquent borrowers to find the right solutions for dealing with the potential loss of their home and encourage greater non-profit participation in our sales," said Genger Charles, Acting General Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Housing. "The improvements not only strengthen the program but help to ensure it continues to serve its intended purposes of supporting the MMI Fund and offering borrowers a second chance at avoiding foreclosure."

The changes come with stronger reporting requirements that include tougher penalties for non-compliance of quarterly reporting requirements, along with a new requirement of those who purchase loan pools to report on borrower outcomes even if a note is subsequently sold after the original purchase.

FHA's single-family note sale program resumed in 2010 as a pilot program allowing pools of loans headed for foreclosure to be sold to qualified bidders that will help bring the loans out of default through some type of loss mitigation. An FHA-backed loan can be include in a pool for sale if the loan is at least six months delinquent and if all loss mitigation options have been exhausted. DASP began in 2012 as a way for FHA to greatly increase the number of seriously delinquent loans for sale and at the same time encourage investment in the communities that were hardest hit by the crisis. Many of the loans are offered for sale as part of geographically-targeted "Neighborhood Stabilizing Outcome" pools, requiring that 50 percent of the loans within a pool that is purchased achieve a neighborhood-stabilizing outcome – which may include holding the property for rent for at least three years if the borrower and servicer are not able to avoid foreclosure.

DASP sales are typically broken into two or more sales – a "National Sale" which consists of loans from across the country, and a "Neighborhood Stabilizing Outcome" in which loans from geographically-targeted areas are sold.

In an update on HUD's single-family loan sale program in mid-March, the Department said that about half of the approximately 79,000 loans sold through the program since 2010 had been resolved via paying the loans current, forbearance agreements, paying the loan in full, a short sale, a third-party sale, or a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

For more information contact

Jerry Gusman, The Gusman Group

888-213-4208

jerryggroup@aol.com

SHORT SELLERS EXPECTED TO RETURN TO REAL ESTATE MARKET!

If you hada short sale in the last 4 years, you may be able to once again secure a mortgage for a home/. To see if you qualify contact us.

Jerry Gusman
The Gusman Group
888-213-4208

New Generation Of Home Buyers Have Very Different Criteria.

Y Ask Gen-Y? New NAR Report Highlights Emerging Generational Trends With the downtown of the Great Recession more or less behind us, home sales have stabilized. But the profile of the buyer market is quite a bit different than it was six or seven years ago. Millennials - those young adults roughly categorized as ages 24-34 (or so), also known as Gen Y - make up the largest segment of the buyer market, and with that trend comes new realities that Realtors will have to learn to navigate in order to win a portion of this market. One of the handiest resources currently out there is the National Association of Realtors' Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report for 2015. Published in mid-March, it's 115 pages of facts and graphs that illustrate the current market. You can read or download the entire valuable report.  A few highlights: It should hearten Realtors that Gen Y, despite witnessing and largely understanding the economic downturn and carrying record amounts of student debt, still feel buying a home is a worthwhile investment. Long-term low interest rates and the potential for equity play into the decision to buy. Younger buyers are much more likely to find the house they want to purchase online, though they are still more likely to contact a Realtor to facilitate a showing and the negotiation/purchasing process. The lesson: If you don't have a robust online presence for your listings, you should. A younger couple is much more likely to be unmarried, which may or may not complicate the loan application process. If nothing else, be mindful of the fact so you don't have any awkward moments where you ask a couple how long they've been married and they have to say "we're not." Self-evidently, younger buyers are more likely to be first-time buyers, and new to the process. Handle them with patience and be a trusted advisor through the process. A happy first-time customer could be a customer for life, and make years' worth of referrals. At the very least, be familiar with the loan process, and know they are less likely (though not necessarily UN-likely) to have significant cash handy for a down payment. Gen Y buyers are more likely to purchase a previously lived in home. There are several reasons for this, the most obvious of which is affordability. However, younger buyers are more likely than older buyers to value historic properties, fixer-uppers, and architectural quirks. They are also significantly more likely to prefer to live in urban areas, with access to a town or city's main social and transportation hubs, rather than in a newly-constructed suburb. While these trends line up across generations, Millennials are most likely to choose a neighborhood based on quality/reputation, its proximity to their job, and the overall affordability of the homes. Keep an eye on such neighborhoods for when young clients come calling. Compared to other generations, there seem to be two sweet spots in pricing for Millennial buyers: The $125,000 to $150,000 range, and the $200,000 to $225,000 range. Their interest falls of fairly dramatically above $250,000. This isn't part of the report, but Millennials are also far more likely to want a home that is ready for technology; smart thermostats, lots of electrical outlets and other digital features will be a big sell. They're also less likely to want a formal dining room or living area; open space and multi-use rooms are the norm. When walking through a home for a younger buyer, be sure to think in terms of what they may want a room to be used for, not just what the current or former owner may have done. We could go on for pages on this report, but it is available for you to read online at the National Board of Realtors' website. It's pretty invaluable, and features great information on four different age brackets. Link For more information Contact Jerry Gusman, The Gusman Group 888-21304208 jerryggroup@aol.com