Every day on our blog we try to give you insights from industry experts on issues that matter the most in real estate. Today we want to give you the thoughts of some non-professionals. People like us. Friends and neighbors who have personally experienced the ups-and-downs of the housing market over the last few years. […]
HOUSING SUPPLY Today I want to cover the impact the expired tax credit and the Fed’s exit of the mortgage market will have on home prices as we move forward. Whenever we talk about pricing, we must look at two variables: supply and demand. We covered buyer demand in yesterday’s blog, No Tax Credit. How […]
BUYER DEMAND The big question in the real estate industry today is what happens now that the Homebuyer Tax Credit has expired. There are many theories around this issue. Some believe that the tax credit (along with other government programs) has created a stabilization in the housing market both in the number of sales and […]
The 5 Keys to a Real Estate Recovery Damn the Data! I’m Buying a House The Price Is the Same, It Just Costs Less When Will 2005-2006 Peak Home Prices Return? Housing in 2010: Supply Will Grow, Demand Will Slow
Thank God For Those Who Have Served! We all owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served this country in times of peace and times of conflict. They preserve the freedoms the rest of us too often take for granted. As a nation, there are too few times we properly […]
There has been a dramatic decrease in the number of loan officers in this country. I have seen estimates that show that in 2005 (the peak of mortgage activity) there were 450,000 loan officers, and that by 2009, the number had shrunk to 150,000. Nearly 70% of individuals feeding their families by originating mortgages have […]
Three different home pricing indexes were released in the last ten days: the S&P Case Shiller Index, the First American CoreLogic Home Price Index and the RPX Monthly Housing Market Report. Each report told virtually the same story. House prices remained pretty much the same since the last reporting period (see table below). The headlines […]
In this horserace to a more normalized housing market, there seemed to be only one constant. The luxury market has been the horse bringing up the rear. We have been experiencing some stability in the lower price points in almost every geographic market. However, the upper tier price points have had an overabundance of inventory […]
The papers will be full of articles urging homebuyers to purchase a home this week before the Homebuyer Tax Credit expires. The articles will be correct. Getting a home into contract by this Friday, April 30 will enable you to collect on the tax credit. However, it is not just the tax credit that makes […]
We do a tremendous amount of research each week. Occasionally we see a news source stressing a certain point. It was interesting to see the articles on housing published at the New York Times over the last several days. It seems they might be of the belief that now is the time to buy a […]
When interviewing agents to sell their home, most homesellers really only care about the answer to two questions: Who is going to sell it for the most money? Who is going to charge me the least? The result of these narrow criteria is painful to the seller. Most people list their home at a price […]
Experts can’t agree where home values will be later this year. There are so many variables to consider: interest rates, foreclosures and unemployment to name a few. That is why it is amazing to see a new report which not only looks at this year but also predicts when housing values will return to the […]
Everyone in both the real estate and mortgage industries waited to see what reaction the mortgage market would have to the Fed exiting its purchase of mortgage-backed-securities last month. Would there be ample demand from the private sector? At what price? The predictions of where 30 year mortgage rates would settle were all over the […]
As I mentioned in a post earlier this month, 5 Keys to a Real Estate Recovery: I believe both the increase of distressed properties and the timing of their release to the market will be the biggest real estate story of 2010 … Anytime the supply of an item increases and demand remains flat, pricing […]
Many people who are looking to buy a home now NEED the Tax Credit to close a gap in their finances. But not everyone feels that way. As the days tick away, I have started to hear some buyers already begin rationalizing why they have not yet gone to contract. They say things like, “$8,000 […]
This blog tries to share the best real estate information we can find. We don’t like opinion pieces with just anecdotal confirmation of points. We like hard facts, packaged in a compelling matter that enables the reader to make sense of a very confusing market. The goal is to not be subjective, but instead, TOTALLY […]
Yesterday, we covered the coming surge of distressed properties that will enter the market in 2010. Today, we will discuss the impact these properties will have on housing values as we proceed throughout the year. Questions you should be asking yourself are: 1) Do distressed properties sales impact the value of the surrounding homes, 2) […]
I firmly believe the foreclosure situation will be the main story line in real estate for the rest of 2010. There will be other key factors (unemployment, government involvement, interest rates, etc.). However, no issue will have the same impact as the tidal wave of distressed properties about to come to market. For purposes of […]
The big question we seem to be getting as of late is whether or not a housing recovery will be coming by the second half of 2010. Today we asked Steve Harney to list five areas that will affect the two main components of a housing recovery: housing supply and demand. When aligned, these two […]
Interested in knowing what’s been going on in the real estate market as of late? Check out our KCM Weekend Library Links below, and see all the real estate articles that we’ve shared over our Blog, Twitter and Facebookthe past week. There is a lot of information floating around out there, so we’ve done our best to bring […]
As the Fed was planning to exit the mortgage market at the end of last month, more and more experts were calling for the exit to be uneventful. Their belief was that there was ample demand sitting on the sideline ready to replace the Fed’s role. Well it is now a week later and let’s […]
I have long been irked by mortgage “pre-approvals” that say a borrower is qualified to purchase a non-specific home for a specific loan amount. Why? Because, lenders don’t qualify borrowers based on the Purchase Price of a home, we qualify them for a particular Mortgage Payment (and payments vary based on a number of factors […]
There is more and more conversation regarding strategic defaults. And that only makes sense since the number of borrowers deciding to take this path is increasing exponentially. What is a strategic default? Let’s first define strategic default in simple terms. According to Wikipedia: A strategic default is the decision by a borrower to stop making […]
The current real estate market is much like a Rubik’s cube. Once you think you have it figured out, you look at it from another angle and find out you still don’t have it right. There are many factors complicating the current market. I want to address one of those factors today – UNEMPLOYMENT. When […]
Whenever a market is evolving rapidly, the most difficult thing to do is keep up with the changes. A home seller or a home buyer in today’s real estate market must make sure that they understand what is happening and why it is happening. They can then guarantee that they are making an informed decision […]
