Saturday, November 07, 2009

2402 College Park Circle, 95401 Short Sale in Santa Rosa


2402 College Park Circle Santa Rosa Ca 95401
#1 Santa Rosa Short Sale Agent for EsonomaCounty.com
Wine Country Living! Contemporary Home. Features: Tile, Wood floors, gas range, A/C, family room with fireplace, dining are and more. Upgraded colors and additional features. Enjoy this well kept home while close to local conveniences.Virtual Tour Available From Link Below







 

Monday, November 02, 2009

Short Sales - The Long View

  What is a Short Sale - A "short sale" or "negotiated settlement" or "short pay" occurs when a Lender agrees to accept less than the amount owed as a payoff. If the property is worth less than the amount owed on the loan, then even if the Lender forecloses and takes back the property, they know they are going to take a loss. In Sonoma County and Santa Rosa Ca we are starting to see banks want to help the sellers of distressed properties.Stop Foreclosure with a Short Sale


HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE? The short sale negotiation process is a lengthy one. It may take 30 days or more to get an approval from the Lender to discount the loan. Many Lenders have several layers of bureaucracy, insurers and investors that have to approve the short sale. They are increasing their loss mitigation departments to deal with the substantial advancing increase in foreclosures, and each loss mitigator may be working on as many as 400 files. So it is important to be patient during this process. Typically, using an aggressive loss mitigation company to conduct the negotiations, a short sales will take 4-6 months from Notice of Default to final close to a new Santa Rosa Home buyer.

More at Sonoma County Short Sales
Santa Rosa Short Sale Help

Monday, October 19, 2009

Home For Sale in Sonoma County Redwoods 3bed-2bath- Must See

Sonoma County Real Estate

1650 sq ft - 3 Bed 2 Ba Home set in the Sonoma County Redwoods

Ask: 290,000

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Thursday, October 08, 2009

Santa Rosa Real Estate Sales - 2bd 2ba Condo



QUIET LOCATION at end of drive way off Mission. 2/1.5 Condo - With Upgrades. Ceiling fans w/ remote. Appliances included, W/D hookups in unit. Bamboo floors! Large fenced yard with redwood deck & drip irrigation. Detached garage plus guest parking. Convenient Rincon Valley location. Great schools. Close to shopping,parks and recreation, 1 block to bus and only minutes to downtown.










Additional Features:
Cross Street: hwy 12
Exterior Description: Wood Siding
Fireplace: No
Garage/Parking: 1 Car
Heating/Cooling: Electric
HOA Amount: 207
HOA: Yes
Laundry/Appliances: Hookups only,In Closet
Lot Description: Level
Map Coordinates: A3
New/Resale: Resale
Pool: No
Property Type: RESI
Sale Conditions: Short Sale
School District: Santa Rosa City
Sewer/Septic: Sewer Public
Residential Type: Condo/Coop
Stories/Levels: 2 Story
Style: Contemporary
Total Bathrooms: 2
Utilities: City,Elec. Water Heater,Electric,PG&E
Water Source: Water Public
Year Built: 1978

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Will the Government put in a 15000 across the board tax credit from the Gove... er... taxpayers (you and me)

Question, Is this bailout stopping another bailout? Time will tell.

Strategic foreclosures are up to about 25% along with people trying to hide or divest assets to be deemed a true short sale. Many think this is a foregone conclusion. Pay now or pay later.
 
Time is fast running out for first-time buyers hoping to get a tax credit of up to $8,000, and Realtors say they're seeing a marked upswing in interest as the deadline looms. 
 
Real estate groups also are urging Congress to extend the credit beyond its current deadline and expand the tax credit to up to $15,000. Now, buyers must close on their purchase by Nov. 30 to be eligible for the credit.

Home builders and real estate organizations are concerned that letting the tax credit expire could knock the wind out of the current housing recovery. And failing to expand the credit could imperil efforts to get more move-up buyers into the market.
 
The tax credit available to first-time home buyers is already linked with an uptick in sales. For the first time in five years, existing home sales have increased for four months in a row, according to an August report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). 
Sales rose 7.2% in July from June, and pending sales are 5% above the pace seen in July of 2008
Many of those using the tax credit, however, are buying up foreclosed homes that are vacant. That does little to stimulate sales by homeowners looking to move up to more expensive properties. Getting more move-up buyers into the market is considered the second stage of the housing recovery.
And even though the tax credit doesn't expire until Nov. 30, today's home purchases take 45-60 days to close as the underwriting and appraisal process is taking longer because lenders are being more cautious. That means offers that will benefit from the tax credit really need to be in this or early next month.
 
There is legislation in both the Senate and the House that would expand the tax credit. A proposal by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., would raise the credit amount to a maximum of $15,000 for any buyer of any home over the next year. It would remove the income caps that currently apply (those limits are now $75,000 for an individual and $150,000 on couples).
"I think we've got a realistic chance of doing this," Isakson says. "Our problem is not with the first-time home buyer, it's the move-up buyer."
Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR, says extending or raising the tax credit would spur the housing recovery, which in turn would help bolster the economy.

Finally.. Lets hope this inspires instead of causing more resentment.

Jerry Brown, state attorney general and Newsom gubernatorial rival, is in San Francisco this morning to announce a major financial investigation.

At a 10:30 a.m. press conference, Brown is expected to announce the launch of a probe into the role the credit rating agencies played in fueling the financial crisis. Brown says that at the peak of the housing boom, the agencies gave their highest credit ratings to complicated financial instruments, including securities backed by subprime mortgages, so they would appear as safe as Treasury bonds issued by the government.

In rating the securities, agencies earned billions of dollars in revenue at a rate double what they earned for rating other financial products, all while working behind the scenes with Wall Street firms that created the securities backed by subprime mortgages.

PREEMPTIVE MOVE ON S+P PART??

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services recalibrated its ratings criteria for collateralized debt obligations, resulting in the ratings firm's putting about 4,790 CDO tranches totaling $578 billion on watch for downgrade.

The changes will make the CDO ratings more comparable to ratings in other sectors, S&P said.

The ratings agency will introduce tests - both quantitative and qualitative - to supplement its default-simulation model. S&P will also adjust its models to target AAA default rates it believes are commensurate with conditions of extreme macroeconomic stress, such as the Great Depression, as well as BBB default rates consistent with the highest actual corporate defaults over the past 28 years.

S&P said downgrades are likely to be multiple notches after reviewing the tranches over the coming months, with Chief Credit Officer Thomas Gillis estimating that outstanding synthetic CDOs will likely experience an average downgrade of four notches. Super senior AAA tranches will probably be affected less, with expected downgrades of two to three notches, while tranches rated AAA will likely be affected more, with an estimated downgrade of four to five notches.

Of the tranches on watch for downgrade, 1,626 tranches are from 623 European transactions and are $250.5 billion in size.

"We believe that adding quantitative and qualitative elements to our analysis - entirely apart from the Monte Carlo default simulations we run - will provide a more robust analysis than using only simulation models," Gillis said.

Ratings agencies have been criticized about being overly optimistic with their ratings earlier this decade when structured-finance securities were created by packaging loans into newly created investments. CDOs, which use sliced-and-diced assets such as subprime-mortgage bonds to create customized products offering various levels of risk, have been at the heart of steep write-downs at big banks and brokerage firms.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Home Foreclosure Services Coming To a Neighborhood Near You

Only 12 percent of U.S. homeowners are eligible for loan modifications under the Obama administration's housing rescue plan have had their mortgages reworked, and millions more foreclosures are coming. Per the Treasury. The fact of "strategic" or voluntary foreclosures up to 35% remain a problem.

Foreclosed California home

Foreclosed California home

A Treasury report showed 360,165 people had their monthly payments reduced through August, up from 235,247 through July, but a senior Treasury official conceded much more must be done to soften the impact of a severe and prolonged housing crisis.

Treasury has begun releasing monthly reports on the loan modification program, called the Home Affordable Modification Program or HAMP.

In July, it said that just 9 percent of the estimated number of homeowners eligible had had their loans modified, so Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions, Michael Barr, was able to claim modest progress in August.

He told a House Financial Services subcommittee that the program launched in February, which brings banks and loan servicers together with at-risk homeowners, was on target to help a half million Americans homeowners by Nov. 1.

But that is a small start on a huge problem at the heart of U.S. economic woes. Hoping for a Home "cash for clunkers" extension of the $8000 tax credit to first time home buyers could help move inventory as it is released on to the market.

Barr said that "even if HAMP is a total success, we should still expect millions of foreclosures" as administration and industry efforts continue to stabilize a crisis-stricken housing sector.

Barr said a strong housing market was "crucial" to a sustained U.S. economic recovery and described the slump in prices and demand in the housing sector as being "at the center of our financial crisis and economic downturn."

He noted that analysts anticipate more than six million Americans could lose their homes in the next three years as defaults continue to soar.

"Much more remains to be done and we will continue to work with other agencies, regulators and the private sector to reach as many families as possible," Barr said.

The Treasury report showed that some lenders had not helped any of their borrowers who were eligible for loan modifications. Others had helped varying numbers of those who were 60 or more days delinquent on their mortgages, ranging up to 100 percent for one bank that only had one eligible borrower.

The option ARMs in a higher price range are expected to start to show up if lenders can't refinance the borrowers.