"under water" properties at their lowest level in a long time!

Just read on RisMedia:

One million borrowers regained equity in 2015, bringing the total number of mortgaged residential properties with equity at the end of the 4^th quarter of 2015 to approximately 46.3 million, or 91.5 % of all mortgaged properties, according to a new CoreLogic® analysis.  Nationwide, borrower equity increased year-over-year by $682 billion in Q4 2015. 

The total number of mortgaged residential properties with negative equity (“under water”) decreased 19.1 % year over year from what it was at the end of last year.

Interestingly, Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, Florida, had the highest percentage of mortgaged properties in negative equity (22% of the total).

San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco, CA, had the highest percentage of mortgaged properties in a positive equity position, at 99.3%.    Houston, then Denver followed SF in that category.

To read the full article on RisMedia.

Thanks for reading!

Francis

The 2016 French Fair is coming to Palo Alto:

March 19th - Lucie Stern community Center

1305 Middlefield Rd - Palo Alto.

http://www.frenchfair.org/
See you there, for French food, fashion, dance, live music, art, company!

Rents are up 5% nationwide

Taken from a Trulia article:

Rents Continue To Climb, Rising Nationally 5.0 Percent Year-Over-Year

Asking rents rose over the past year in almost all large metro areas included in the Trulia Rent Monitor. In the largest metros, rents rose 6.2 percent in New York and 6.1 percent in Chicago, but only 0.6 percent in Los Angeles. Rents rose strongly in Miami (12.1 percent) and Denver (9.9 percent), which also experienced large asking price increases. Meanwhile, rental affordability declined in places where rents rose while prices fell, most notably in San Francisco (rents up 11.1 percent), Seattle (9.7 percent), San_Jose (9.4 percent) and Boston (9.2 percent).

On the ground I find that there is a complete penury of rentals in the area centered around Palo Alto, and that rents have gone up in the Silicon Valley by a lot more than 10% in some cases.  It is good to check with your Realtor on the latest values if you are thinking of renting out your property for a while.
I often advise to also check Craigslist's listings.

Francis Rolland

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

Francis - on Trulia

Current Mortgage rates