Good news: housing inventory is up..

After some grueling months in the trenches, (if you happen to be looking for a house to buy), seeing the number of homes available on the market dwindle to something not seen since 2005, we relish a breath of fresh air:  the number of houses and condominiums available for sale is finally coming up a bit, promising more balance in the market may be?  We'll see.

When the market is sharply up, people often think that it is "great" for Realtors. Not quite so, unless you strictly work for sellers. If buyers have too hard a time to purchase a property, it does not benefit the community as a whole. Hence the sigh of relief when the market is more balanced.

In the past month, and as of the 18th of May, we have seen the number of homes on the market for sale, in the whole County of Santa Clara, come up from about 1575 to 1720. (below is the average for a given month...).

At the same time, the percentage of houses (not condos) sold for more than listing price has gone up to 44.5%.  By the way, this statistic is available every Saturday in the San Jose Mercury News in the real estate section.

Thanks for reading!
Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Current Mortgage rates

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

Buy? Sell? Another tack, another take...

Buy now, sell now?? 

This is another take on my previous post, another perspective, quite interesting and informative if you have been thinking about buying, or about selling a property in the "new market" of today.

The article, albeit a bit long, does offer a few tidbits of information which verifiably qualify as interesting, - information taken "from the trenches".

Coldwell Banker: "Reality Check"

My clients know me, I do not like to influence them into a purchase, or a sale.  But there are things that I do advise clients to keep in mind and stay informed about.  Of course the new market, as radical as it is, is one of them.

If you need a sounding board, don't hesitate to write or call me,

Thank you,

Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Current Mortgage rates

Buy a home? Good time?

Consumer attitudes toward home buying shift.

More consumers may be looking to purchase homes with a shift in several key housing market indicators, according to Fannie Mae’s March 2012 consumer attitudinal National Housing Survey. More Americans now expect both home rental and home purchase prices to increase over the next year. Nearly 1/2 of consumers expect higher rental prices, the highest number recorded since monthly tracking began in June 2010. These trends may be providing Americans with an increased sense of urgency to buy a home as 73% of Americans now believe it is a good time to buy a home, up from 70% in February.

Highlights of the survey include:

- 33% of respondents expect home prices to increase over the next 12 months, a five percentage point increase from last month, the highest level over the past 12 months.

- On average, Americans expect home prices to increase by 0.9 % over the next 12 months (up slightly since last month).

- 39% of Americans say that mortgage rates will go up in the next 12 months, a five percentage point increase from last month.

- On average, respondents expect home rental prices to increase by 4.1 percent over the next 12 months, a significant increase since February, and the highest number recorded to date.

- 48% of respondents think that home rental prices will go up, a three percentage point increase from last month and the highest number recorded to date.

- 66% of respondents say they would buy their next home if they were going to move, up one point since last month, while 30 percent say they would rent, up one point versus last month.

More info on the FannieMae article in question.
Thanks for reading!
Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Current Mortgage rates

Curious about the (new) San Antonio Shopping Center ?

If you are wondering about what is coming up at the San Antonio Shopping Center, at the crossroads of El Camino Real and San Antonio Rd in Mountain View, here is some information about what is going on there:
San Antonio Shopping Center.

Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Current Mortgage rates

House financing, refinancing? Hidden fees..

Let's be technical here, just a bit, to understand better what is in a loan "rate".

A hidden fee is set to rise
The guarantee fee – a hidden fee inside the interest rate quoted on a home mortgage – has been mandated by Congress to increase this spring, and other increases are likely later to take place later this year and next.

A little bit of background on the subject:

The guarantee fee has been charged by government sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for more than three decades. The fee does not show up in borrowers’ mortgage documents or good-faith estimates, and it is little known outside the industry. According to a Fannie Mae spokesman, the fee “gets incorporated into the underlying rate the borrower pays.”

An interest rate is usually made of up 3 parts: The largest goes to the bank or the investors who buy the loan; the smaller portion is for the mortgage servicer that collects monthly payments; and then there’s the guarantee fee. Fannie and Freddie charge guarantee fees as a form of insurance against default for the loans they acquire and resell to investors.

The guarantee fee will rise 10 basis points on April 1; the increase was included in the two-month extension of the payroll tax reduction last December. A basis point is equal to one one-hundredth of 1 percent, or 0.01 percent.

One way to avoid the guarantee fee is to use a lender that does not sell off its loans – for instance, a community bank or a credit union.

In addition to offsetting risks, the fees provide a primary source of revenue for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Both organizations started raising fee rates in 2008 during the housing crisis, as foreclosure costs rose.

Read the full story in this New York Times article.

Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Current Mortgage rates

Inspections before sale of property...

Just like home buying must start with a pre-approval, home selling really should start with some inspections.

I have been involved recently in a transaction where no inspections had been done before putting the property on the market.  The result was difficult to watch as the transaction unfolded, as problems started to show up after I ordered a termite inspection and a property inspection for my client, the buyer.

First we discovered the almost "usual" termite problems, as the recommendation was to tent the house, but we were also faced with a description of the problems that entailed opening up an area to see exactly how much damage was occuring.  The termite company knew there were problems in that area, but had to remove the heating ducts in order to know exactly how much it would cost to correct the termite infestation.

Then with the property inspection we learned that the foundation needed significant repairs, which we had priced by a foundation specialist.

The problem with this is that the seller did not know about these problems, and most likely these repairs would have to be done in order to sell the house.  Buyers and sellers entered into a contract without the information.  Then there is a catch 22: you can cancel the transaction, but then you are still faced with the necessity to address the issues with another buyer, or you continue and you have to pay for the unexpected repairs.

These were not the only problems discovered by the inspections, and I felt very sorry for the very nice people selling this house, and for the lovely client I had buying it.  Both were somewhat shaken up by the process.

I made a mental note to keep in mind this story to illustrate the definite need for inspections done ahead of time, for my clients sellers.
When time comes to negotiate, you want to negotiate with as many known facts as possible, and avoid very costly unknowns.

Thanks for reading, let me know your own experiences...
Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Current Mortgage rates

Refinancing: fixed rate, or ???

A fixed rate alternative


With interest rates at historically low levels, many borrowers are finding value with a reliable fixed-rate mortgage.
However, as clients often turn to me and ask me what they should do, I point out that borrowers who think they will be moving/ selling in the not-too-distant future have another alternative: an adjustable-rate mortgage that offers several years at a fixed interest rate.

Hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, originated in the jumbo-loan marketplace at the end of the 1980s. They fell out of favor – along with the riskier ARMs that offered extremely low teaser rates and interest-only components – after the subprime mortgage market collapsed.

Some adjustable-rate mortgages have an interest rate that changed every year, but a hybrid – also known as a delayed first-adjustment ARM – has a fixed interest rate for a period of time. Most loan officers refer to a hybrid by the period during which the rate is fixed. A 5/1 loan, for example, has a fixed rate for five years, then adjusts annually for the remainder of the term; a 7/1 loan adjusts after seven years.

ARMs account for only a small segment of the overall mortgage nowadays, financing just slightly more than 10 percent of home purchases. However, market share for hybrid loans is expected to increase to 14 percent this year, according to an annual survey released last month by Freddie Mac. The 5/1 hybrid was the most popular adjustable-rate loan product in the market, according to the survey. The least popular was a 3/3 ARM, which adjusts once every three years.

A common reason for choosing a hybrid ARM is projected length of homeownership. It’s a nice option for buyers who don’t expect to stay in their home for longer than three to five years.

Rates on hybrid ARMs are also attractive. As of last week, the average rate on a 5/1 loan was 2.81 percent, compared with 3.88 percent for a 30-year fixed-rate loan, according to Freddie Mac.

Borrowers should be aware though that with rates starting at rock-bottom levels, there’s generally only one direction for them to go. And even though there are caps on the rate change amount, the jump could be as much as six percentage points, when it adjusts.

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times on the subject.  Food for thoughts....

Francis

Silicon Valley Real Estate

Local market trends

useful links

Current Mortgage rates