New Financial Product to Free Up Mortage Financing

US Treasury Secretary Paulson announced today that the four largest US banks are prepared to create a market for a new kind of product to help free up liquidity in the mortgage market. This type of action is needed to get the Santa Rosa real estate market going again.

clipped from biz.yahoo.com Covered bonds, issued by banks and secured by pools of assets like home loans, are widely used in Europe but have only become attractive in the United States since the segment of the mortgage securitization market driven by investment banks dried up last year amid a wave of foreclosures. He said that Bank of America (NYSE:BAC - News), Citigroup (NYSE:C - News), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM - News) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC - News) said they intend to establish covered-bond programs "and kick-start this market in the United States."

Sonoma County Foreclosures Dip Slightly

California foreclosures rise at 6.6% but Sonoma County drop by 1.1%. Still too early to tell if this is the bottom as the numbers are very high when compared to year over year.

clipped from www1.pressdemocrat.com Foreclosure activity showed signs of leveling off in Sonoma County during the second quarter even as it continued to spiral to unprecedented highs in other parts of the state, according to a study issued Tuesday. Lenders sent 1,376 default notices to Sonoma County borrowers who fell behind on their mortgages, down 1.1 percent from the first quarter, when lenders issued 1,392 default notices, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a real estate research firm.

Santa Rosa Home Sales for Week of June 29

A list of homes sold in Santa Rosa for the week of June 29.

clipped from www1.pressdemocrat.com 721 Mill St., $285,000 713 Trowbridge St., $230,000 510 Duncan St., $320,000 1617 Clover Lane, $372,500 3619 Yale Drive, $360,000 1615 Solano Drive, $349,000 2810 Sioux St., $250,000 2728 Navajo St., $205,000 6413 Meadow Creek Lane, $535,000 405 Oak Brook Place, $770,000 429 Oak Vista Drive, $719,100 9432 Oak Trail Circle, $682,972 2065 Tebow Court, $425,000 2365 Redoak Drive, $428,000 2348 Maria Luz Court W., $325,000 2322 Jose Ave., $295,000 1373 Peterson Lane, $411,000 421 Manka Circle, $310,000 439 Ashwood Drive, $200,000 323 Anteeo Way, $235,000 2145 Fairfax Place, $370,000 2155 Onyx Way, $305,000 1232 Comalli St., $430,000 1390 Funston Drive, $292,000 4455 Hall Road, $380,000 115 Coronation Drive, $350,000 2077 Banjo Drive, $360,000 1839 Bancroft Drive, $300,000 1308 Starview Drive, $260,000 1906 Greeneich Ave., $295,000 2822 Audubon Court, $305,000 3490 Bonita Vista Drive, $500,000 3823 Rocky Point Way, $734,000 2319 Northwood Drive, $348,181 556 Silva Ave., $337,500 2126 Orchard St., $400,000

Foreclosures Continue to Rise

The Santa Rosa real estate market is not immune to the foreclosure crisis that has infected California. With median home prices falling and more foreclosures on the horizon there won't be a bottom till next spring. If you are thinking of buying a home, be sure to save as much as you can and keep your dept low, there are deals to be had on Santa Rosa homes.

clipped from biz.yahoo.com In all, some 63,061 homes were lost to foreclosure in the second quarter -- the most in any quarter since 1988, when the firm began tracking foreclosures. Foreclosures, measured by the number of trustee deeds recorded, increased about 33 percent from the previous quarter and jumped 261 percent versus the same quarter last year. Notices of default, meanwhile, more than doubled in the second quarter to 121,341 loans on a total of 118,020 homes, compared to the year-ago period. Most of the home loans that slipped into default in the most recent quarter were made between September 2005 and November 2006, as air came out of the housing bubble.

Quick Tip When Buying Foreclosures

Whether it's Santa Rosa CA or anywhere USA, seems like everyone is talking about buying real estate foreclosures. There are deals to be had, just be careful.

clipped from finance.yahoo.com Buying at a public auction is the most common type of foreclosure purchase. Buyers can expect a discount of 10% to 25% compared with buying a home through traditional channels, says Dean Street, an agent and 30-year veteran of foreclosure buying in the western U.S. But the road to auction can be bumpy, too. For starters, you often cannot inspect the interior of the home. Street says it's vital to see the property even if you can't gain entry. "If there is 300 pounds of garbage in the front yard, there is probably 600 pounds inside," he says. One way to research the interior is to check the local building department's permit records, or have your agent see if a recent listing has information on appearance, layout and previous remodelings.

Housing Starts Down to lowest level since 1991

The first step in getting the housing market in Santa Rosa back on track is to reduce the inventory of homes for sale (Santa Rosa Real Estate Home Inventory Stats) and at a national level, we are seeing the signs. Is this the beginning of the end of the housing crisis? Probably not. But it just may be the first sign that the market is turning.

clipped from news.yahoo.com The Commerce Department reported Thursday that construction of single-family homes dropped by 5.3 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 647,000 units, the weakest performance since January 1991, another period when the housing industry was going through a severe downturn. Private economists were not enthusiastic about by the housing report, however, stressing that the data was being skewed by the one-month spurt of activity in New York that was magnified by the fact that the government adjusts one-month changes to annual rates. Analysts predicted that housing will continue to be under strains for the rest of the year.

Santa Rosa Home Sales for Week of June 22

There were 35 homes sold in Santa Rosa for the week of June 22. I've listed each of the homes sold in Santa Rosa below and the selling price for each Santa Rosa home too.

clipped from www1.pressdemocrat.com 641 Oak St., $263,000 1605 Lang Court, $319,000 3133 Sonoma Ave., $285,000 2107 Midway Drive, $480,000 1809 Calavaras Drive, $479,000 255 Mockingbird Circle, $490,000 45 Autumn Leaf Drive, $548,500 1631 Nina Court, $370,000 2105 Lapper Ave., $340,000 1928 Waterford St., $315,000 4187 Concord Ave., $365,500 2368 Donna Maria Way, $309,000 513 Chipmunk Court, $350,000 1305 Lombardi Lane, $290,000 1089 Pippin Circle, $400,000 4165 Yeager Drive, $325,000 1911 Eversley Place, $380,000 1579 Cabernet Circle, $355,000 1685 W. College Ave., $383,500 5477 Carriage Lane, $590,000 2376 Summercreek Drive, $360,000 2555 Horseshoe Drive, $550,000 4820 Cottsberry Court, $690,000 2065 Banjo Drive, $310,000 1768 Fenwick Drive, $260,000 5409 Santa Teresa Ave., $630,000 3529 Flintwood Drive, $429,000 3957 Park Gardens Drive, $700,000 3664 Crown Hill Drive, $1,165,000 133 Northwood Court, $570,000 3002 Sunridge Drive, $550,000 1604 El Rancho Way, $420,000 4549 Offner Lane, $660,000 4716 Culebra Way, $530,000 4941 Snark Ave., $375,500

"OMG - Freddie and Fannie" - Real Estate is so interesting....

This weekend will be interesting... it is really hitting the fan with Freddie and Fannie for the real estate market. But the bottom line is "this will pass". Not today, not tomorrow, but this will pass....

clipped from news.yahoo.com While most of the mortgages they hold are fixed-rate loans to borrowers with good credit, the housing downturn has been so severe that they have sustained gigantic losses in their loan portfolios due to foreclosures — about $11 billion over the past few months — pushing them closer to the financial brink. And because their stock prices have plunged so far, they are hard pressed to raise fresh capital on their own. Former St. Louis Fed President William Poole this week said Fannie and Freddie were already technically insolvent. "There's no good news here for the housing market or for the broader economy," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

Will tightening credit markets effect Santa Rosa Real Estate?

I just got an email from my financial planner urging me to put today's dramatic plunge in the stock market into perspective. Thank goodness I have a strong stomach for market fluctuations. But the one bit of today's news that is most troubling to me is the news about Fannie and Freddie:

clipped from biz.yahoo.com Because of the turmoil surrounding Fannie and Freddie, recent borrowers are likely paying nearly 10% more in monthly mortgage payments than they would have. "Some lenders are really pulling in their horns," said Steve Habetz, a Connecticut mortgage broker. "They're getting scared. They're demanding really clean loan applications with every i dotted and every t crossed." The troubles for Fannie and Freddie could even affect current mortgage borrowers since they put the housing rescue bills that Congress has been agonizing over for months in jeopardy, according to Zandi, who has testified before the Senate on aspects of the bills.

What this means to Santa Rosa real estate, both buyers and sellers, is a tighter credit market decreasing the number of qualified buyers. With less buyers, the home inventory will continue to rise. As inventories rise, prices fall.

We're not at the bottom yet.

See the real estate stats for Santa Rosa for yourself, not a pretty picture.

Letter from New York Times - Will it work in Santa Rosa?

I ran into an interesting article from the NYT on Yahoo today. The gist of the the article is that now is the time to approach sellers with compelling offers and quotes the following stats. Interesting real estate reading...

clipped from finance.yahoo.com First, consider the big picture. Nationwide, home prices in the first quarter of 2008 fell 14.1 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index. Not only that, earlier this month, the National Association of Realtors pointed to the huge number of existing homes on the market. As of the end of April, the total number was 4.55 million. At the rate people are buying right now, that represents an 11.2-month supply. So buyers have options right now. A lot of them. I’m no different. Your home is great, but it isn’t unique. Few homes are. I know this may be hard to hear, since you’ve spent years creating memories here. But you may be waiting a long time if you hope to find a buyer with the same emotional connection that you have.

Santa Rosa Real Estate

This is my first post on the Santa Rosa Real Estate blog. I will post information about Santa Rosa CA real estate as often as I can. I am entering the real estate market in Santa Rosa and have been studying the Santa Rosa real estate market for over two years.

There are some very interesting dynamics happening in the Santa Rosa real estate market.

You can see the latest sales trends in Santa Rosa real estate here.