Entries Tagged 'Foreclosures' ↓

Are you deep in debt and are worried that you might have to file bankruptcy? A debt settlement may be the answer that you are looking for. A consumer debt consolidation or credit settlement can help you avoid having to file for bankruptcy; in a debt settlement a person makes an arrangement with their creditors. This type of arrangement involves the creditors receiving a payment which is less than the balance of the debt in exchange for having the debt taken care of.

How do I qualify for a debt settlement? The only way to qualify for a debt settlement is to stop paying your monthly bill payments. Most creditors will want you to be at least three to four months delinquent on your monthly bill payments before they will even discuss a debt settlement with you. They will discuss a reduced balance agreement; usually they will reduce the balance owed by thirty to fifty percent.

Debt settlements are catered to people who mainly have credit card debt or unsecured debt because student loans cannot be forgiven or reduced. You will need to make a lump sum payment to your creditors after they have agreed to your debt agreements.

Many consumers have thousands of dollars in credit card debt so settling with your credit card companies instead of filing for bankruptcy can really help you out financially. If you can get your credit card debt under control and start making your monthly bill payments on time after your debt settlements have been arranged then you will be back on track financially. You should try to budget your monthly expenses and save money so that you can slowly improve your credit which will be very beneficial to you down the road.

LOS ANGELES – Countrywide Financial Corp., its stock pummeled this week by rumors of bankruptcy and lackluster housing market forecasts, said Wednesday the percentage of borrowers who missed payments on home loans last month rose, signaling worsening trouble for the nation’s largest mortgage lender and for the entire mortgage sector.

The company also reported that it had funded $23.5 billion in loans in December — a steep decline from $42.8 billion in the year-ago period.

“Their new business is down roughly 50 percent,” said Sean Egan, managing director of independent ratings firm Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Philadelphia.

“The market is fairly concerned whether the company is going to be able to correct the fundamental problems that it’s faced with,” he said.

The new figures drove Countrywide stock down by more than 15 percent at one point in the day before it recovered to end down 35 cents, or 6.4 percent, at $5.12.

The decline followed a loss of $2.17, or 28.4 percent, on Tuesday after the company denied rumors that a bankruptcy filing was imminent.

Wachovia Capital Markets analyst Jim Shanahan suggested Countrywide stock will remain volatile at least until the company reports its financial results for the fourth-quarter later this month.

Countrywide said some 6.96 percent of the loans in its servicing portfolio were delinquent last month, up from 5.02 percent in December 2006.

Loan delinquencies as a percentage of unpaid principal balances jumped to 7.20 percent from 6.52 percent.

About 1.04 percent of the mortgage loans were pending foreclosure, up from 0.65 percent.

The spike in loan delinquencies and pending foreclosures suggests many borrowers continue to struggle to make their payments, despite efforts touted by Countrywide to find ways to keep borrowers in homes.

Countrywide was among the major lenders involved in a Bush administration push to help homeowners with subprime loans avoid mortgage defaults by temporarily freezing their interest rates.

Falling or stagnant home prices, weak demand and a credit crunch following the subprime meltdown last summer has battered the mortgage sector and other financial institutions, leading to billions in losses.

“Mortgage quality is fast eroding and will continue to erode despite policy efforts to stem the surge in delinquency and foreclosure,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

Nearly 2 million adjustable-rate mortgages are expected to reset to sharply higher payments in the next two years. A weakening job market, particularly in the hard-hit Midwest, could also lead to more home loan defaults.

Countrywide said its loan fundings during December rose 1 percent from November, ahead of internal forecasts.

Average daily mortgage applications for December slipped from the year-ago period, however. Countrywide and some analysts attributed the dip to a typical seasonal decline.

“We are a little disappointed to see purchase activity not really reacting to lower home prices, but December is traditionally a weak month for purchase activity,” Frederick Cannon, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc., wrote in a research note.

Countrywide continued to shift away from risky subprime loans to people with shaky credit histories, with fundings totaling just $6 million last month, down from $3.73 billion in December 2006.

Home equity loan originations also declined last month to $1.26 billion, down 61.3 percent from $3.27 billion in the year-ago period.

Countrywide’s slate of adjustable rate mortgages fell by 75 percent to $3.68 billion, from $15.22 billion a year earlier.

In all, the lender originated 116,577 home loans in December, down from 212,566 in the year-ago period.

On a brighter note, deposits at Countrywide’s banking subsidiary rose by $2.3 billion in December. That money has become a key source of capital for loan funding since the collapse of the secondary market for mortgage-backed securities.

Management pointed to the bump in loan fundings and rising bank deposits as evidence the company was heading in the right direction.

“Our fourth quarter ended with a number of positive operational trends,” David Sambol, Countrywide’s president and chief operating office, said in a statement. “Management is pleased with the progress we have made in positioning the company to navigate the current challenging environment.”

Countrywide previously reported a $1.2 billion loss for the third quarter of last year, but management forecast a profitable fourth quarter and 2008.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial are estimating Countrywide will post a fourth-quarter profit of 12 cents per share on revenue of $1.9 billion.

Egan-Jones warned in a report on Tuesday that the lender is on precarious financial footing, contending it could fail unless it gets an infusion of $4 billion in capital within the next two weeks.

The test for taking a real estate license is administered by a state agency and the name of the actual test varies form state to state. For you to determine your estate exam licensing procedure, you should go to your testing agency. Because before you can take the test, there are many variations on requirements like age, background and education.

If education is required you should find out the specifics about this requirement. In some states college course work is required, while other estate only requires you a special real estate courses.

You can now save some of your valuable time and complete an entire course from your home or office instead of sitting in a classroom for countless hours. Check out home inspection training courses and irrigation home study course or visit the website www.celi-edu.com for more information.

Investors from the financial industry are helping establish a new $16 million fund that will address foreclosures, help revitalize neighborhoods and increase housing opportunities for families in the Twin Cities.

US Bank, Wells Fargo, TCF Bank and Thrivent Financial announced Tuesday that they are investing in the Family Housing Fund’s new loan program called the Home Prosperity Fund.

The fund will, in part, provide money to assist organizations working in neighborhoods threatened by foreclosure. They will acquire vacant, boarded homes to repair and sell to responsible owners.

The new loan will also help create new affordable housing opportunities in the metro and provide gap loans to families so they can afford to buy a home.

The Home Prosperity Fund has initial investments of $16 million with a goal of reaching $50 million by 2012.

The Dayton’s Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services, Greater Metropolitan Housing Corp., Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and the Minneapolis/St. Paul HOME Program have been awarded the first loans from the Home Prosperity Fund.

The Family Housing Fund is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide safe, affordable, sustainable homes to families and children in the Twin Cities through ongoing partnerships with the public and private sector.

Black neighborhoods in Baltimore were disproportionately affected by the subprime mortgage fallout, according to a federal lawsuit expected Tuesday from the city, which is attempting to recoup the costs of maintaining neighborhoods wracked by foreclosures.The suit alleges San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Bank N.A. engaged in a pattern of predatory lending practices in Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods, leading to foreclosure rates nearly double the citywide average.

While the lawsuit, to be filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, does not specify compensatory or punitive damages, City Solicitor George Nilson said foreclosures have cost Baltimore tens of millions.

The lawsuit alleges that Wells Fargo targeted black neighborhoods for deceptive lending practices — a practice known as reverse redlining, which is prohibited under the federal Fair Housing Act. For example, it claims that mortgages for homes worth $75,000 or less — most of which are located in minority neighborhoods — were sold at higher rates and laden with fees and surcharges.

The Australian real estate company that owns Vallejo’s Gateway Plaza and Vallejo Corners, otherwise known as the Target Center, is seeking buyers before a February debt refinancing deadline, a company official said. Centro Properties Group, which also owns Metro 580 and Rose Pavilion in Pleasanton, said this week it seeks “expressions of interest” for either buying the company or its Australian and U.S. assets, according to reports.

The move is a result of damage caused the firm by the subprime mortgage crisis, said Mitchell Brown, spokesperson from the firm’s Australian headquarters.

San Rafael-based Autodesk Inc. said it has completed the acquisition of Hanna Strategies, a software development firm with offices in Shanghai, Atlanta and Pune, India. On Nov. 1 Autodesk announced its intention to acquire Hanna Strategies. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. This acquisition supports Autodesk’s goal of creating digital design innovation technology through its software development.

If you are a real estate agent and you want to practice your profession in a particular state, it is needed that you should obtain first a real estate license before you are able to practice your profession.

One of the basic requirements of acquiring a real estate license is that you must be at least 18 years of age. Remember that each state have there own specific set of requirements. For example in Texas real estate, it is required in there that you should take a 60 hours course on “Principles of Real Estate”. Aside from this, it is required that you should take at least 30 hours on Texas real estate courses about the Law of Agency and Law of Contracts. To know about these specifications, check with your local state office and ask how you can fulfill the requirements to obtain a real estate license.

Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) will hold a five-day public auction for more than 1,000 residential properties over the course of three weekends–allowing time off for the Super Bowl– during January and February in Southern California.

Some homes in the auction, which will take place between January 26 and February 10, will have starting bids that are 40 percent lower than the previously valued price.

REDC conducts real estate auctions on behalf of third parties–mortgage companies, lenders or builders–that have inventory remaining from subdivisions or properties they developed.

“”We offer alternative marketing processes,” says REDC Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Joe Joffrion. “You don’t typically see TV, print and Internet combined advertising from builders. We hit all forms of media. We’re trying to really broaden the audience to include people who may not be aware these homes are available.”

The company’s builder and developer auctions are smaller and can involve properties such as condos and single-family homes.

Auctions featuring foreclosed properties offer options ranging from single-family homes to one- to four-unit multifamily residences. REDC foreclosure auctions have taken place almost every weekend since May.

“[Auctions are] an instantaneous process,” Joffrion says. “There’s an expedited offer and acceptance period. It helps sellers and communities because the worst thing today is the amount of homes on the market that just aren’t moving.”

In December, REDC held an auction involving nearly 70 new luxury condos in four communities in Southern California.

This month, auctions for discounted condos, townhomes, twin homes and single-family homes–such as a four-bedroom, $1.25 million single-family residence in Glendale, Calif. (pictured), which has an opening bid price of $359,000–are scheduled for the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif. on Jan. 26 and the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on Jan. 27

Additional auctions are slated for the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif. on Feb. 2, the Pomona Convention Center in Pomona, Calif. on Feb. 9 and Riverside, Calif.’s Riverside Convention Center on Feb. 10.

The majority of homes for sale are lender foreclosures, but the auction also will feature 13 brand new homes.

Individuals interested in the auction are encouraged to attend one of the open house inspection days on January 12, 19 and 20 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pre-registration, property and bidder information can be found at www.USHomeAuction.com.

Established in 1990 and headquartered in Irvine, Calif., the Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) has sold more than $1 billion in real estate assets since May 2006.

Baltimore’s mayor and City Council are suing Wells Fargo Bank, contending that its lending practices discriminated against black borrowers and led to a wave of foreclosures that has reduced city tax revenues and increased its costs.

The recent surge in homeowner defaults nationwide, generated by lax lending practices during the real estate boom, has officials bracing for a range of problems that often accompany foreclosures. Some municipalities, including Cleveland and Buffalo, are trying to make lenders responsible for abandoned properties to ward off crimes like arson, drug use and prostitution.

But the civil suit that officials in Baltimore are filing in United States District Court may presage another type of litigation against lenders by municipalities facing shortfalls in their budgets.

In the suit, Mayor Sheila Dixon joined with the City Council to ask that the court bar Wells Fargo from charging higher fees to black borrowers. Many of these borrowers paid more under the bank’s subprime lending program, designed for less creditworthy consumers, and are more likely to default on their real estate loans.

In 2006, Wells Fargo made high-cost loans, with an interest rate at least three percentage points above a federal benchmark, to 65 percent of its black customers in Baltimore and to only 15 percent of its white customers in the area, according to the lawsuit. Similarly, refinancings to black borrowers were more likely to be higher cost than to white ones and to carry prepayment penalties.

The complaint requests unspecified damages to cover the diminished property tax revenues and higher costs that the city said it had incurred. Additional costs include those for fire and police protection in hard-hit neighborhoods and expenditures to buy and rehabilitate vacant properties.

Kevin Waetke, a Wells Fargo spokesman, rejected the contention that race was a factor in the bank’s pricing of mortgage loans. “We do not tolerate illegal discrimination against or unfair treatment of any consumer,” Mr. Waetke said. “Our loan pricing is based on credit risk. We are committed to serving all customers fairly — our continued growth depends on it.”

But Suzanne Sangree, chief solicitor for the Baltimore City Law Department, said: “This wave of foreclosures in minority neighborhoods really threatens to undermine the tremendous progress the city has made in developing distressed neighborhoods and moving the city ahead economically. Wells Fargo could do a lot, as well as other banks that have engaged in similar practices, to help to curb the flood of foreclosures that the city is experiencing now.”

Among the practices cited by the city, Wells Fargo allowed mortgage brokers to charge higher commissions when they put borrowers in loans with higher interest rates than the customers qualified for based on their credit profiles. The bank also failed to underwrite mortgage loans to traditional criteria, the suit said, setting up the borrowers for default. Such practices were common at many lenders during the boom.

Now, Baltimore is a city in a foreclosure crisis, according to the complaint. Citing figures from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, the suit said foreclosure-related events in the city, including notices of default, foreclosure sales and lenders’ purchases of foreclosed properties, rose more than five times between the first and second quarters of 2007.

Wells Fargo has been the largest or second-largest provider of mortgage loans to Baltimore borrowers since 2004, according to the lawsuit. From 2004 through 2006, Wells Fargo made at least 1,285 mortgage loans a year to area residents with a total value of more than $600 million. Wells Fargo now has the largest number of foreclosures in Baltimore of any lender, the suit stated.

Half of the Wells Fargo foreclosures in 2006 occurred in census tracts with populations that were more than 80 percent black, the suit said. Meanwhile, only 16 percent of the foreclosures were found in tracts with populations that are 20 percent or less black. Figures for 2007 were similar, the city said.

John P. Relman, a lawyer at Relman & Dane in Washington, represents the City of Baltimore in its case against Wells Fargo. “Foreclosures have a more profound effect in minority communities because they are closest to the line of distressed neighborhoods in many cities,” Mr. Relman said. “That causes big problems for the cities, not just the lost income from taxes but also the long-term social costs. Programs are going to be needed to stabilize the communities to be rebuilt.”

The Baltimore complaint cited a 2005 study showing that foreclosures required more municipal services and higher costs. The study, commissioned by the Homeownership Preservation Foundation of Minneapolis, identified 26 different costs incurred by government agencies responding to foreclosures in Chicago and in Cook County, Ill., in 2003 and 2004. The analysis concluded that total costs reached $34,199 for each foreclosure.

And so, 2008′s San Francisco real estate year begins not with a bang but a whimper. It is the spawn of last year’s market, which was so slow that in the last week of 2007, Alexander Clark’s SFNewsletter (links.sfgate.com/ZBYS) about San Francisco real estate didn’t even bother to update its “new on the market” listings.

Nationally, the experts – like Robert Shiller of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index (links.sfgate.com/ZBYT) – continued to issue predictions that 2008 will be another year of grim reaping. And in the past few months, many cities in the greater Bay Area have become the happy hunting grounds for pre-foreclosure vultures.

Such are the gruesome factoids that should warm buyers’ hearts.

But this specter of the boom’s death hasn’t helped my friends, a couple who are in the market for a new, not-too-pricey home in San Francisco. In the past two months, as they began their search, they’ve collided with the harsh realities of the local market again and again.

One promising property got nine offers before they could get in to see it. Another, a Queen Anne single-family home with a legal in-law unit in the upper Castro, was taken off the market and remarketed as separate TICs – which transformed an almost affordable home into an impossible dream. A historic Italianate with a potential for another cottage in the backyard on a less-than-picturesque street in the Inner Mission seemed to be overpriced by $300,000, but their real estate agent refused to even bother writing the low-ball offer they proposed.

My friends are not naive, first-time home buyers – they have a hefty down payment and know how to analyze market data and make reasonable offers – which makes their experience a little baffling. Shouldn’t a market with such ample use of exclamation points after the phrase “price reduced” translate to a real buyer’s market?

How could the new median price for a single-family home really be only $779,000 when the modest homes in most city neighborhoods go for far more than that?

How could it be that the average time on the market is approaching three months when my friends keep losing out on homes because they don’t make offers quickly enough?

After analyzing the numbers of SFNewsletter and market research from Altos Research, I’ve decided it’s not simply a matter of spin. The dissonance between my friends’ experience and the numbers reflect deeper distinctions in the city’s real estate market. Herein lies a tale of two San Franciscos.

Far from the Nob Hills and Noe Valleys, the Pacific Heights and Outer Sunsets, there are neighborhoods stretching across the southern and eastern quadrant of the city that tourists have never heard of and many San Franciscans have never visited. And it is these areas – Portola, Ingleside, Ocean View, Mission Terrace, Outer Mission, Bayview, Excelsior – that have been hit hardest by the real estate downturn.

“The market is terrible there,” explains Wilko, an agent with Prudential Real Estate, who “like Cher or Sting” goes by only one name. “For the whole city, the supply of homes is about 3.7 months,” he says referring to a common measurement for predicting how long it will take to sell the homes on the market. “But if you take out those (southeastern) neighborhoods, the supply is closer to two months. If you look only at the (southeastern) neighborhoods, the supply of homes is closer to 20 months.”

Why would one part of San Francisco experience the housing bust while other neighborhoods seem immune? “We really started to see it during the whole subprime mess,” said Wilko, who adds that buyers have become more scarce in part because low-down-payment loans have become more difficult to obtain.

“The banks got much pickier. The people in Pacific Heights never had to lie for a loan – never had to do stated income, they have sizable down payments. But the people buying in the lower end of the market – up to, say, $700,000 – often had no-down-payments with adjustable loans.” The current sellers are also feeling the heat. “Now (many sellers) have no equity to refinance, so they have to sell,” said Wilko, who says the added number of foreclosed properties in these areas isn’t helping the market. “The banks are not wasting any time reducing prices until the houses sell.”

Indeed, an inordinate number of the single-family homes coming on the market in recent weeks are located in these neighborhoods. What’s more, they seem to be staying on the market longer: 77 percent of December’s SFNewsletter’s list of houses that have been on the market for more than 100 days come from these neighborhoods.

The result is that although such neighborhoods represent only about 25 percent of the city’s land, and less than a quarter of the city’s population, they are overly represented in the real estate statistics. Why? In part it’s because these neighborhoods are largely comprised of single-family homes – and, typically, single-family homes, not condos or tenancies in common, are used as the measuring stick of the market.

But it is also because the sellers in these markets have fewer choices, and their willingness to lower their prices is changing the overall market. According to my calculations, a full 35 percent of single-family homes sold between Nov. 30 and Dec. 28 came from these easterly, southern neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were once the working-class and modest middle-class havens in a city of storied affluence. It’s here that the real estate market has approximated the same fall from grace as Antioch, Suisun City and so many other communities around the state.

In contrast, people in Atherton seem to be continuing to snatch up mansions like fresh cream puffs. How else would you explain the median price jumping from $4 million to $5.5 million in the past six months?

According to Fiona Santos of Coldwell Banker Peninsula, neighborhoods like Ingleside and Ocean View have dipped as much as 15 percent, or the equivalent of $100,000 per property. “It’s definitely a buyer’s market,” she told me, “And sellers are pretty desperate.”

She said that the desperation is not only emanating from those moving out of town or those who can’t afford their mortgage, but those buyers who have already bought a more expensive home in San Francisco.

“Some of my clients have already moved up. Now they can’t sell their first home. These homeowners can’t afford to carry two mortgages,” she said. “So they are foreclosing on their first home.”

Does this mean that the southeastern quadrant now offers the only good deals in San Francisco and my friends should not walk but run to the nearest east-side short sale they can find?

Most of the real estate agents I spoke to were hesitant to suggest that lower prices necessarily translate to good deals. “It all depends on the price,” says Santos. “But right now, nothing is priced low enough for an investment. If it’s a home and you plan to stay there a long time, it’s probably fine.”

Yet with 20 months of inventory, it may take some time to see how these neighborhoods will fare. “I don’t see these neighborhoods having tremendously more erosion in price, but they are unlikely to have tremendous appreciation in the short term. And they may be harder to sell,” said Shelley Trew of Vanguard Properties. She adds that there are reasons the rest of San Francisco has continued to hold its value. A lot of the new buyers – high-tech professionals who work in Silicon Valley – want to live in walkable neighborhoods closer to downtown, not more suburban neighborhoods.

“In the end, I guess it depends on how you define a good deal,” Trew said. “If it means getting a house for less than what you could have bought it for a year ago then, yes there are good deals. But does that represent more value for a buyer? I don’t know.”