Fair Isaac Corporation, the company that pioneered the development of the FICO score, keeps track of trends in the scores, here is the latest year over year comparison:
When your buyer goes to their mortgage company for their loan, this is the first information they get before moving forward. You should know the buyers score and receive a pre-approval letter prior to negotiating a contract.
Check your FICO Score Here for Free!
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Mortgage company Freddie Mac said today the average rate for 30-year fixed loans dropped to 4.57 percent. That’s down from the previous record of 4.58 percent set last week and the lowest since Freddie Mac began tracking rates in 1971. The last time rates were lower was in the 1950s, when most long-term home loans lasted just 20 or 25 years.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama signed Friday morning a three-month extension on the deadline for home buyers to obtain a federal home-buyer tax credit of up to $8,000.
Buyers now have until Sept. 30 to close on a home sale to be eligible for the credit. The closing deadline was originally June 30. To be eligible, buyers need a contract that was in place by April 30.
232,959 Foreclosed Homes sold at an average 27 percent discount in the first quarter as almost a third of all U.S. transactions according to RealtyTrac Inc.
Over 1 million are currently for sale and another 1 million foreclosed properties will come on the market this year. The important fact that the bank and government doesn’t get, the average family is not the buyer of these properties, it is investors. The investor buys, then spends money on material and labor to improve the property, hopefully to get the value back to normal. Yes, for their efforts, investment and risk, there is a profit. Encouraging this process helps in the following ways:
1. Raises the value of properties in the neighborhood, which reduces further foreclosures
2. Improves the economy by spending money on materials and labor.
3. Improves the Federal Budget by collecting more income tax
4. Reduces the unemployment rate
5. Reduces bank liablilities
6. Reduces inventory of vacant properties for sale
Another Too Big to Fail happens today, unless the closing date, June 30th of the Homeowner Tax Credit, is extended. It’s reported over 180,000 properties that are under contrat need to close today or they all go back on the market July 1st, further increasing the inventories of homes for sale. This would be a big blow to the fragile real estate market trying to reduce inventory and get back to normal sales.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday backed by a vote of 409-5 a measure to extend the closing deadline to September 30 for buyers who already met the April 30 deadline to have a signed contract.
More news will come out today.
” The Case-Shiller 20-city Composite for home prices made a 3.8% year-over-year increase in April. An increase of 3.4% had been widely expected. The overall Home Price Index for April came in at 144.6, up slightly from the 143.4 that was registered in the prior month.”
With the huge increase in activity because of the expiring tax credits, fsbo.com has been extremely busy. We will return to updating our blog on a regular basis.
The federal tax credit for homebuyers is winding down! This is the last month to get your accepted contracts in to be eligible. Please visit our site for information and details…
http://www.fsbo.com/taxcredit.aspx
Don’t miss out on this opportunity! Now is the time to buy!
Many groups give out real estate related information on a regular basis. Looking short term can get you confused and riled with no consistency. Longer term, things come into focus. Todays information shows:
1. Commerce Department announced January housing starts increased 2.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000 units.
2. The Commerce Department also said New building permits, which give a sense of future home construction, fell 4.9 percent to 621,000 units.
3. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity decreased 2.1 percent to 600.5 for the week.
Know the past so you don’t make the same mistakes, trust the future with more knowledge & experience.
Yes, we keep hearing stories of sellers with a qualified buyer ready to close on the sale, but the mortgage lender keeps delaying plus coming up with new documents that need to be completed. Sometimes they act like yours if the first time they have ever given a mortgage on a property. Â Here is one reason:
THE BANKS ARE HOARDING THEIR CASH!!, NOT WANTING TO LOAN!! How do we know this, well, according to Federal Reserve data, major banks are now sitting on as much as $1.29 trillion in cash, equal to a record 98 cents for every dollar of existing business loans.  This figure of cash has more than quadrupled from 21 cents in June 2008.
Our suggestion, keep pushing them or contact your congressman or take your business to someone else.
Anybody else had these problems??
Home sales is all about affordability, the lower the cost (price of property + interest paid) of ownership, the more sales there will be.
We have been pounding the table that the bottom is in and interest rates will rise by Spring. Here is more information to back that up:
In an effort to stimulate home sales, the Federal Reserve, in an unprecedented move, has purchased of $1.25 trillion of mortgage securities and plans to stop as soon as March, driving up interest rates on new home loans. Analysts at BNP Paribas SA, Credit Suisse Group AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. say the extra yield over benchmark rates that investors demand to hold the securities will widen as much as half a percentage point as the Fed stops purchasing. The 11- month-old program has reduced yields, which guides lending rates, by about 1 percentage point, BNP estimates. Along with the Federal Tax credit incentive, which ends April 30th, sales number should keep increasing for the next several months, then hit a ‘brick wall’.
If you are planning to sell in the Spring or Summer, you should move up your marketing schedule to as early as possible. If you are planning to buy, right now is time.