Irvine Housing Blog

BoA’s decision to turbocharge foreclosures is so important, it has to have been OK’d by their CEO. 

REOs hurting prices and prolonging the bottoming is very market-dependent.  Where there are few defaults and underwater loans, you won’t see this effect (the flip side of places not experiencing a bubble).

Ultra-low rates are designed to help the worst hit markets.  From what I’ve seen in Florida, a lot of the hardest hit markets are getting a large number of cash buyers - the impact of low rates is lessened.  I am not seeing price increases here in NC, but affordability is definitely happening.

MOG, this is merely “The West Coast” states?

Three of the worst hit sand states - Californication, Loss Vegas and Arid-zone-AH—and Washington and Oregon.

Please note that the “AAAHH” in AZ is absolutely NOT caused by moving here from “a farm house” in Sand Diego!

IHB, we are being told every single month in Phoenix that the huge decline in “listed inventory” AND in listed REOs AND the decline in NODs is absolute proof that The End is Near!!!

According to Calculated Risk and Lawler, the decline in listings has occurred in almost every city in the U.S. And, this week Bill@Cr shows U.S. that the “Re-modelling Index” is at an all time high. Does this suggest that many of U.S. are NOT going to sell out at these depressed prices, and ARE gonna fix it up, and stay around for a while?

So, where DID BoA find “double” the number of homes to foreclose? You suggest its the homes of the “marginal cost renters”. Might be!

But still, after more than 3 years of huge numbers of foreclosures in Cal, Nev and Az, BoA can still DOUBLE the number of NODs?

Absolutely Astounding - and, yes, we are now thinking about attending AA - is it not.

It’s called cannabis, not pot, neo-cons call cannabis pot, those brain-washed by the system.

Legalize freedom. God has given every person the right to choose their medication and what they put into thier own bodies. The War on Drugs has caused more harm to this country than slavery, and anyone who says they love freedom cannot support the drug war and not be a hypocrite.

I guess Lincoln, Einstein, and Jefferson were out of their minds when they warned us of this government intrusion.

I’m sure most of you LOVE the smell of brewing coffee (a drug), having a beer (a drug), smoking a cigarette (drug), and downing your scripts to feel better. I’d rather deal with people using cannabis ANY DAY rather than some obnoxious person on alcohol.

P.S. There are many co-ops in Lake Forest to this day, a few in Irvine, and even neo-con Costa Misery. Remember, it is LAW now Prop 215. I hope it gets legalized for everyone next year. Where is the Tea Party on this freedom? Oh yea, that’s right, more hypocrites.

Funny “MLS Find of the Day”.  Kind of hard to tell, but I do believe the last photo shows some live plants growing in the “lush” backyard.  It could be grown for medical reasons though.

$800k for a house literally on Culver?

good luck with that!

Since when did the law mean anything in Kalifornia?

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Has anybody noticed the significant drop in asking price and sale price of houses in Newport Coast. The high-end is finally catching up with the decline in a very big way.
I am amazed by people who still pay top dollar for the house in Irvine when there is a better product out there.

This is the begining of capitualation from the banks and will lead to capitulation from sellers at the ‘high end’.  Anything North of 800K is hopelessly out of touch in the ‘ask’ pricing.  There just isn’t the income or savings to pay for soooooo much of this stuff. 

This will cause compression of everything lower.  And worst of all???  If you believe that interest rates on a 30 year fixed won’t be double what we have here in the next decade you are delusional… this will kill all real appreciation for as far as we can see…  If rates are this low in 10 years…OMG - the country will still be in near depression.  This will be Japan.  RE worth less 25 years later than it is today. 

My .02

B

A friend of mine put in a $1.6M bid on a short sale over a year ago but BofA rejected it.  A couple months ago they contacted him about his interest now…he re-offered a lower $1.4M and BofA accepted it.

A note fixed to a neighbor’s door said the townhome was going to auction next week. It listed the original NOD date of 8/07. We noticed the lady living there was moving some boxes to her car over the weekend, so maybe this time it’s for real. 3+ years of squatting, though, not bad.

Trying to recall if it was BoA letterhead.

A NOD does not necessary meaning a timely FC.  Do the banks need to file a NOD to keep the non-performing loan active, i.e. to avoiding implied approval of a forgiven loan?  If no NOD were made after x years would the court consider the loan paid or void?

I’ll beleive it when the houses goes to FC.  Remember all the NOD for NPB that have been going on for years with actually FC’ing.

NPB house hunters are different from Irvine house hunters.  RE in NPB is much better looking than Irvine’s RE.  The Irvine HH are generally put more value on the schools and closeness to speciality food shopping.

Government policy makers actually believed they could engineer a bottom ot the housing market through tax incentives, lower interest rates, and relaxed accounting rules.

Dude, you’re always saying stuff like this, but do you really believe it?

I think it was just more “extend and pretend”. The government simply applied the brakes a little bit. Sure, some money was wasted then, but in the long run more money was saved.

Think about the amount of tax revenue lost for the program, then think about how it will have bumped the market up for about 3 years. That’s 3 years of inflation eating away at the debt overhead. That’s real money being saved by the financial institutions. Now, that’s how you do a bailout.

Pisses me off because I want to buy a home, but it was still a good idea from a macroeconomic point of view.

The thing that I’m really dumbfounded on is how so many buyers took the bait in California. I mean spending over 1/2 million dollars for an $8,000 credit? Really? Well, thanks for the bailout I guess.

Here’s an article on strategic default:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/09/19/new-face-foreclosure-strategic-defaults/

And here’s the mortgage industry commenting on the article and basically asking, “How dare borrowers default!?!”:

http://www.housingwire.com/2011/09/20/the-new-slap-in-the-face-of-foreclosure?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+housingwire/uOVI+(HousingWire)

Courageous to forecast home prices in the spring!  Consider this:  the banks built shadow inventory, and did not speed foreclosure.  Conclusion drawn:  they were to be rescued by something that would save them, but what? a) inflation b )population growth c)weak dollar d) incredibly lower interest rates on homes.

And a few other gambits.  All failed to some extent, although these steps did make the collapse a fraction of what it would have been (total chaos and depression, probably).  The FED is not done yet, they are trying STILL to lower rates artificially, and thus, to keep trying the same steps until they work:  the most important is to drop the 30 year rate on mortgages to say, two and a half percent in the spring.  They might succeed, and they might also let investors use the same banking system of fha to buy distressed properties and juice it further.  Not so farfetched, so the real issue for Spring 2012, what’s the 30-year rate going to be when the FED gets done?  Higher? unlikely. Lower?  almost certainly, no matter how ridiculous that sounds.