| By Dennis Norman,on October 17th,2011 Today U.S. News Media Group unveiled The 10 Best Places to Retire in 2012 with top locations in 10 key categories that are most often considered as key factors by people when choosing where to retire. Many of the categories focus on how to achieve the retirement lifestyle you want on a fixed income,such as the best place for water views on a budget (Traverse City,Mich.),an affordable mountain town for retirees (Boone,N.C.),and the best place to find affordable housing (Port Charlotte,Fla.). [...] By News Desk,on July 27th,2011 David B. Fein,United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut,announced that ANNA McELANEY,40,of Norwalk,was sentenced earlier this week by United States District Judge Janet C. Hall in Bridgeport to eight months of imprisonment,followed by three years of supervised release,the first six months of which McELANEY must spend [...] By Dennis Norman,on July 22nd,2011 Radarlogic,real estate data and analytics company that frequently disagrees with the National Association of REALTORS® view of the housing market,released their RPX Monthly Housing Market Report for May 2011 yesterday and in it had a scorecard showing how their rather bleak predictions they made at the end of 2010 for the 2011 [...] By Dennis Norman,on April 22nd,2011 A “first-look”report issued by Lender Processing Services,one of the countries largest loan servicers and aggregators of loan performance data,is somewhat encouraging as it shows the U.S. mortgage delinquency rate (not including foreclosures) for March 2011 was 7.78 percent which is a decrease of 11.6 percent from the month before and a [...] By Dennis Norman,on December 13th,2010 A report released this morning by CoreLogic shows negative equity declined in third quarter of 2010 for residential properties,marking the third-consecutive quarterly decline. The CoreLogic reports that 10.8 million,or 22.5 percent,of all residential properties with mortgages were in negative equity at the end of the third quarter of 2010,down from [...] By Dennis Norman,on December 2nd,2010 According to a report released by RealtyTrac,foreclosure homes accounted for 25 percent of all U.S. residential sales in the third quarter of 2010 and that the average sales price of properties that sold while in some stage of foreclosure was more than 32 percent below the average sales price of properties not in [...] By Dennis Norman,on October 25th,2010 Dennis Norman The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development today released their “October 2010 Scorecard”on the “Obama Administration’s Efforts to Stabilize the Housing Market”. The scorecard points out the success of “The President’s housing market recovery efforts”but does point out that “data in the scorecard [...] By Dennis Norman,on October 18th,2010 Dennis Norman According to a report just released by RealtyTrac® foreclosures increased in the third quarter of 2010,although with a slowing rate of increase. There were 930,437 foreclosure filings in the third quarter,up almost 4 percent from the 2nd quarter but up only 1 percent from the year before. One in every [...] By Dennis Norman,on September 17th,2010 Dennis Norman A report by CoreLogic cautions that recent data showing improvements in negative equity,serious mortgage delinquency and a decrease in market share of short-sales,has been distorted as a result of the short-term boost in the “non-distressed”housing market by the homebuyer tax credit program,which recently ended. [...] By Daniel Manzano,on September 9th,2010 Daniel Manzano Many of us Real Estate industry professionals know that a Short Sale transaction can take months for it to be approved and closed. Nevertheless,we have had Short Sale approvals in less than 10 days. But,the reality is that Short Sales usually take three to four times as much as a [...] By Dennis Norman,on August 10th,2010 Dennis Norman A report just released by CoreLogic estimate the financial impact of short-sale fraud to be $310 million annually. It is estimated there is fraud in one in every 53 short sale transactions resulting in an unnecessary loss to the lender of $41,000 per transaction on average. [...] By Dennis Norman,on June 30th,2010 Dennis Norman Average discount on Foreclosure and Bank-Owned Homes is 27 Percent This morning RealtyTrac released a report stating that 31 percent of all residential sales in the first quarter of 2010 were foreclosure homes or bank-owned homes. They are reporting 233,000 foreclosure and bank-owned homes sold during first quarter 2010 at an average [...] By Dennis Norman,on June 8th,2010 Dennis Norman I don’t think I need to tell real estate investors about the record foreclosure rates we have seen as well as the unprecedented number of people that are struggling to make their house payments. As a result,there are many good opportunities out there for real estate investors to acquire property at [...] By Dennis Norman,on June 1st,2010 UPDATE- June 2,2010:The National Association of REALTORS obtained answers from the Treasury Department on 3 common questions about HAFA: agents are not permitted to rebate a portion of their commission to the buyer,sellers who are real estate agents must list their home for sale with another broker,not their own broker,and [...] By Dennis Norman,on March 29th,2010 Over 11 million homeowners in the US have Negative Equity Dennis Norman According to a report released by First American CoreLogic estimating that the typical U.S. homeowner whis is currently in a negative equity position will not see positive equity in their homes until late 2015 to 2016. Furthermore,in some depressed markets,the [...] By Dennis Norman,on March 26th,2010 Dennis Norman Back in early December I did a post on a different blog about a new program that was announced in November,the Home Affordable Foreclosures Alternative (HAFA) Program which is scheduled to go into effect April 5,2010. HAFA is a program to help provide alternatives to homeowners that are facing foreclosure. [...] By Dennis Norman,on October 6th,2009 Dennis Norman Many investors see short-sales and foreclosures as opportunities to make money in this challenging real estate market. If you are one of them,or agree,rest assured,there are plenty more “opportunities”coming. According to a report just released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency,the number of short sales and foreclosures continue to [...] By Dennis Norman,on September 22nd,2009 Dennis Norman I was at a real estate industry function last night and,while talking with Dave,a commercial real estate broker,an interesting topic came up. We were discussing the residential market and potential buying opportunities,concerns about an oversupply of rental property,etc. Dave then asked if I thought sale-leasebacks would be a good [...] By Dennis Norman,on September 3rd,2009 Dennis Norman I have written a couple of previous posts about a practice that has gained popularity over the past couple of years:the use of an option contract to “buy”a property on a short sale and,assuming the investorcan find a buyer, flipping the property to a new buyer on the same day the [...] By Dennis Norman,on July 2nd,2009 Dennis Norman By:Dennis Norman This past Monday I did a post on short sales where I addressed the use of option contracts by investors on short sales. Since then I have spent a lot of time discussing and researching this approach to short sales. I always try to keep an open mind when [...] By Dennis Norman,on June 30th,2009 By:Dennis Norman Today the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Office of the Thrift Supervision (OTS) released their mortgage metrics report for 1st quarter 2009. The report shows foreclosures continued to increase during the first quarter of this year. However the report also shows a significant increase in short-sales which [...] By Dennis Norman,on June 29th,2009 Dennis Norman By:Dennis Norman A recent study shows that 20% of homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. This,coupled with the challenged market we have been in the last year and a half or so,has led to a record number of “short-sales”. A short-sale is something that was [...] | |