Tips
Another spring, another dormant season in real estate?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
In 2008 alone, the housing bust wiped out an estimated $2 trillion in home values. But for the first time in a long time, we are finally seeing an upside.
The same falling home prices that wreaked so much havoc in the economy are queuing up as the solution to the bust.
With prices down about 25% from their 2006 peaks, homes and buying incentives are tempting bargain hunters once again. Many economists agree that we’ve seen the bottom of the market and can see a faint but discernible light at the end of the long, dark tunnel. Sale volumes are up in many parts of the country, but prices aren’t.
In early April, the average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage loan dropped under 4.8% to historic lows, according to Freddie Mac, prompting some qualified buyers to buy and others to refinance.
At a spring speech, Harvey Rosenblum, executive vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said the economy will improve markedly in 2010 and should be back on track by 2011. Housing, which led the country into this economic mess, could well lead it out, he said, partially because of the Obama administration’s $75 billion mortgage relief plan.
The stimulus plan, in part, is offering first-time homebuyers a tax credit up to $8,000, plus a refinancing program that gives much-needed help to owners who are struggling with mortgages and incentive to their lenders.
Credit is finally starting to flow again, and prudent families with a reasonable down payment are for the most part getting the go-ahead to buy. Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, noted this spring that falling housing prices are likely to slow heading into the summer months and possibly show improvement, cautioning that “foreclosures are weighing heavily on prices.”
A history lesson
There are some important lessons to learn from the bust, lest we be doomed to repeat our mistakes. In a nutshell, here’s what happened:
Years of robust health in the housing market prompted overinvesting, quick flipping, overbuilding and credit overextension, enabled by cheap financing. Homes began to exceed their brick-and-mortar and land values vastly, and owners started borrowing against hoped-for run-ups in future values. Meanwhile, builders cranked into high gear to accommodate zealous investors and builders.
Caught up in the frothy market, lenders and buyers alike bucked basic risk-management principles by implementing unsustainable mortgage arrangements, zero-down deals and other dubious lending programs, many with upward-adjusting ARMs — adjustable-rate mortgages that would later cut the legs out from under them.
Meanwhile, some financiers read aggressive federal anti-redlining guidelines as a green light to lend to everyone with a pulse. Lenders pushed these and other mortgage risks onto institutional investors the world over via mortgage-backed securities and bonds, which even some of the world’s best financial minds failed to identify as ticking time bombs.
The last wave of investment homes was sold abruptly at big losses, and values started dropping across the board, especially in places such as Florida, California and Nevada. ARMs reset and foreclosures continued to spiral. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of people owed more on their homes than they were worth and had nowhere to turn. Soon, the stock market tanked, the values of retirement plans were slashed and millions of jobs were lost.
The net result: Real estate has been repriced. The rest is history — a history we should not soon forget.
The repricing of home values almost everywhere in the country brings with it a whole new real-estate reality, one that marks a return to some of the real-estate “rules” of the past. It’s a reversion to many tried-and-true fundamentals you should recognize and comprehend:
- Save smart for a down payment. It’s true that tying up all your equity in a mortgage can take away your emergency cash buffer in a downturn. But with the market starting to stabilize, the benefits of a large down payment — from 15% to 20% — will pay off in the form of higher equity, lower payments, better interest rates and more readily available refinancing.
- Borrow within your means. Just because you’re approved by a lender for a specific mortgage amount doesn’t mean you can really afford the home. The wholesale defaults that occurred on tens of thousands of too-lenient loans carry a strong message: Live within your budget. Lenders grew more complacent with underwriting and appraisal standards because double-digit annual price appreciation lulled them into believing their collateral was safe. In their gamble, they abandoned the three C’s of mortgage lending — credit, capacity and collateral — and everyone lost. Until the run-up in values, a safe mortgage on a home was considered no more than three times a buyer’s annual family income. Some old-school traditions need to become new-school traditions.
- Buy for the long term. This isn’t the time to try to make a fast buck in real estate. There’s still some market pain left, and it’s unclear when prices will rebound. If you’re buying this year, plan on staying put for the long haul.
- Your market is unique. National housing trends don’t mean anything. Understand your market’s dynamics, which include the health of the local job market, local foreclosure statistics, price movements, a home’s average time on the sales block, the lack — or abundance — of newly built homes coming upstream and the prices of comparable sales in your specific neighborhood of interest.
- Watch for the pricing warning signs in the next cycle. Continued home-price run-ups year after year should raise a big, bright, red flag in your castle. From 2000 to 2005, U.S. housing prices increased by an average of 53%, with many markets far exceeding that, including California at 109%, Nevada at 94% and Florida at 90%. That party ended abruptly, and nearly everyone suffered a hangover.
This article was written by Steve McLinden for Bankrate.com.
Category : Tips
When you get a raise or accumulate some savings, you may find yourself confronted by an innate instinct of modern civilized men and women.
The desire to spend money.
It begins simply, by going out to restaurants, then accelerates to purchasing clothing, electronic gadgets, and since North Americans have a special fondness for the automobile, you may even buy a “brand new car.”
If you’re married or ambitious, a few months later your thoughts eventually turn toward buying your own home. Or a move-up home, if you are already a homeowner.
Next, you contact a loan officer to get prequalified for a mortgage loan. You state your desired price and how much you can put down. You provide your income and may even supply pay stubs and W2 forms. The loan officer methodically crunches the numbers (by telephone, in person, or even over the internet).
“If only you didn’t have this car payment…”
No Major Purchase of Any Kind
Review the article titled, “Don’t Buy a Car,” and apply it to any major purchase that would create debt of any kind. This includes furniture, appliances, electronic equipment, jewelry, vacations, expensive weddings…
…and automobiles, of course.
Don’t Move Money Around
When a lender reviews your loan package for approval, one of the things they are concerned about is the source of funds for your down payment and closing costs. Most likely, you will be asked to provide statements for the last two or three months on any of your liquid assets. This includes checking accounts, savings accounts, money market funds, certificates of deposit, stock statements, mutual funds, and even your company 401K and retirement accounts.
If you have been moving money between accounts during that time, there may be large deposits and withdrawals in some of them.
The mortgage underwriter (the person who actually approves your loan) will probably require a complete paper trail of all the withdrawals and deposits. You may be required to produce cancelled checks, deposit receipts, and other seemingly inconsequential data, which could get quite tedious.
Perhaps you become exasperated at your lender, but they are only doing their job correctly. To ensure quality control and eliminate potential fraud, it is a requirement on most loans to completely document the source of all funds. Moving your money around, even if you are consolidating your funds to make it “easier,” could make it more difficult for the lender to properly document.
So leave your money where it is until you talk to a loan officer.
Category : Tips
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