Walk Away From Your Mortgage – Roger Lowenstein – New York Times
Roger Lowenstein has published an excellent piece in today’s New York Times regarding strategic defaults – other wise known as walking away from your property. The Mortgage Bankers of America of course don’t want you to do that….neither does Wall Street or the Obama Administration. But when Wall Street or businesses make a bad deal, they walk or flush the company. It’s no big deal. It happens all the time.
I am seeing more and more information about strategic default. This could become a REAL problem if this starts to gain more traction. Although that said, in conversations I’ve had with others recently, the government is doing so much to try to manipulate the market from loan modifications to holding interest rates artificially low – that no one really knows what the market should actually look like.
I suspect we’d be out of this mess in a couple of years if they just let the market work. I’m sure there are others who say that if we just let the market work, it would collapse everything else in the economy as housing crashed. I don’t know. I’ll leave that to the smart people to figure out.
Here are a couple of other entries I made on strategic default – here and here.
Case-Shiller Home Price Index – Twin Cities Declines 8.4% Year over Year
The S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index was just released moments ago for October 2009 home sales data. The Twin Cities is showing a year over year decline of 8.4%. The over all 20 city composite is down 7.3%.
Click here for the press release from S&P.
Case-Shiller Home Price Index Reports Tomorrow
The much anticipated Case-Shiller Home Price Index will be released tomorrow morning. I’m expecting we’ll see surprisingly good news with regard to the improvement in the numbers. Overall home prices will likely still be negative compared to one year ago, but the intensity of the decline should be lessening. I’ll have more on this tomorrow.
Morgan Stanley Strategic Default Commercial Buildings – Billion Dollar Loss to Investor?
There has been much discussion about strategic default….that is people strategically walking away from their homes because they believe it’s in their best financial interest to do so. The banks of course, don’t want you to do that. That said, business does this all the time and even the top Wall Street firms do this as well.
Check out Denninger’s piece at Market-Ticker.
$7.7 Million Development Project Moves Forward in Brooklyn Park, MN
We don’t see this very often these days, but there is some commercial development going on in the Twin Cities. According to this Finance & Commerce story, the Beard Group announced that they are moving ahead with a $7.7 million retail development in part because they have a commitment from HCMC to lease half the space.
Twin Cities Real Estate Market Update – Week of December 14, 2009
From the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors:
Weekly Market Activity Report
The post-Thanksgiving bump is in effect for the Twin Cities housing market. The week ending December 5 saw pending sales swing upward from the previous week by 152 to settle at 551. This is 7.7 percent less than last year at this time, marking the third week of the last four to post pending sales numbers lower than a year ago. The aftermath of the tax credit’s initial expiration date is combining with the typical holiday slowdown to bring sales down.
Two other important metrics:
Months Supply of Inventory – At 5.7, this is the lowest MSI in more than two years and a full 32.9 percent below last year. This bodes well for sellers in general, but the higher price ranges are still buyer’s markets.
Housing Affordability Index – At 207 and improving, this is welcome news. This means that the average family income in the Twin Cities region is 207 percent of what it takes to qualify to purchase the median priced home.
Click here for the full report.
Wild Meadows, Medina, MN
Okay, this is more than a little self serving, but for anyone who tries to do some business on the internet, it’s always fun to find out that you’re on the first page.
Here’s a Google search for Wild Meadows. My information site is (at least at the time of this search) showing up as the very last entry on page one. My Wild Meadows information site is Wild Meadows Home Info.
If you’d specifically like to stay up on Wild Meadows, then please do sign up for that search. It’s free and there’s no obligation. If you’d like to look for distressed sales and foreclosures in Medina, then sign up for this site at Medina Distress Sales.
Avoid Foreclosure in Minnesota – Know Your Options – www.JohnMurphyHelps.com
Find out more what your options might be if you’re upside down on your mortgage and facing the possibility of foreclosure. Visit my site dedicated to helping homeowners in financial distress – John Murphy Helps.
Foxberry Farms Home Sales Update – December 2009
Home prices in Foxberry Farms continue to slide from their peak in 2005. Foxberry has typically seen the average home sales price in the $700,000’s but this year is the first years since the early days of the development that average home prices are now under $600,000. That doesn’t mean that homes can’t sell in the $700,000’s, but it makes it a lot more difficult given where the buyer activity is these days.
There remains stiff competition from newer developments including Bridgewater in Medina, as well as Prominence Creek in Maple Grove, and Taryn Hills in Plymouth. Pulte will soon be launching 70 new housing units in Plymouth starting in March 2010. The competition is endless.
Foxberry Farms Home Sales - Medina, MNFoxberry Farms Sales by Finished Square Feet - Medina, MN
Foreclosure Prevention Works
Foreclosure prevention works….this blog post came to me from the Ed over at the Minnesota Home Ownership Center. There is a link to a Washington Post story that articulates how homeowners are benefiting from working with a counselor to help them with their loan modifications in order to possibly prevent foreclosure.
If you are unable to get a modification approved, one of the other ways you can avoid foreclosure is to pursue a short sale. There is no guarantee the short sale will be approved, but from everything we’re hearing, the banks are likely to start moving more aggressively in this direction to do a better job of approving them.
Visit John Murphy Helps for more information.
