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The averal lot in our area here runs between $38,000 to $150,000 & that's for 100 x 100 if you are lucky to find one & then you have those who are Developlers and you must Build on there site......to there spects. New Housing Developments going up all over here ......Jobs .....If you want work .....there work here.....
Even as housing markets throughout the country soften, many Americans believe their homes are retaining -- and even gaining -- value. According to a recent survey conducted by The Boston Consulting Group, homeowners are nearly as optimistic now about the rising value of their homes as they were at this time last year.
"Americans believe their homes are still their best investment
The home-loan industry, facing the worst housing downturn since the early 1990s, is ramping up efforts to help strapped borrowers stay in their homes.
The goal is to restrain a gathering wave of foreclosures that carries big costs for both lenders and borrowers.
This rescue effort isn't expected to save every at-risk homeowner. But it promises to reduce monthly payments for many who have fallen behind on mortgages. In the process, it could help to stabilize a struggling real estate market.
So far the housing slump, precipitated in part by overzealous borrowing and subprime lending, continues its downward slope. In discouraging news for homeowners and homesellers nationally, a report Tuesday showed "the deceleration and declines in home prices are showing no signs of turnaround." Citing February data, Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller index of housing prices in 10 cities posted a 1.5 percent drop from February 2006 – an annual decline not seen in 15 years.
That news follows hard on a revised 2007 price forecast by the National Association of Realtors. NAR said this month it no longer expects the median price of an existing home to rise this year, predicting instead a 0.7 percent decline. The slower recovery, it said, is a result of "tighter lending criteria and fallout from the subprime loan debacle."
Some lenders offer to refinance
Impelled by financial and political pressures to try to curtail foreclosures, lenders are taking action on several fronts:
• Fannie Mae, America's leading mortgage lender, says it plans to help as many as 1.5 million "subprime" borrowers – people with low credit ratings – refinance out of high-interest loans.
• Freddie Mac, which like Fannie Mae is a government-backed corporation, is creating new products to make homes more affordable to buyers with poor credit. Freddie Mac doesn't make loans directly but pledges to buy as much as $20 billion worth of these mortgages from participating lenders.
• Washington Mutual, another giant lender, says it will refinance $2 billion in subprime loans, helping borrowers avoid foreclosure. The new loans will come with below-market interest rates.
• Some finance companies are partnering with nonprofit organizations that act as advocates for at-risk borrowers.
• In addition to efforts by specific companies, the Mortgage Bankers Association announced a foreclosure-prevention campaign in partnership with the nonprofit group NeighborWorks America. They will link homeowners to a free counseling hotline (888-995-HOPE) provided by the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, boost the capacity for homeownership counseling within NeighborWorks, and conduct a national ad campaign for homeowners in financial distress.
All of this represents significant relief, but the magnitude of the problem is large and growing.
"We're struggling to provide help" to troubled borrowers, says Robert Pulster, who heads a Boston nonprofit group called Ensuring Stability through Action in our Community. "We're seeing double the problem that we were seeing last year."
The lenders themselves are careful not to overstate what the new projects can achieve. "While these efforts will help cushion the expected rise in foreclosures, we need to be clear that these offerings are not a panacea," said Richard Syron, chief executive of Freddie Mac, as he unveiled the new products at a congressional hearing April 17.
Even when the economy and the housing market are strong, some borrowers run into financial difficulty because of events such as job loss, divorce, or illness.
Over the past year, two other factors have driven the rise in past-due loans and foreclosure filings.
One is known as "payment shock," when adjustable-rate loans reset sharply upward. Lenders in recent years failed to consider whether the borrowers will be able to afford their loans once initial "teaser" rates adjust, critics charge.
The other is simply that a decade-long housing boom stalled out. Some who bought homes near the market peak – often with no down payment – owe more than the house is now worth. So selling it offers no sure escape route from foreclosure.
But foreclosure is costly for lenders, chewing up tens of thousands of dollars in missing loan payments, home-sale expenses, and property maintenance. If foreclosures are concentrated in a community and drag down home values, that's bad for lenders' business prospects.
Politicians have been prodding lenders to help at-risk homeowners. In congressional hearings, Democrats have bashed the mortgage industry for helping to create the problem. Nonprofit organizations have added to the pressure.
Rita Askew, safe at home
Rita Askew of Evanston, Ill., is one borrower who remains in her red-brick townhouse thanks to help from her lender and community groups.
Her husband, the family breadwinner, had to leave his school-maintenance job for several months last year because of an accident. "I probably would have been selling my house," Mrs. Askew says, if the National Training and Information Center (NTIC) hadn't stepped up for her.
NTIC helped win a loan-modification accord that cut the monthly payment from $1,668 to $1,117. The interest rate dropped from 10.6 percent to 6.0 percent.
Several major lenders, including Ocwen Financial Corp., CitiFinancial, and Select Portfolio Servicing Inc., have agreed to partner with NTIC to negotiate "workout" deals when possible for troubled loans.
But for people who face difficulty paying their mortgages, the choices can narrow quickly if the loans go unpaid for a month or more.
Borrowers can seek a traditional refinance deal with any lender. They can seek temporary forbearance or a loan modification deal. Some can successfully sue the lender, showing that the original loan process violated state or federal laws. Or they can try to sell the home, perhaps talking the lender into accepting proceeds that fall short of the loan balance due.
Housing advocates say to beware of "rescue" scams, outfits that charge big fees and then fail to help people stay in their homes.
What do they know > it all depends on where you live > Possibly the biggest real-estate news of the week came from the National Association of Realtors -- and it wasn't good. The trade group reported that U.S. home prices will likely fall 0.7% this year, the first nationwide drop in at least 38 years.
"People across all income brackets are having financial hardship."
hi novo, good evening.
i have it.
Hey Mick...Take a look at the chart for the Real Estate iShares ETF...
Here's the link:
http://usmarket.seekingalpha.com/article/26659
(Hope you're doing well. ;)
Interest Rates
Type Current APR
30 yr fixed mtg 5.85% 6.03%
5/1 ARM 5.61% 6.98%
60 month new car loan 6.93% 0.00%
1 yr CD 4.85% 4.96%
$30K home equity loan 8.33% 0.00%
Punxsutawney Phil, America's esteemed groundhog, predicted on Friday that we'd have an early spring this year. And spring traditionally signals the beginning of home buying season.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Sales of new homes rose 4.8% in December and prices climbed 1.2% as the number of homes on the market decreased, but for the year, the Commerce Department said 1.061 million new homes were sold, down 17.3% from 2005.
While Friday's report showed some firming in the weakened housing sector in December. The year's drop was the biggest in 16 years and the first annual decline after a five-year rally.
In December, sales of new single-family homes rose to a 1.120 million unit annual rate after climbing sharply the previous month. The department revised November 's sales pace up to a 1.069 million pace from an originally reported 1.047 million unit rate.
While those increases were better than expected, analysts cautioned that they were influenced by unusually warm weather in those two months.
The number of new homes on the market at the end of December fell to 537,000 from 542,000 a month earlier. At the current sales pace, that represented 5.9 months' supply.
The median home price — half sold for more, half for less — rose to $235,000 in December from a downwardly revised $232,200 in November, the Commerce Department said.
New-home sales in December rose 27.3% in the Northeast, 26.6% in the Midwest and 0.3% in the South. In the West, sales fell 4.4%.
The Commerce Department's latest take on the housing market adds to data released a day earlier that showed a 0.8% decline in December sales of existing homes, which represent 85% of the housing market.
According to that National Association of Realtors, existing home sales dropped 8.4% in 2006, sharpest decline since 1989, when they fell 14.8%.
Depends on the area > Areas where there are University's will continue the Grow > Around DC > MD > VA >DE & near by
WASHINGTON -- U.S. home builders are slightly more optimistic about the housing market and are "starting to see that the worst is behind them," the National Association of Home Builders reported Wednesday
New construction on homes in the United States rose for the second straight month in December, reflecting year-end strength in apartment construction, the Commerce Department estimated Thursday
A $58 million estate in Alpine, N.J., was the most expensive home sale in the U.S. in 2006
NEW YORK (Reuters) — Mortgage applications fell last week, reflecting a drop in demand for home purchase loans, as interest rates climbed, an industry trade group said Wednesday.
The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and purchasing loans, for the week ended Jan. 12 decreased 0.6% to 667.2.
However, the four-week moving average of mortgage applications rose 0.8%.
excerpt for two gov't ___ us gov't and da feds.
The US gov and the Fed are 2 separate entities. The US Gov can only
borrow money and always has to repay it with interests.
Second most of the inflation comes from the debt creation currently.
None of this means that the Fed cannot create money out of nothing.
The question is what they do with it. They can lend money (buy bonds)
that they create out of nothing, as in the fractional reserve lending
system, but then banks have to repay it and when they do, this money
disappears. I think this is your point.
Now in case of deflation, where a chain of defaults takes place. If a
bank defaults on the money lent by the Feds, the money lent stays in
the system and the Feds are never repaid. Further to avoid this, the
Fed can make emergency loans to the bank. For the bank this is not a
loan to consume or to satisfy customers who want to buy houses, but a
loan to stay alive. The availability of this kind of loan would make
it difficult for many banks to go bankrupt as they did in 1929.
Through this the Fed can probably at least limit the damages of
deflation if things come to the worse. The Feds can also lend money to
the gov, and though people don't like deficits, there may not be much
choice in a Depression.
What the Fed cannot do is force people to consume. They can foster
enough debt creation to make it easy for them to do so, but if the
psychology reverses, this control may not be enough. This is why I
think there may be phases of deflation.
The influence of foreign central banks is also interesting. I read
that the trade deficit protects the US from inflation, because the US
can export deflation in the same way it exported inflation for some
time. i.e. if the consumers stop to buy, anyway things are not made
here, so China (and the others) would suffer (at least a part of the
problem). Of course the reverse argument is that if the Chinese
government sees this demand go away and decide to spend its
(remaining) surplus internally to foster internal demand instead of
subsiding the US, then the interest rates in the US might go up,
causing for deflation not less. They prolong the credit cycle by
buying dollars but may make the end worse when they stop to do that.
This is the critical inflexion which is not there yet.
hi opida, good afternnon to all.
Mortgage rates edged up in Freddie Mac's weekly survey released on Thursday, the fourth increase in five weeks, lifted by a strong December employment report, the company's chief economist said
Realtors launch $40 million ad campaign to boost home sales
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The National Association of Realtors is launching a $40 million advertising campaign to encourage Americans to buy houses
Investment Proterty >
Now is a Good Time to Invest in Real Eastate if you have the extra Dollars > Rates are @ a Low & the right investment proterty will pay for itself > gotta get the right location > Go shopping as they say >>>> Both for Locations & for Interest rates
:)
The Federal Reserve Banks that Loan Money @ interest to Banks so they can Loan Money to the public >
The 12 Banks are Located in
Boston > 1 & A
New York > 2 & B
Philadelphia > 3 & C
Cleveland > 4 & D
Richmond > 5 & E
Atlanta > 6 & F
Chicago > 7 & G
St. Louis > 8 & H
Minneapolis > 9 & I
Kansas City > 10 & K
Dallas > 11 & L
San Francisco > 12 & M
Check your Dollar Bills
Top 10 'value' towns for retirees
Geographer ranks the best areas for seniors seeking low cost of living
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Hot Springs, Ark., has enjoyed popularity as a spa resort, but its low cost of living also makes it of particular interest for retirees, according to geographer Warren Bland. The Arkansas town is No. 1 on Bland's list of the top 10 value towns for retirees in 2007.
Below is Bland's list of top value towns, from the least to most expensive:
Hot Springs, Ark.
Winston-Salem, N. C.
Fayetteville, Ark.
Bowling Green, Ky.
Lawrence, Kan.
Columbia, Mo.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Gainesville, Fla.
San Antonio, Texas
Colorado Springs, Colo
Shifting into reverse
Five questions to ask when considering a reverse mortgage
Those considering a reverse mortgage should ask themselves five questions:
Is downsizing a better option? As part of their due diligence, homeowners should seriously look at selling and moving as a way to tap home's equity. Those who do will sometimes realize they could get more for their home than they thought or that another living situation is more attractive. Or, they realize their best option is to stay in the current home.
How long do you plan to stay in the house? A reverse mortgage doesn't make sense, for example, for someone planning on moving two years in the future.
What are your financial needs and how would a reverse mortgage help you? If the mortgage is being considered to supplement a rainy day fund, it might be best to consider a line of credit that can be tapped when it is needed, Mahoney said. If money is needed for a shorter period of time, maybe a home equity loan is a better choice.
How much could you get from a reverse mortgage? Financial Freedom's Web site offers a calculator to help: http://www.financialfreedom.com/calculator/Input_new.asp.
When do you need the loan? In addition to waiting for less expensive products in the pipeline, remember that homeowners are eligible for more money the older they are and the more their house is worth.
me again bob, you placed well said comments. i'm happy to see them in the ibox for all to read.
To 'mick' on 'SONS and DAUGHTERS of BBCMF THE RUSH TO INVEST
in LAND and REAL ESTATE.' -
RE: land , your home____you never really own it. ya pay taxes on it or the local, state, gov't takes it back and sells it or eminent domain takes it.
we die more taxes to be paid on these properties. if no one is living in the family then the gov't owns it.
so all and all we really never own our property. it all owned by the government at our departed end of life.
maybe you can do this message at the land , real estate one and we can refer it to a message to be read about the shrinking dollar.
thanks my friend -
your message is correct - you newer own the land -
you buy it - but you only have the right to improve -
upon the land -
you make improvements - ex. built a house -
your improvements will be up to a new assessment of your land -
and the taxes will be higher -
if you can't make the tax payments -
the uncle sam - takes the land back -
you lose the land -
Ex. you may have forgot payments of the taxes or was sick,
or in another country and forgot your taxes -
you may lose your land -
you never own it -
only have the right to improve upon it -
all improvements become more taxes to pay -
so I do prefer to invest in companies with the richest land
I can find to the best price - my best bet is -
FMNJ - FY2pennies worth dd... the worlds largest and richest -
Silver Mine - Cerro Rico Inca - Au & Ag --
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=5406
btw. the companies are made up - forever -
in princip as a person who never die -
still the stocks are much more easy to sell for a market price -
vs. land - is often more complicated and often takes much more
time to sell for the right market price value -
Happy New Year
hi bob, good moning. i answered you about the shrinking dollar and some of my thoughts about.
your message is a great one for the once almighty dollar valuation.
answer____
01/02/2007____say i have your message and the shrinking dollar chart is very accurate.
land , your home____you never really own it. ya pay taxes on it or the local, state, gov't takes it back and sells it or eminent domain takes it.
we die more taxes to be paid on these properties. if no one is living in the family then the gov't owns it.
so all and all we really never own our property. it all owned by the government at our departed end of life.
maybe you can do this message at the land , real estate one and we can refer it to a message to be read about the shrinking dollar.
we said my friend.
hi opida, good morning and to all our freinds and readers have a very nice day.
Palm Harbor > Nasdaq < PHHM >
Fleetwood > NYSE < FLE >
Champion Homes > NYSE < CHB >
Cavco > Nasdaq < CVCO >
i'm starting here for state by state real estate interest.
this will be in the ibox.
START HERE FOR REAL ESTATE PRIVATE HOME___COMMERICAL___RESORT AREAS.
ARKANSAS
1/01/2007_____I Found This To Be Interesting by IBCX MGMT.
_____http://www.pbcommercial.com/articles/2006/12/07/news/news1.txt
_____http://www.pbcommercial.com/
hi opida, you surely been hitting a few here for us.
Refinancing will increase in 2007 for those who do not have a fixed rate & took out mortages two years ago.
It was a week of surprising -- and mostly good -- news for the housing market.
On Thursday, the National Association of Realtors reported that existing-home sales rose 0.6% in November. Inventories of unsold homes fell 1%, the group reported.
The day before, it was the Commerce Department with news that sales of new homes rose 3.4% in November. Sales figures for October were also revised upward. Moreover, the median sales price for new homes rose to $251,700, up from the $248,500 reported in October.
Some industry observers read the trends as encouraging for housing.
Mortgage Demand Rises As Rates Fall > Refinancing Surges
NEW YORK — Mortgage applications rose sharply last week, as the lowest interest rates in more than a year prompted a surge in demand for refinancing, an industry trade group said Wednesday.
The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, including refinancing and home-purchase loans, rose 8.1% to 647.6 the week ended Dec. 1 from the previous week's 599.
Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 5.98%, down 0.15 percentage point from the previous week, lowest since the week ended Oct. 7, 2005, when it stood at the same level. Interest rates were also below year-ago levels of 6.32%.
Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital in New York, said the mortgage bankers' indexes tend to be volatile but lower rates have enticed consumers, which will benefit the U.S. housing market.
"The decline in mortgage rates and the slowing in home price appreciation, along with the buildup in inventories, has led to a much better situation for home buyers through increased affordability as well as more inventory to choose from," he said. "Households are saying on surveys that home buying conditions have improved notably, and that has coincided with the stabilization in home sales."
Fueling the rise in mortgage applications last week was a 13.7% jump in the MBA's seasonally adjusted index of refinancing.
The refinance share of requests rose to 50.1% from 46.9% the week before, highest since April 2004.
Info came from the > Reports including the Chicago purchasing managers' index, consumer confidence, jobless claims and help-wanted advertising this week & others
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