Zillow Advice: Home Buying - Sacramento as a case study

Jal74, You have the ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:15:00 GMT

Jal74,

You have the site where I can view that data?

java gremlins The answer ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:22:00 GMT

java gremlins

The answer for May is out. Listings are down considerably from trend again. The May report shows only 2,300 new listings. On the flip side, REO sales accounted for 1,084 out of a total of 1,654 sales = 65% of sales. Ouch. Inventory is down to 4.8 months of sales however, which is a good stat

Regards

The

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:19:00 GMT

The

Ann

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:19:00 GMT

Ann

I would wait for more data ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:19:00 GMT

I would wait for more data to try and predict anything. Might be a lot of noise in the one month. For example, new listings were way off trend

Feb 2008 - 2,948

Mar 2008 - 3,379

April 2008 - 2,262

The question is was this an aberration. Will those listings expected in April show up in May? If so, you would be way too early calling bottom

It is too early to tell, ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:06:00 GMT

It is too early to tell, but you can't deny it could be a start to the bottom in Sac. Just have to see how the buying holds up.

FHA loans are great, but ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:54:00 GMT

FHA loans are great, but are pretty hard to qualify for. The reason most of these troubled borrowers went to the more exotic products was that they did not qualify for FHA loans. And even if they do qualify now, they need a 3% equity cushion minimum based on a conservative FHA appraisal -- if they bought from 2004 forward, there is no chance of that.

The idea that fha refis could stop 10 to 20% of pending foreclosures is wildly optimistic.

they are calling the bottom ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:42:00 GMT

they are calling the bottom in phoenix for similar reasons: prices have already dropped alot, inventory has dropped a little over the last few months, sales have come up alot...

nevertheless, foreclosurse and NTR (90 day before foreclosure) keep climging. today alone, 400 more people got their 90 day late notice, that may be a one day record. So the question remains, is this a temporary spring/ "honey look how much the price dropped" buying boom, that will fade in another month or two? or is it sustained buying that will last for years? It is JUST ENOUGH buying to keep the foreclosure from piling up on top of each other, and I'm not seeing any evidence that foreclosures will slow down any time soon, if the buying fades into fall, which it commonly does, the market will become identifiably worse very quickly.

I agree, not everyone will ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:21:00 GMT

I agree, not everyone will be able to refinance, but some will, and some already did, even if its' only 10-20% of all the pending foreclosures, it will slow down the decline.

don't forget about the new ...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:09:00 GMT

don't forget about the new FHA loans, the loan limit was increased to over 700k with only 3% down and with poor credit history. many of the people who face the coming ARM reset will be able to refinance.

Not many will be able to refinance when they are more than 20% underwater on their LTV. If they could have refinanced they would have already. In addition, FHA has adopted a second appraisal requirement for houses in declining areas.

Outside of california and the washington DC area there are only a few counties (131) that qualify under the FHA guidelines for over 417K (this is out of a total of over 3,000 counties) and only 102 counties in total (including CA and wash DC - over half btw) that have loan limits over $550,000

I would beg to differ on refincings helping any at this point