Tag Archives: Real Estate Investment

The U.S. economy grew at a disappointing 1.5 percent in the second quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Friday, down from an upwardly revised 2.0 percent growth rate in the first quarter but better than expected. The growth pace is below the 3.0 percent level needed to add jobs to make a dent in the nation’s unemployment rate. Indeed the GDP report covered the same quarter which saw the weakest job growth – 225,000 jobs – since the third quarter of 2010 when the economy grew at a relatively robust 2.5 percent.

First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. (FGMC) announced Thursday that it is making available 203k home rehabilitation loans as part of the Homeowner's Assurance Program (HAP).

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Shaun Donovan and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Commissioner Carol Galante announced in a press conference Friday FHA's program to sell mortgage loan pools to investors. The Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, designed to give homeowners with seriously delinquent loans a chance to avoid foreclosure, is an expansion of an earlier FHA pilot program that allows investors to purchase loan pools headed for foreclosure. Investors are then charged with the task of working to bring the loan out of default. The program starts in September 2012 with a sale of the loan pools.

The June 6 edition of HVF's ""Lessons from the Data"" showed that rent-to-value ratios, also called rental yields, tend to be highest in areas with elastic markets, such as Las Vegas. In areas of the city where the ease of adding new housing keeps home prices low, rental yields in certain neighborhoods climbed to 14 percent or higher. On the other hand, areas with restrained housing markets (like many neighborhoods in the New York metro) see yields lower than 2 percent.

The stigma associated with foreclosure purchases has apparently faded with interest in foreclosures nearly tripling in the past two years, according to a survey released Wednesday by Realtor.com. The survey, conducted over 1,004 phone interviews at the beginning of May, suggested that homebuyer interest in foreclosures has jumped 159 percent since October 2009, when foreclosures made up 29 percent of all home sales. The vast majority of buyers said they would want to live in their foreclosure purchase, with 92.1 percent looking for a home to live in and only 6.9 percent looking for foreclosure investments.

With vacant homes stretching the capacity of banks' balance sheets and homebuyer demand lackluster at best, short sales are becoming a top loss mitigation choice for private lenders and investors, particularly in especially hard-hit markets. According to Barclays Capital, the benefits of pursuing a short sale are compelling for servicers and investors who are able to liquidate delinquent loans in an expedited fashion with fewer payment and interest (P&I) advances and who take ""quasi"" possession of the property in better condition and at better prices than REO, lowering severities.

The Arizona capital of Phoenix was one of the hardest hit markets by the housing crisis, with home values plunging nearly 60 percent from 2006 through mid-2011 and foreclosure filings soaring. One analyst says it wasn't too long ago that Phoenix was considered ground zero of the housing market's collapse, but now, it's on a path to recovery that's considerably outpaced other distressed markets. So what's going on in the Valley of the Sun that's strong enough to lift the nation's sixth most populous city from the depths of the downturn?

Ally Financial has agreed to extend the maturity of its secured debt facility with its wholly owned mortgage subsidiary Residential Capital LLC (ResCap). Shortly following the announcement, Fitch Ratings issued a research note on the action, saying that Ally's decision is in line with the agency's expectation of continued moderate support to ResCap from its parent company. That moderate support, however, may be short-lived. With the debt renewal only extended through mid-May, Ally may be planning for a bankruptcy resolution in the near future.

Nineteen members of California's congressional delegation want to keep Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's ""for rent"" signs outside their state's borders. Led by Congressman Gary Miller, the group sent a letter to Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, petitioning him to exclude the 600 homes in California slated for the pilot program of the REO Initiative, which aims to sell off homes repossessed by the GSEs and FHA to institutional investors who will turn the properties into rental homes.

According to the March 2012 Fannie Mae National Housing Survey, 48 percent of Americans who responded expect rental prices to increase, and the expectation is that they will go up by 4.1 percent over the next 12 months, the biggest projected increase recorded to date. Also, 33 percent of respondents expect home prices to increase over the next 12 months. Americans project home prices will go up by 0.9 percent over the same time period. If respondents were going to move, 66 percent say they would buy a home.