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Friday, July 31, 2009
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31 comments:
Manassas has a starry-eyed flipper:
http://franklymls.com/MN7122447
Went U/C after 4 days at $395K in March as REO. Back on market at $395K in May, U/C in 4 days again. Looks like new laminate flooring, some new paint/light fixtures, and a professional stager. Will be interesting to see what happens to it. Nothing around $500K has sold in Manassas since January.
Tabitha did you mean to say Manassas City. There are areas with a mailing address of Manassas that are actually in PW, ie 20111 and 20112 with quiet a few of them U/C. I can toot a little bit about Bear Creek because they are actually closing. Have you noticed none of those Ellis places U/C have closed? I'm not so sure Manassas City had that many houses over 500 before the bubble burst. Not very much newer housing was built within city limits.
I didn't know the WaPo had a map of foreclosure auctions since 2007 by zip code!
Maybe everyone else had already found this. You can get actual numbers by zip too.
Cara, I saw that map in the paper, but did not know there was an interactive online version. Such fun!
Arkey, I meant the city of Manassas. You're right--there were never that many >$500K houses, but the number has been shrinking:
>$500K sold/available 20110
0-14 5/08
0-13 6/08
0-10 7/08
0-9 8/08
0-9 9/08
0-7 10/08
0-6 11/08
0-4 12/08
1-3 1/09
0-4 2/09
0-3 3/09
0-2 4/09
0-2 5/09
0-3 6/09
Our zip isn't doing much better:
20111
1-32
2-29
2-26
3-23
0-18
0-16
3-12
0-12
0-12
1-14
0-13
0-20
1-21
0-17
Tabitha..we have 3 in BC..1 closed 7/8..the second I'm sure closed this week because it looks like people are moving in and the one on Chinpakin..all U/C/closed well above 500.
WAPO..I don't know..right on front they say 20111 woodbridge has the highest amount of foreclosure..man..that just aint cool..if you look at the real Woodbridge zips, 20191,92,93..you can see they have about 6500..NOT 20111 around 1200..those are still the TH and Condos in MP and PW..low end stuff they are setting aside if you catch my drift.
Tabitha..I forgot to mention Ellis..they have at least 5 or 6 U/C..not closed for sure..if ever..SS and Foreclosures..River Road has had 2 close, too over 500, 510 and 515..Davis Ford closed for 510 altho its considered 112, its actually about a mile from the house. I agree these U/C's aren't closing but around me or in my area within a mile they are. 7005 closed 7/8 and its still not recorded
Very cool map, Cara. Not being as close to the data as some of you already were, I was surprised by several things. Did everyone see that Fairfax is now the highest line and trending upward? and Alexandria City has a lot more foreclosures per zip than most Arlington zips, where fs. are more concentrated in 2 zips.
woops, should have said "auctions."
Ace,
Yeah I think "greater alexandria" is getting whacked. That would be my guess for the source of the upward trend in FFX overall.
yeah, Arlington is basically clean as a whistle outside of two zip codes. And this is the data up through June 2009!
Cara-
My answer to your question about people taking FHA loans is that I think most normal people will take the higher priced offer, figuring the worst case the FHA doesn't go through and they can get a different offer pretty quickly.
Most flippers will not take these loans though for two reasons. One is that the process is slow and likely to fail(time is money for these guys. They are paying a mortgage and no one is living there). The other reason is FHA is known for having lower appraisers so they do not think the house will appraise for the bid and the buyer will ask for a lower price.
We put a bid on a house owned by a flipper and the highest bids were all FHA he ignored these bids and was going to take our bid, but then someone came in a little lower than our bid who didn't need financing so he took this offer instead.
Actually, I think they distinguish between the real alexandria versus the fairfax county portion (which is in fairfax county count).
The one thing I wish they did was account for density of various zips - most of those close to the city have many more houses per zip than those outside of fairfax. Thus 100 foreclosures in a zipcode of 10,000 houses is not the same as 100 foreclosures in a zip of 2000 houses.
CRT, agreed. One also has to mentally factor in the proportion of condos vs. SFHs, which can vary a lot from one zip to the next.
Ace, I agree..in PW..20112 are for the most part nice SFH and 20111 altho there are more they are old pre 1950 houses, T.Houses and junk. It really rankles that they can't interpret their own work/chart. 20111 IS NOT Woodbridge. WAPO wonders why nobody pays .75 for thier paper..DUH!..maybe they need to re-hire some copy editors.
CRT,
Yes that's what I meant... The "greater Alexandria" part of FFX county is one of the areas with significant foreclosures that I think has room for more to come based on the ummm housing stock. I also think it's a huge contributer to its district in the GAO report I posted yesterday.
It would be nice to see this map redone normalized to density, and then also weighted for housing stock.
Oh, and btw. we had the inspection. It went great, the honey-do list is long, but absolutely nothing major. The dishwasher's on the fritz, and all the kitchen appliances have seriously served their time... but we'd already priced that in.
And the new windows that the condo association chose? Are to die for. I love them. Shh, don't tell anyone until after we close.
"Cara said...
Yes that's what I meant... The "greater Alexandria" part of FFX county"
Oops - I misread what you said before - sorry.
One other potential problem with this data. They got some of it from realtytrac - the same source that says rates exploded or plummeted YOY with an asterik explaining their counting method had changed.
Maybe they just used realtytrac for state and national figures, and went down to the courthouse and did a handcount (meaning local data was more reliable). I dont know.
Oh and your collective wisdom is now requested on shopping for loans?
How deep into the process to we have to get with each lender to find out what the costs would actually be?
It seems like a pretty hard thing to shop for when we're potentially so far away from a close.
If we get a good rate lock, would we normally be able to pay to extend it past its first cut-off?
Cara-
I am not sure that a lender would let you lock in a loan before the bank agrees to it. One comment I have is to stay away from the major banks and look at local brokers. The rates we got from BofA, C, JPM were all much worse than what we saw from First Savings Mortgage Corp and some of the other brokers.
housebuyer,
They claimed they'd let us lock it for 30 days regardless.
Has anyone looked at the NYTimes website? Their cash-for clunkers slideshow has a beemer as the first "clunker". Dude! I love old beemers!!! I'd buy it! Okay, maybe not for $4,500.... Talk about pent-up demand though. $4,500 for a trade-in (so long as it's not my 35 mpg saturn... which I already sold...), there's a lot of demand for that.
Congrats on your inspection, Cara!
Housing Bottom? No, the Mother of All Head Fakes
Posted Jul 31, 2009 11:31am EDT by Henry Blodget in Investing, Recession, Banking
From The Business Insider, July 31, 2009:
Housing bears immediately tried to poke holes in the surprisingly good numbers in the May Case Shiller report.
The most widespread bear argument, that the rise was just seasonal, is weak: Even the seasonally adjusted numbers were the best in three years.
Two other arguments, however, are more persuasive.
Whitney Tilson of T2 Partners calls the May numbers "the mother of all head fakes." He--and the two analysts below--think house prices will resume their decline in the fall. We're in that camp, too...
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/293365/Housing-Bottom-No-the-Mother-of-All-Head-Fakes?tickers=%5Edji,%5Egspc,hd,l,len&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=
housebuyer,
I was wrong, again. Or more precisely the rep who had been taking the lead on my pre-approval was wrong. BofA won't even start the application process until the seller's bank has approved the sale.
which is fine. Nobody's wasting time, and no money out of pocket for me.
Ace, thanks! I'm really starting to like this house. It's a good house. (condo, whatever) Another listing in the same complex came on today. An organic sale (supposedly) down near the list of our SS, ($4k higher, big deal), but it's in a totally inferior location within the complex. One I just simply, wouldn't buy. So I'm half glad that the SS contract is keeping me from being tempted.
We are having some rough weather here in the Shenandoah Valley, VA. Everyone should check there basements for leaks and make sure you sump pumps are working. If your basement is soaked or flooded you should call Rainbow International services here in the Valley the number is #(540) 869-5571 and for all of you not in the Valley the National toll free # is (877) 517-2462 tell them that A.D. Carter sent you from the Virginia Operation for discounts on your loss.
housebuyer,Cara,
When I was shopping for mortgage back in March, I didn't find much difference between the smaller brokers, credit unions and large national banks. I went with Wells Fargo (Their Dulles office handled my loan) because for the same rates, they were very upfront about all the fees (no hidden fees) and allowed a 60-day rate lock.
If you have a reliable local broker, if you show the large bank quote to them, they often try to make a better offer. But I didn't have a trusted one (There are many online, but they often charge you application fees and you will have trouble getting them to refund; and they have hidden fees that may surprise you later), so I went with Wells.
The only negative with Wells Fargo was that at that time, the underwriting people were very busy with so many people doing refinancing. They get you a preapproval early enough and then give you a hint things are all right, but the underwriting office gave the final Ok just the day before closing date. That can cause a lot of anxiety for the buyer.
Seems the rate advatange is not fixed. At that time HSBC and Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab bank had better rates (be sure to compare all fees and points), with Wells Fargo having a slight edge. But after a couple of weeks, the slight edge went to other banks, including some local ones. It seems the advantage is not something that is fixed, so you have to get quotes as soon as you have a ratified contract.
Another thing you may want to note at/after closing--for a 30-year fixed loan, if you sign up for bi-weekly payments, the principal gets paid a bit faster, so it becomes a 25-year mortgage in effect.
CRT,
Zip codes take into account density. While they are not exactly the same in population they are not that dissimilar either. Look at the zip code maps website:
http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm
The zips with a lot of condos and TH (say 22201 or 22209) are much smaller than the ones that are mostly SFH (look at how huge 22066/Great Falls is).
Some of the zips in DC are really tiny!
I suspect they will break up some of the Metro area zip codes in Arlington the next time the USPS studies zip code size.
"TBW said...
Zip codes take into account density. While they are not exactly the same in population they are not that dissimilar either."
Actually, they can be. Even by your link Annandale in Fairfax county has 19998 households, whereas Bristow in Manassas has 2,743 households.
On the surface it appears they have similar # of foreclosures 962 for Annandale, 711 for Bristow. You might even assume Annandale was worse than Bristow.
However, when you take households into account, you see that a relatively modest 4.8% of Annandale houses went into foreclosure, whereas a whopping 25.9% of Bristow houses are in foreclosure.
Long term, you may be right. My guess is they set the postal service sets the zipcodes based on the number of houses that will eventually be built in Bristow. However, as they arent yet built, the differences by zip can still be dramatic.
CRT, another thing to note about Bristow foreclosures is that many are relatively new. While the Manassas/Woodbridge hotbeds of activity are ongoing, I have noticed a significant shift to the western (newer, richer) part of the county for new foreclosures. Interesting.
Just listened to a couple spots on NPR about housing tonight, the first one about loan modifications (how few are actually happening), with some almost funny rationalizations as to why people will keep paying a seriously underwater mortgage ("as long as it is only 31% of their income, it's sure to be as much as/cheaper than renting!"), the second about bidding wars on foreclosures (focus: California). The second spot mentioned one house with over 30 offers, and how banks would sometimes offer a house for sale, then pull it after multiple offers and list at a higher price a month later. I have seen that happen out here more than once.
Re: zip codes, some have many more businesses and other organizations present while others are more heavily residential. This will greatly affect the # of households per zip.
tabitha,
Yeah I was listening to that same one about, oh you'll never find a rental that's cheaper if the house "only" takes up 31% of your pre-tax income. And I was just like, mmmmm. Crack-rcok, gotta back away from the rainbow flavored crack!
Now, it's true, there are many place in this country which didn't have significant bubble's and most people are underwater by less than 10%, kinda like my brother-in-law in Chattanooga who thinks his house is worth $140k, just because that's what a real estate agent told him he should price it at when he was thinking of selling (and buying his best friend's condo for fewer maintanence chores). But who "can't" sell, because his PITI is under $600/month and his old rent on a much smaller 2 bedroom apartment was $800.
But, those are not the problem places.
I also heard those NPR reports. Do you think the $8K incentive is a big factor?
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