Making Shorter Work of Short Sales

Every good thing (not to be confused with a sure thing) comes with a not so good thing. In the case of buying property that has been designated a "short sale" that not so good thing is the amount of time it can take from the signing of the offer to acceptance to dare we say it...The Closing. Why why why does it take so long when all one is trying to do after all is help the bank and the distressed property owner?
With a plethora of complaints from all over the country, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae finally agree. They agree so much in fact, that there are now new guidelines that will be implemented starting on June 15th. With Freddie Mac having completed an amazing 45,623 short sale transactions last year and more sadly expected well into next year, these new guidelines couldn't have come soon enough. Some highlights of these new guidelines are:

• Loan servicers (um...banks) must make a decision within 30 days of receiving an offer under Freddie Mac's short sale program and a completed Borrower Response Package (BRP) requesting consideration for a short sale under HAFA or Freddie Mac's traditional short sale program. 
• If the lender requires more than 30 days to respond, it must give the homeowner a status update on a weekly basis (or more), and decision must be made within 60 days.
• If the loan servicer counters an offer, the borrower must respond within 5 business days . The servicer/lender/bank then has another 10 days more to respond to the borrower/buyer. 

Even though this is still an inequitable negotiation, it is much better than it has historically been for borrowers and buyers who just want to move on with their lives.
Way to go Federal Housing Finance Agency for insisting on these guidelines that make short sales a viable alternative to adding more foreclosures to the real property for sale pipeline.

Time to buy buy buy? Mr. Buffet agrees!

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” recently that he’d “buy up a couple hundred thousand” single-family homes if it was practical.

Buffett said that’s because he believes purchasing a home with ultra-low mortgage rates and holding it for the long-term has become a better investment than stocks right now.

“Housing will come back, you can be sure of that,” Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders recently.

Buffett forecasts an increase in household formations, as more people who moved in with their parents or family members during the recession look to move out and get their own home soon.

“People may postpone hitching up during uncertain times, but eventually hormones take over. And while ‘doubling-up” may be the initial reaction of some during a recession, living with in-laws can quickly lose its allure,” Buffett said.

Buffett said the recovery in the housing market could vary quite a bit among local housing markets, however. He did not provide a timeline of when he expected a full housing recovery, admitting that his prediction last year that a housing recovery will take shape within the year turned out to be “dead wrong.”

Source: “Housing Market Forecast Beyond 2012 From Warren Buffet,” International Business Times (Feb. 28, 2012) and “Warren Buffet on CNBC: I’d Buy Up ‘A Couple Hundred Thousand’ Single-Family Homes If I Could,” CNBC (Feb. 27, 2012)

Wistful Thoughts of Gazumping

In the world of real estate, listings are king. We all work very hard and diligently to get them and harder still to tend and nurture them. We treat them with the same strategic care as any beauty pageant mother vying for first place. But it is the buyer that is really The Queen in the current marketplace.  Pre-qualified for a loan? Great. Got cash? Greater still.
As we begin what promises to be an interesting and hopefully pivotal year in real estate and the country at large, I am thinking of dreamy past sales, Realtor nirvana really, of bidding wars and multiple offers.
In England and Australia they have a term that is used when a seller accepts a verbal offer of full asking price and then subsequently accepts someone else's higher offer. If this happens, one can consider themselves "gazumped."  We don't use this term here in the States.  We're partial to written offers in these parts that when accepted (in writing), bind the seller. Inspection periods in purchase and sale contracts thankfully make gazumping a non issue here but still...a girl can dream of sales gone by and closes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2002/apr/14/houseprices.uknews

One time coming in third is preferred in Florida.

 FORECLOSURE DAYZ IN FLORIDA

http://www.realtytrac.com/content/news-and-opinion/third-quarter-2011-top-state-foreclosure-timelines-6892?a=b&accnt=305786

Reading these numbers for the third quarter of this year takes my mind in several directions.
My Realtor brain wonders what the real impact of all these yet-to-be-foreclosed properties will have
on our inventory and absorption rate for the next few y-e-a-r-s. Will they trickle or flood onto the market?
The Personal part of my brain feels relief for friends and friends of friends who though living with a gavel over their heads, can stay in their homes for over two years while they figure out what they are going to do and where they are going to go from here.
None of it is good for the spirit or the bottom line of us collectively and individually.