Redding's Ups and Downs

There are 296 homes for sale in Shasta County priced under 150,000.  Of these, 141 are at least 3 bedroom and 2 baths.  Fifty-five are bank owned properties and 54 are short sales. 

Intererst rates are low, so if you're wanting to buy a home, let us know.

 Don't want to risk buying a house in today's market?  Although it's very understandable, you might not be able to buy a house for years if you don't take advantage of prices and interest rates now.  Lenders keep tightening the rules for loans and owning a home will just get more impossible in coming months. 

The National Association of Realtors announced that home sales dropped in June by  5.1 percent.  The average price of homes has also dropped, with the medium price at $183,700.

The number of houses nationwide has increased and it is expected to go even higher, thus prices will go down even further.  But getting a loan will become more difficult.

First time homebuyers made up almost half of all sales, while short sales and REOs made up one-third of all sales.  

Short Sales, meaning the homeowner owes more than their home is worth, has been a buyer's worst nightmare.  Realtors, buyers and sellers have been frustrated by the process taking anywhere from 3 months to 9 months to close escrow.  Often times, after that amount of time the buyers walk, even if the process is about to be approved.  Often, the seller's home actually goes into foreclosure before they can get approval of a short sale.  That nightmare happened to me.  I can't tell you how beat up I felt when that happened.  

Under a new program that applied to federally regulated banks, called The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program, the government offers financial incentive to mortgage companies, loan servicers and borrowers to complete a short sale transaction in a timely manner.  The new program should help stabilize the housing market by preventing more foreclosures. This is good for everyone.

People need to be aware that by not paying their homeowner association dues, they can lose their homes.  A HOA in Texas took tile to a home on the steps of the county courthouse where the homeowner owed less than $800 to the association.   Apparently this is not uncommon these days, as borrowers let the dues slide to keep their home mortgages current.  

Thirty four states allow for judicial foreclosures by HOAs.  The redemption periods differ from state to state. The redemption period is the amount of time that a homeowner has to pay up all the dues and fees after a homeowners association has officially taken title to the home.

California has a 365 day redemption period but many states have no redemption period. 

Four percent of all home purchases in the United States in the year ending in March were by international clients with permanent residences elsewhere.  With over 41 billion in sales, 55% were cash sales. 

Fifty three countries were represented with home sales in the United States.  The top four were Canada (23 percent), Mexico (10 percent), the United Kingdom (9 percent) and China/Hong Kong (8 percent).

FHA backed loans, to help home owners with negative equity, dropped 3 % in May. The really unbelievable fact is in a 30 day period, only 6 refi loans were processed.

What does this mean? I believe that if anyone wants to buy a house, act now before it is impossible to get any kind of a loan, especially when home owners who were able to get their loans refinanced, default for the second time.  The guide lines just keep getting stricter.

The homebuyer assistance deadline is now extended to Sept. 30, 2010.

The old closing deadline was June 30, 2010.

The extension applies only to homebuyers who had sales contracts in place as of April 30, 2010, but have not yet closed. The NAR estimated nearly 180,000 home buyers (17,700 in California) would have missed out on the tax credit had Congress and the president not taken action to extend the deadline to close escrow.