Spread Getting Wider

Written by Jim the Realtor

February 10, 2012

Think it’s been crazy so far?  

Between sellers getting more optimistic, scamming realtors low-balling short-sales everywhere, and bank clerks hoping to find the 30-day price from hundreds of miles away, it could get wackier!

12 Comments

  1. college joe

    Good job to the realtor for getting 950K! Just in time…

  2. me

    I’ll bet that buyer backs out or renegotiates the price. And his agent had better tell him about this 700k listing – he has 3 days to bail easily and even once enters escrow, can bail until his contingencies are removed.

  3. tj & the bear

    $700K sounds much more reasonable, but damn… that house has zero character. Nothing but a collection of blank slabs inside & out.

  4. Native San Diegan

    The place does indeed look pretty beat up. The white tile inside the master bath is a turn off. I do agree if you can get a good price, it gives a lot of flexibility to remodel to your taste.

  5. d_2

    if you decide you can live with the road noise, is there any hope for adding “character” to a house like this? would paint, crown molding, wainscoting, floors etc add the missing character, or is that just putting lipstick on the pig?

  6. No_Such_Reality

    Wow, I disapper for a while and next thing I know, Jim’s beat up truck is gone and a little Mercedes ornament is out front.

  7. still surfing

    Spreads seem that they will continue to stay dis jointed until the sellers get a reality check of price. It seems this will be an interesting year between bank settlements, Tax free status of forgiveness disappearing, and expedited short sales with banks bribing the underwater homeowners

    I do not see it discussed much but MDRA is expiring this year. In 2007, the federal government enacted the The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act( MDRA) that allows qualified taxpayers to exclude “income” up to $2mm that the banks forgive. This expires in 2012. As the sellers become educated the short sale listing will increase.

    Banks seem to be accelerating efforts to get troubled mortgages off their books. They seem to not only move faster but they are also offering $35,000 or more in cash to delinquent homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe.

    This will continue to increase inventory and widen the spreads between bid and ask. Corelogic stated that “Losses for lenders are about 15 percent lower on the sales than on foreclosures, which can take years to complete while taxes and legal, maintenance and other costs accumulate”.

    With settlement behind them seems the banks want the SS over teh foreclosures.

    “The deals accounted for 33 percent of financially distressed transactions in November, up from 24 percent a year earlier”, said CoreLogic Inc., a Santa Ana, California-based real estate information company.

  8. tj & the bear

    NSR,

    JtR has always had a Benz for biz — a silver one then and a black one now. The truck is still around for the grittier work, it just doesn’t show up in videos that often.

  9. Temeculaguy

    Still surfing

    I agree that the bank settlement may finally start shaking out more homes that have been in the shadows.

    The settlement stopped the limbo of forclosures as many banks stopped reposessing until the negotiations were finalized. Realtytrack expects a 15% to 25% increase in foreclosures in 2012 v 2011.

    Unfortunately this will have to put additional pressure on prices and ultimately more negative equity strategic defaults and more short sales.

    http://cnnmoney.mobi/snarticle?c=cnnm_business&p=10&aId=20120210%3Amortgage_settlement_foreclosures%3A1

  10. Chuck Ponzi

    Still Surfing…

    I know Jim has mentioned short sales going faster, but I don’t see it. Not in the slightest (the bank’s not going to give it away either).

    Short opinion: If you haven’t already started the short sale, its not going to happen in 2012.

    However, people may start getting desperate if they discover that the end’s coming soon, and will try to blow the doors off with pricing to get solid offers. but, this doesn’t meant that the bank will play ball, and will probably be nothing more than window dressing when the year closes.

    BTW, that debt forgiveness makes short sales more attractive… you know, especially for strategic defaulters. Once that incentive goes away, i think we’ll have FEWER properties. the 20teens might just be the decade of the no inventory.

    Who knows?

  11. Chuck Ponzi

    Temeculaguy,

    My understanding re: settlement vs foreclosures was that this was only in judicial foreclosure states. I.E. California was not substantively impacted by this delay. Do you know something differently?

    also, California has decided to not take part in this. Therefore, no changes has been effected so far. I doubt that CA can effect a settlement that works for both, as anything that would satisfy the CA AG would make the major banks (BofA, anyway) effectively insolvent. It seems like they’re at an impasse.

    Chuck

  12. Hankster

    Chuck

    Search the Internet and you will see that California is the biggest benefactor of the $25 b settlent deal. With of course a few outs for California AG

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