Will we see the banks/servicers using the trustee sales as a primary channel for selling REOs in 2010?
It looks like WaMu/Chase has been aggressively pricing their opening bids to move properties at the court house steps. Their trustee has conducted 302 trustee sales this quarter, and only took back 109 properties, when the overall average lately has been around 50% of the trustee sales going back-to-bene.
Of the nine properties over $800,000 that they have sold to third parties at the court house steps in 4Q09, the average sales-price-to-published-bid was 62% – and their opening bids were even lower!
Since the foreclosure moratoriums expired, the trend lately has been that the number of trustee sales that resulted in going back-to-bene have stayed relatively steady, at around 1,000 per month.
It’s the 3rd-party purchases, and the cancellations that have been increasing:
This month’s numbers are incomplete – with three days to go there are still 425 trustee sales scheduled for December, 2009!
I’m hoping that the increases in 3rd-party purchases and cancellations means banks and servicers are looking to move more property, either by aggressively pricing their trustee sales (3rd-party buys) and/or completing more short sales (cancellations).
If WaMu and others are going to be using the trustee sales to unload properties, we’ll want to be there to enjoy the additional well-priced inventory!
hey jim,
I am hearing that a lot of short sales are being sold to family members of the deliquent homeowners in the hopes of buying it back further down the road.Are you seeing any of this funny business?
down & out, that is astounding.
And probably perfectly legal.
Thus, there will be a reality show out by next fall on “reverse flipping.”
I claim rights to “Reverse Flip This House.” HGTV Producers, contact me privately for terms. 🙂
I’ve bid on short sales. I had to sign a document saying I’m not related to seller.
Im excited about the high number of upcoming trustees sales… let me just grab my suitcase with $1 million cash… whoops there is no suitcase.. guess I’ll have to buy from a flipper and pay a 50% premium because I actually want to live in the house..and will need a mortgage like 95% of Americans out there.
And not to mention deal with all the real estate funny business that is going on that you guys are talking about… reverse flipping, envelopes with green stuff and an offer “Green offers” in them given to listing agents of high interest short sales/foreclosures… not that any of this would ever happen.
Nick, I studied astronomy in college and would like to pay the russians a zillion bucks to fly me to outer space but I don’t have a zillion bucks like those rich dudes who likely screwed over somebody to get it… and they’re going to space, not me. Damn, it’s not fair. I studied astronomy. I deserve to go.
Homes are now cheap.
No, not everywhere in the country (more about that later). And, even after the latest Case-Shiller data, it’s anyone’s guess when they might actually turn around and start rising steadily again. It could be years.
But if you’ve been thinking of buying a home to live in, the current meltdown is a big opportunity.
You might not know it from the coverage of the latest data. Too many, as usual, are focused on the trees instead of the forest. The 10 and 20-city composite indexes were unchanged between September and October. And the numbers were lower than a year ago, but the rate of decline seems to have slowed: Two facts that are both obvious and practically useless. Indeed the latest survey contains a whole truckload of information for all those who prefer data to knowledge.
But long-term fundamentals are more important than the short-term noise. And it’s generally a mistake to pay too much attention to doomsayers or to overthink these things.
Here’s some home truths.
Real estate prices in the Case-Shiller 10-city index have now fallen by a stunning 30% from their 2005 peak. Nothing like it has been seen since the Great Depression–and, according to some sources, not then either. Obviously for anyone who bought a home at the peak of the market this has been a disaster. But for those thinking of buying a home now this is exceptionally good news.
And at the same time, mortgage rates have also plummeted. In 2006 you had to pay an average of about 6.4% on a 30-year fixed loan, according to the Federal Reserve. Right now you can get deals for about 5%.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703510304574626212033033506.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Until the average wage earner can afford more than a tar paper condo, house prices are still too high.
All that inventory not going through regular channels and higher interest rates should help fix this.
Imdudesdad-
I think yoo need to talk to all the people who bought in Japan in 1995. Have you seen a chart of japanese house prices since 1990. Still on a downward slope for twenty years. Can it happen in the United States till 2015?? That only 10 years of declining prices.
Some of us are old enough to remember the 80’s when the Japanese were doing everything right. When the land around the Japanese palace was worth more than all the real estate in California.
You need to get the income back with house valuations. Are we going to get back to 3 to 1? If that happens, there are a lot of $800,000 and above homes that need to come down big time.
worm, I was going to write something similar. Houses are not “cheap” until we are back to the place of known stability: 20% down, 30-year fixed, 28% debt to income ratio.
This formula kept housing stable for almost 40 years. Once we started messing with the formula, we’ve had housing price inflation over 100%.
That’s not imdudesdad speaking, it’s the beginning of the article from the link that he sent along.
CR has a good response to that WSJ fluff article about homes being “cheap”:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/12/are-homes-now-cheap.html
“I think yoo need to talk to all the people who bought in Japan in 1995.”
Not only that, what happens to home values when Asteroid Apophis impacts the earth in 2029? We permadoomers need to unite to tell the realtards the truth – home prices just keep going down forever!!!