Mortgage Rate News
Interest rates have continued to drop since mid October with the average 30-yr fixed rate mortgage recently dancing just around 6%.

Analysis
It’s a mixed bag. There’s no way around the negative impact that flat home prices, cutbacks in new homes construction and ever-decreasing consumer spending continue to have on the overall economy. Manufacturers have experienced increases in overseas orders, but this is largely due to the weakened value of the dollar.
There are some positive indicators though.

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Having a home staging it will help a homeowner to sell it quickly for the most amount of money by appealing to the largest amount of prospective buyers is one of the goals. In making a home staging it will make the house have the potential by transforming it into a ‘neutral’ property because the way we live in it will change the home so completely different than the way we should sell the home.

San Francisco ranks fifth in the nation as a location for real estate development and investment, according to a national study released Thursday in San Francisco.

The City lost out to top-rated New York City, which was deemed the most desirable metropolitan area to invest in development and real estate in the nation, according to the 2008 Emerging Trends study, an annual survey of real estate industry professionals put out by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the nonprofit Urban Land Institute. Seattle was the only West Coast city to rank higher than San Francisco on the annual list.

Factors in San Francisco’s attractiveness to developers include its access to airports and ports, its emphasis on transit oriented development and its status as a “24-hour, global-pathway city,” experts said at the Emerging Trends in Real Estate Conference on Thursday.

“San Francisco is a multifaceted city with many diverse attractions,” said PricewaterhouseCoopers, Jonathan Miller, keynote speaker at the conference, hosted by the Hotel Nikko. “It’s still the dominant 24-hour city of the West Coast, and it attracts a global market that few cities in America can attain.”

Read more here…

Source: Examiner.com

Realtors forecast for year sees the outlook worsening in 2008

WASHINGTON – Sales of existing homes in the U.S. are forecast to decline to a five-year low in 2007, a trade group for real estate agents said Tuesday, and the outlook for 2008 is worsening.

The ninth-straight downwardly revised monthly forecast from the National Association of Realtors calls for U.S. existing home sales to fall 12.7 percent this year to 5.66 million, down from 6.48 million last year.

Last month, the association predicted a 10.8 percent drop from a year ago.

This year’s sales would be the lowest since 2002, when sales hit 5.63 million. The Realtors group forecasts sales will rise slightly next year to 5.69 million, but that is down from last month’s prediction of 6.12 million.

The trade group’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, said the housing market is likely to experience a “modest” recovery next year as mortgage markets stabilize.

“It is possible for even higher home sales activity than we’re forecasting if buyers regain their confidence,” he said in a prepared statement.

The trade group also said its index that forecasts near-term home sales inched upward in September. The trade group said its seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes rose 0.2 percentage points from August , but was down 20.4 percent from a year ago.

September’s reading of 85.7 came after the index hit a record low in August.

The pending home sales index is designed to predict sales levels over the following two months. A reading of 100 is equal to the average level of pending sales activity in 2001, when the index began.

Source: msnbc.msn.com

Home Sales Pace Summary

Existing home sales in September dropped another 1.2% totaling a whopping 10% overall drop since end of August.

The seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million homes is the lowest seen by the National Association of Realtors since they began tracking the combined sales of single-family units + condos in 1999.

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So, you’ve seen on the internet or on the dailies your dream house? Well, don’t jump the gun too fast. Before you get a mortgage for that dream house of yours, you have to know first your credit score. Yes, the dreaded credit score.

The worst credit score is about 300 while the best ranges around 850 according to FICO by Fair Isaac Corporation. If you wish to obtain a mortgage for your house, and I mean a good one, you should have at least scored 600 in your score card. Now what makes your credit score low? Past loans that aren’t paid on time, existing credit card debts and the like contribute in making your credit score low.

What can you do? Obviously, pay your debts. You should pay your bills on time and by doing so, the dream house you’ve been craving for will be within reach.

Photo taken from http://www.theweslyngroup.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — During the housing boom, home sellers were in the driver’s seat with real estate agents courting them – often at bargain commission rates. But now that the bubble has burst, the tables have turned.

In 1991, the average commission rate was 6.1 percent, according Steve Murray, of Real Trends, which tracks the brokerage industry. The rate inched down to 5.4 percent by 2001 and by the end of 2005, it stood at 5.02 percent.

Industry insiders expected further declines with the competition of discount and Web-based brokerages. In early 2006, the chairman of Re/Max, Dave Linder, told Real Trends that he expected a drop into the 4 percent range within five years.

But when home sellers found themselves with houses sitting on the market, they became increasingly amenable to paying higher commissions. Real Trends reports the average commission reversed its course and climbed to 5.18 percent in 2006, and it looks like it’s going to end 2007 with another rise.

“The thing that changed,” said Murray,” is that the market flipped. There was a flood of listings on the market and suddenly they weren’t as valuable. Agents were saying, ‘I’m not going to drop my commission rate as readily.”

Learn more: money.cnn.com

Before you purchase a condominium policy, check with your condominium association to make sure you’re buying the insurance you need.

• Find out what parts of the interior are covered by your condo association’s insurance and what items are your responsibility. Then make sure that you have adequate insurance to cover repairing or replacing the items for which you are responsible.
• The contents of your condominium are not insured under the association’s master condominium policy. So, estimate the cost to replace your contents and buy insurance for that amount.
• Your association’s master condominium policy does not provide any liability coverage for your unit or your personal exposures. So, make sure you purchase adequate liability insurance, usually $300,000 to $500,000 or more, depending on your situation.
• If your association has insufficient funds, you may be assessed a proportionate share to pay for damage to your building and other situations. Check to see whether the condominium insurance you purchase covers these assessments. You may wish to buy Loss Assessment Coverage, which is available in amounts of $5,000, $10,000 or more.

Source

Naturally, when you buy something in the market (no, I’m not referring to the grocery store near you, but the bigger market), it’s called an investment. When you’re investing on something, it actually calls for luck since it only has two to ways to go: up or down. Just like the stocks, real estate can be unpredictable. The prices and market values five years ago may not be the same as what is today.

Nevertheless, however stumping the economy of the country is, real estate will never fall rock-bottom. Why? Well, there’s what we call government intervention. The government does its best to revive the economy, proposing different kinds of Bills and switching targets, for things to get better.

Alison Rogers, a real estate broker, implied in her published letter that, of all the types of people she hates, the fence-sitters are included in her top 10. Fence-sitters are those who wait for the market value of something to plummet 50% (or below) than its original. Sadly, these people do not know what that entails and I am pretty sure they won’t get their houses anyway since this will never happen (not in their lifetime!).

Photo taken from http://www.duplexman.com

With the economic downfall, it is a fact that the prices of houses have been hit rock bottom for the past months and the prices of goods and commodities have skyrocketed, making almost everyone a pauper in their own respect. Goods have recorded a total of 1.4% increase last month while home prices still continue to decline. The stock market too had a hard hit, losing trillions and trillions of money. The record last year of home prices was down to 4.6 percent from April 2007 – April 2008. According to housing reports, the prices of houses is still continuing to decline, however, the rapidity of the decline is slowing, which of course is a sign that housing prices are nearing dirt bottom.

Photo taken from http://blogs.venturacountystar.com