Friday, February 19, 2010

Home Sale Prices End '09 on Upswing

The average price of a house ended 2009 on a positive note, according to the latest government figures.
The average price of new and used houses sold in the country’s 32 largest metropolitan markets rose 1.3% in December, from $298,200 to $302,100, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported.
While the increase is hardly one to jump up and down about, it was the largest gain recorded in the agency’s quarterly survey in several years. But proving once again that all real estate is truly local, the average was all over the ballpark in the 32 areas covered in the FHFA study.
The nation’s capital is now the fifth most expensive place in the country to buy a house. Still, the average in the Washington-Baltimore region barely moved the needle in the fourth quarter, rising a scant 0.4%, from $444,300 a year ago to $449,000 when 2009 came to a close. Not a huge jump, but it’s positive none the less. For info on more states involved in the FHFA survey, go to http://www.managingreo.com/feature/?story_id=227 .
Visit our website today if you’d like to find out what your home is worth!
www.JenniferYoungHomes.com

Monday, February 15, 2010

1 in 409 Homes Face Foreclosure Filing

RealtyTrac, one of the leading online marketplaces for foreclosure properties, released its January 2010 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows foreclosure filings—default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions—were reported on 315,716 U.S. properties during the month, a decrease of nearly 10% from the previous month but still 15% above the level reported in January 2009. The report also shows one in every 409 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in January.

REO activity nationwide was down 5% from the previous month but still up 31% from January 2009; default notices were down 12% from the previous month but still up 4% from January 2009; and scheduled foreclosure auctions were down 11% from the previous month but still up 15% from January 2009.

“January foreclosure numbers are exhibiting a pattern very similar to a year ago: a double-digit percentage jump in December foreclosure activity followed by a 10% drop in January,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac “If history repeats itself we will see a surge in the numbers over the next few months as lenders foreclose on delinquent loans where neither the existing loan modification programs or the new short sale and deed-in-lieu of foreclosure alternatives works.”

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Another Short Sale APPROVED!!

Our system for getting approval and making it to closing is now fine tuned and we’re ready to take on more assignments. If you know anyone who is upside down in their mortgage or they’re facing a hardship and can’t make their mortgage payment, tell them to visit my website at www.HomeRescueVirginia.com – read through it and contact me. They can even apply for more info online. Tell them we have a 99% Success rate. We’ve helped hundreds and we can help them too!



Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Another Short Sale Closes!


5300 Ferndale St
Springfield, VA 22151
SOLD Price: $330,000

1st Trust Owed: $390,000
Total Owed: $390,000

Homeowners bought in 2006 for $555,000, found themselves upside down and walked away avoiding foreclosure!

Monday, February 08, 2010

Short Sale Success Story

Another Short Sale Closes!


706 Catoctin Cr NE
Leesburg, VA 20176
SOLD Price: $325,000
January 2010

1st Trust Owed: $500,000
Total Owed: $500,000

Homeowners bought in 2004 for $470,000, found themselves upside down by $175,000 and walked away – avoiding foreclosure!

Friday, February 05, 2010

Another Short Sale Approved!

8 Short Sales closed in the past 3 months and now another approval, with closing set for next week. We wanted to put up an example of what an approval letter looks like. Our system for getting approval and making it to closing is now fine tuned and we’re ready to take on more assignments. If you know anyone who is upside down in their mortgage or they’re facing a hardship and can’t make their mortgage payment, tell them to visit my website at www.HomeRescueVirginia.com – read through it and contact me. They can even apply for more info online. Tell them we have a 99% Success rate. We’ve helped hundreds and we can help them too!



Thursday, February 04, 2010

California Foreclosures

February 4, 2010—(MCT)—Ethelda Lopez, a retired telephone company worker recently watched as her dream retirement home was auctioned off on the lawn outside a county courthouse in downtown Merced, California. “When I heard my address, it was so disheartening,” she said. “It’s amazing how it all works.”

For six months, she had made hundreds of calls to her mortgage company, federal officials, local political leaders—begging them all for lower payments or more time. No one paid heed. Wracked with depression and anxiety, she was too ashamed to tell her friends that she was losing her sprawling stucco-and-stone ranch home in the Atwater countryside.

Merced County ranked first in California for foreclosure filings in 2009, and sixth among counties nationwide, the national firm RealtyTrac reported recently. One in seven homes in this county of 250,000 people has been foreclosed on since September 2006, according to Foreclosure Radar, a California reporting service.

Over and over, residents caught up in the foreclosure crisis—homeowners, renters, even Realtors—report that they are suffering from stress or depression and are sometimes too ashamed to reach out for help. This is the hidden human fallout of foreclosure.

Thousands of new homes like Lopez’s sprouted from farmland countywide in the past five years. Merced was gearing up for a bright new future as a college hub. Optimistic developers dreamt of throngs of buyers paying $300,000 and more so that they could raise their children in neat stucco homes along tranquil cul-de-sacs. But the dream crumbled, and so did the peace-of-mind that home ownership is supposed to guarantee. Now, many homeowners are caught up in a nightmare, trying to figure out how to pay mortgages on dwellings worth a fraction of what they owe—or whether they should give up the dream and move on.

The drama plays out on the courthouse lawn like clockwork, Monday through Friday, at 12:30 and 3 p.m., when Realtors and investors bid for foreclosed homes like Lopez’s. The crisis shows no signs of abating. In November 2009, one in five Merced County homeowners was 90 days or more delinquent in payments, according to another service, First American CoreLogic. What the statistics don’t show is the human toll. Debt-wracked residents are suffering from anxiety, sleeplessness and depression in a universe gone sideways. Clinically, their suffering may not qualify as PTSD, the psychological state felt by soldiers, cops, first-responders and others after a traumatic experience. But far too many are in sad shape. Some are reaching out for help. At Merced-area health care clinics, workers report an increase in residents experiencing mental distress, and in the seriousness of their symptoms. Many new patients are homeowners or renters fearful of losing their homes and all the stability that a home provides, they say.

Many more feel so much shame about their financial and emotional distress that they shut themselves off, too fearful to ask for help. Entire families suffer as stress radiates from debt-plagued parents to their frightened children. “The trickle-down of this is big. Kids have stomach aches. They don’t want to go to school. Then you find out they’ve just moved in with someone else, their parents are about to lose their homes, they’re having trouble paying the mortgage,” said Elizabeth Morrison, clinical director of behavioral health at Golden Valley Health Centers, a network of 25 nonprofit community clinics and eight dental sites serving the Merced area.

School leaders are concerned, too. In the Merced Union High School District, which covers students in all of Merced, Atwater and Livingston, 613 students, or 7%, reported this year that they were “doubled-up” with another family in a single-family home. At Atwater High School, the number was 12%. Some residents fear they soon will have no home at all.

For residents on the verge of losing their homes, knowing that their neighbors and friends are in the same straits may or may not be reassuring. The stigma of foreclosure and bankruptcy may sting less here because so many people are struggling. But jobs remain scarce, and that, coupled with the high foreclosure rate, may make residents even more pessimistic, said Jim McDiarmid, director of behavioral sciences at the Mercy family medical residency program.

(c) 2010, Merced Sun-Star (Merced, Calif.).