April 30, 2008

Weekly News Round-Up

Thank you, Kathleen Pender. In the SF Chron’s Sunday Business Section, Kathleen penned an article titled “As ARMS Reset, Little of the Expected Chaos Is Coming to Fruition.” I love, love, love seeing some good news on the housing front. Yes, the Feds have stepped in, and maybe that is not such a good thing, but overall the resetting is not wreaking the havoc that was first estimated.

We’ve all been staring into the well, trying to see if the housing prices have yet hit bottom. By now we all know that there has been no splash, and there is still a ways to go (the term “digging to China” comes to mind). How deep that well is, well…that’s open to interpretation. For a variety of takes on this subject you can read:
Marketwatch “Home prices plunge at faster pace in February”
Wall Street Journal “Foreclosure Numbers Double from 2007, California Yet to Hit Bottom”
LA Times “A bottom in housing? That’s a big ‘NO’”

Having watched the mortgage crisis hit and whip through the country, I have got to wonder where the mortgage industry is going to find a leg to stand on in the fight against tougher regulation. According to the New York Times, the “Loan Industry Fighting Rules on Mortgages.” Seems to be that they have one hand tied around their back in this fight, and we can only hope it will be a losing battle for them. Mortgage reform is necessary. Gotta learn from those mistakes to keep them from happening again in the future.

Last month I wrote about the problems of in-house appraisers and the inflation of housing prices to garner loans. Some safeguards have been put in place to correct this problem, and according to eFinance.com, “Inflated Appraisals May Become a Crime of the Past,” which is a very good thing.

The sharp eyes over at Front Steps pointed out the difference in reporting styles between KGO and SFGate, and how a few key words or phrases can result in remarkably different viewpoints. Case in point is the recent foreclosure stats for SF.

Big News on the Redfin front: Last night a new version of the search program at Redfin.com was released. You can now view FSBOs (for sale by owner) and bank-listed foreclosures, as well as another couple of cool features:
• Open-house search: Redfin users can search for open-house showings, rather than simply seeing them alongside other property listings.
• Open-house alerts: Redfin notifies users by email or RSS when an open house appears in their area.
• Favorites updates: Redfin notifies users by email when their favorite listings host an open house, change price or change status.
• Improved past-sales search: An improved interface for retrieving public records about recently sold homes lets users more easily see on Redfin’s map the price, size and location of homes that sold between one week and 20 years ago.
For the full scoop, check it out here.