But I’m sure you all know what it’s like when you’re driving a country road for the first time and it widens from nearly a one-lane experience of fright to [...]]]> Finally, we’re seeing the balance tip in the financial press, with forecasts of a good—or at least tepid—selling season this spring.

But I’m sure you all know what it’s like when you’re driving a country road for the first time and it widens from nearly a one-lane experience of fright to a broad two-lane ‘highway’ that locals take at about 70 miles per hour. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the road goes from smooth concrete to asphalt to gravel, and you pull to the side, wondering what’s up ahead and whether you’ll survive it.

So it is with the economy today, at least where real estate is involved.

Many observers, whose words we find scattered through the financial press, are breaking out the champagne. Derek Kravitz and Alex Veiga, both of whom write prolifically for the Associated Press, recently had this to say, for example: “Five years after the U.S. housing bust sent sales and prices plunging, the spring home-buying season is pointing to a long-awaited recovery. Reduced prices, record-low mortgage rates, higher rents and an improving job market appears to be emboldening many would-be buyers. Open houses are drawing crowds. A wave of foreclosures is leading investors to grab bargain-priced homes.”

Which is all pretty great—smooth driving on a newly-cemented road—but the patches of unimproved gravel continue to intrude on our progress and make the driving feel dangerous.

The most recent completed sales computations, given the apparent improvement in related indicators—especially jobs—were disappointing. For sales completed in March, existing home sales fell off 2.6%, while new home sales were off by 7.1%. Even pending sales brought little solace, since newly-signed contracts dropped by 0.5% in February. (The index for March will be released tomorrow, on Thursday, April 26.)

There are a few mitigating circumstances. For example, there was a striking annual decline of 2.5% in the number of existing homes on the market. And the new home sales looked especially weak because of upward revisions to the number of sales in prior months—40,000 in February, 11,000 in January. Still, these don’t appear to be the sorts of dazzling numbers that would usher in a certain and sustainable recovery.

If I may climb aboard another metaphor, we should recall that the real estate market—like an ocean liner—takes a lot of time to turn around and often brings to mind the surprises that greeted the Titanic, the unsinkable ship, long ago. Our progress toward a truly sustainable market, therefore, is almost always attended by some fits and starts.

But this is not a bad thing for everyone. Certainly, there are those of us who have about run out of the ability to keep holding our breaths, waiting for the ‘All Clear’ signal. Actually, I suspect this economy will continue to generate concerns and uncertainties for many months to come, if not until the cows come home.

Meanwhile, the good part. There is still time, brothers and sisters. We don’t have to rush into the market with our checkbooks in our back pockets, pens at the ready, trying to grab a great deal and good financing before they’re gone. What we have here is a window of opportunity when nearly all the ingredients have come together—even the amount of time needed to engineer a solid transaction. This will surely pass, so the time to act on all of this is now.

And there’s something to watch very closely. Even major financial houses are beginning to see that investing time and energy into streamlining the ‘short sale’ process can potentially save them a lot of money over the cost of disposing of a property in a foreclosure. If they can make this work…if the market moves in favor of short sales (there were apparently more of them in January than foreclosure sales for the first time ever)… we may eliminate the heavy, dark clouds with which imminent foreclosures continue to threaten the real estate recovery.

The difference this time is there is no homebuyer tax credit incentivizing people to buy ASAP. [...]]]> Last month the median price of residential homes in most of the surrounding counties (Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, and Nevada) increased year over year, the first such occurrence of this happening in almost two years.

The difference this time is there is no homebuyer tax credit incentivizing people to buy ASAP. It’s truly the market (low prices and low rates), along with an ever so slightly but consistently improving economy and job market, doing its thing here.

Check out the data (median sales price from March 2011 – March 2012)…

Placer County Homes: 6% increase

Sacramento County Homes: 1.3% increase

Sutter County Homes: 9% increase

Nevada County Homes: 9% increase

Yolo County: Flat (no increase/decrease)

El Dorado County: 5% decrease

This is no guaranty that home prices in Placer, Sacramento, or any other county are on the rise, or that the market is back on track to normalcy, but coupled with all of the news I share with you on a regular basis about declining defaults and foreclosures, as well as other less talked about real estate market data it seems pretty clear to me… A more normal market, a market that will appreciate at a more normal rate going forward (1-6%), isn’t just hopefully thinking, the data tells us it’s already here.

~Greg

The place to start, I suspect, is here: We have heard a lot of whoppers about how the current high price of gasoline at the pump [...]]]> Let’s talk about gasoline for a few moments. Surprisingly, doing so may afford some insight into other subjects, maybe even the level of interest rates.

The place to start, I suspect, is here: We have heard a lot of whoppers about how the current high price of gasoline at the pump either was engineered by Obama or was the result of Obama’s lack of obvious oil-price-easing activities. In short, it’s because of what Obama did (or, as the case may be, it resulted from all Obama didn’t do).

Most economists look at this argument and respond with a very obvious point. Obama couldn’t cause gas prices to rise if he wanted to. Sadly, he isn’t much more proficient at making gas prices fall, either.

There is a belief, however (“Drill, Baby, Drill”) that Obama could bring prices down if he found ways to encourage greater gas production in America. An obvious problem here is that we have not only already increased our production – largely because of technology that unlocks the oil heretofore bound up in shale deposits in a vast number of locations beneath the American soil (note for example, North Dakota) – but we even graduated to the status of net oil exporter (that’s right, we export more oil than we import) this past year.

It was assumed that the price of oil would decline if we seemed to have enough of it. But no. The price of oil is determined by “the international market,” and thus it depends on the level of demand for oil across the world, and the key there is whether OPEC wants to boost the price of oil or to bring it down.

A grocery store, after all, can lower the price at which it sells hot dogs. But when an international chain of supermarkets sets the price higher, the grocery story may gain several new fans, but the price of its hot dogs will eventually move to the price established in the international markets.

This has raised the question of why OPEC countries are so “greedy” – why they don’t just accept a lower price when the profits they are making by producing it for a few bucks a barrel and selling it for over $100 are outrageous (the same, of course, can be asked of American oil companies. The Saudis, among others, have no lock of greediness)?

In any case, there is an obvious answer… If you are the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, for example, and the only things your country has for its people – like food, like the essentials of living, as well as the luxuries – are imported, not grown or manufactured at home and those imports are paid for with oil money, you want to manage your national resource with great (and greedy) care. Otherwise, you will end up thrown out of office and into the same dustheap of history where Mubarak and Gaddafi and others find themselves.

As Bibal Qabalan noted in NPR’s Planet Money, every gallon of gas we buy has an unspecified but costly tax within it. “Like it or not, the bill for keeping the Persian Gulf monarchies in power is now being footed by every American. Every time we fuel our car we send an extra 35 cents per gallon, or roughly $6 per fill up, to the Save the King Foundation. Since oil goes into everything we buy from food to plastics, this adds about $1,500 annually to the expenditures of the average American family.”

Is it a political issue, therefore? Absolutely. But neither Obama nor any other American politician can do much about it – except throw his and her support behind our own energy program, and get us into electric cars, still a somewhat dubious proposition, especially in the short term.

The Saudis don’t want to make us overly angry. So they also work to keep oil prices from rising too high – whatever that might prove to be. Studies have shown that, even as oil prices rise still further, “Americans may protest loudly, but their economic behavior indicates a remarkable indifference to the price of oil.”

And what might this have to do with interest rates? It just fits into a similar category. Interest rates, particularly today, are established in world markets. They depend on how well the euro happens to be faring, the psychology of certain fiscal and political problems – from Greece to Spain to Iran to Brazil – and other matters. To gain some understanding of why rates are going where they’re going, we have to dig very, very deep. And we’re still likely to come up with little to no gain – either in understanding or in profit… And so it is at this moment.

No one can tell for sure what interest rates on any loan, FHA included, will be on any day. Interest rates for pretty much every type of loan fluctuates daily (sometimes more than once a day).

“I understand that on April 1, 2012 the FHA Interest rate will increase?”

No one can tell for sure what interest rates on any loan, FHA included, will be on any day. Interest rates for pretty much every type of loan fluctuates daily (sometimes more than once a day).

You may be referring to the FHA Mortgage Insurance premium… This is changing on April 9th and is going to increase; a.) The Up Front portion of FHA’s mortgage insurance premium by 0.75%. The Up Front MIP is generally financed into the loan, spread out over the entire term of the loan, and doesn’t have much of an effect on one’s payment, but it will increase most people’s loans by a least a few bucks. b.) the Annual or Monthly MIP is also going to increase by 0.10-0.15% depending on their loan scenario, and by another 0.25% for those with loan amounts that exceed $625,500.

This is going to increase every FHA borrower, that has their FHA case number pulled after April 9th, monthly payment by a bit. Quite a bit in some cases. But FHA is doing this to keep the fund solvent and ensure that FHA loans are always available for those that need them. They are still the best loan for many people and will be the only loan for many people for quite a while.

Sincerely,
Greg

Innerwork Mortgage
Roseville, CA