The Virginia Real Estate Board is composed of seven real estate licensee members and two citizen members, all appointed by the governor and confirmed by the General Assembly. The term of office is four years.
The terms of three licensee members expire on June 30, 2012. Two of these members are not eligible for reappointment.
VAR makes recommendations to the governor on appointments to the Real Estate Board. If you are interested in being considered by VAR for recommendation, please contact Jay DeBoer at jay@varealtor.com.
Because lenders have shown that they can’t necessarily be trusted to evaluate potential borrowers, the federal government will be setting standards that lenders must used to determine whether someone can repay a loan.
No, I’m not being snarky about lenders. That’s the sentiment of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray.
When discussing the forthcoming QA rule — which tells lenders what they have to consider when deciding whether a borrower has the “ability to repay” — Cordray quipped, “You wouldn’t think that you would really need a rule that a lender would have to pay attention to whether or not a borrower could repay a loan.”
The definition of a qualified mortgage — a QM (not to be confused with QRM, which is a stricter standard) — is expected this summer.
Mortgage rates fall to record low. There. I said it. Again.
That is all.
Let’s look at President Obama’s mortgage refinance plan. Its goals are to allow a lot more home owners to refinance at today’s lower rates, and thus pump more money into local economies. It will also reduce foreclosures, which might help bolster property values — not to mention allowing people to stay in their homes.
Essentially, the plan the President outlined will allow any borrower, not just those with Fannie or Freddie loans, to refinance through the FHA if they meet the qualifications.
It’s estimated to save a typical borrower $3,000 a year — three grand being pumped back into local economies.
So, what’s a guy gotta do to qualify?
1. It’s only available to responsible borrowers – those who are current on their mortgages for at least six months, haven’t missed a payment in a year, and have reasonable credit (a FICO score of at least 580).
2. The mortgage they’re looking to refinance has to be within the FHA’s conforming loan limits.
3. If borrowers owe more than 140 percent of the value of their home, the lender has to agree to reduce the loan balance. The White House also said Tuesday it wants to help banks that want to refinance those deep-underwater borrowers.
If a borrower can verify his employment, he won’t have to file the whole magillah of paperwork. And appraisals won’t be necessary.
One independent estimate found that about 3.5 million people would qualify to refinance.
Risks and rewards
In a way, President Obama is saying that if banks won’t help these responsible homeowners, the federal government will — and it will also reap the rewards. Remember, FHA doesn’t cost taxpayers money, it generates profit. More so if it can expand its roll of responsible ‘customers’.
Further, as insurance against some of those borrowers not being as qualified as they seem, banks will be charged fees based on “their size and riskiness of their activities” — in other words, the more sloppy a lender’s underwriting, the higher that fee.
Of course, that would seem to leave lenders with the rest: the borrowers who don’t take advantage of the lower rates for whatever reason, and those who are behind on payments or have too low a credit score to qualify.
And the rest
Also part of the Obama plan is prohibiting banks from dual-tracking: working to modify a home owner’s mortgage on one hand, while beginning foreclosure procedures on the other — speaking with a forked tongue, as it were. Before a lender can foreclose, it will have to show it took all reasonable steps to modify a borrower’s mortgage.
Finally the plan would start the process of having Fannie Mae make foreclosures available to investors in bulk, provided those investors then make the homes available as rentals. (Between them, Fannie, Freddie, and FHA own about 25,000 foreclosed properties.) But the details of how that would work are still up in the air.
In another positive sign for Virginia’s economy and thus housing market, there seem to be more people moving into Virgina than out of Virginia.
Of note, Virginia is one of only 9 states where this is the case!
Source: KCM Blog
“Normal” is “now”.
- Human settlement patterns (where people are living and working)
- Gas prices
- Expectation of permanence/transience
- Interest rates
- Property tax rates
- Monetary supply
- The internet’s availability and impact
Those are just a few of the ways that 1999 differs from 2011, and makes application of “normal” challenging.
Here’s something that hasn’t changed – people need homes. Buying a house is a choice, and one that comes with greater responsibility than renting – you’re accepting on the maintenance, the permanence, the mortgage, the community, the risk. If you’re not ready for those, don’t buy a house. If you’re ready to buy a home, do your due diligence and consider it.
Guest post by VAR member and Charlottesville Realtor® Jim Duncan. Originally posted at the Charlottesville real estate blog, RealCentralVA.com.
A couple of interesting pieces Out There about housing inventory. Keep in mind as you read them, of course, that so much about inventory is estimates; take it all with a grain of salt.
First there’s good ol’ “shadow inventory,” aka the foreclosure pipeline: homes that are not on the market yet, but are in or near foreclosure and thus will soon be available. There is much hand-wringing about how this lurking wave of distressed property will affect the rest of the market.
The problem, though, is that there isn’t an official definition of “near foreclosure.” As a Wall Street Journal story points out, how much is coming down the pike depends on who you ask. In the paper’s quick survey, the numbers ranged from CoreLogic’s guess estimate of 1.6 million homes to Amherst Securities’s 10.3 million guess estimate.
Why the range? Because you’re trying to guess how many homes will be in foreclosure based on things like “days past due” that are far from reliable indicators.
So why should you care about shadow inventory? Because foreclosures (as we know) can play havok with property values. The more distressed sales that come out of the shadows, the greater the impact on existing prices.
It’s like trying to guess the size of the earthquake so you can decide how big a tsunami is coming. (But you don’t have a seismograph, and there are a lot of other factors that will determine the tidal wave’s power.)
But wait, there’s more!
So you’ve got all these foreclosures in the pipeline. Some of them take months, some take years (and some will never happen). Now add the fact that the foreclosure process across the country ground to a halt when lenders were caught with the whole fake paperwork, forged signature, robo-signing mess. Those homes will eventually make it back into the system, adding power to the forthcoming wave.
Meantime, because lenders are being careful (and legal) this time, foreclosures are taking a lot longer than they had been.
Some people say we need to speed up the foreclosure process — let’s get this mess over with (and the market back to ‘normal’) ASAP. Others point out that that lenders have shown they aren’t exactly trustworthy, so we need to make sure things are kosher before we kick people out of their homes.
And the Fed says that A) unnecessary foreclosures are hurting the market, and B) we need to put foreclosed homes back on the market slowly to avoid a shock to the system.
Messy, huh?
What’s the bottom line? Prices have been falling. The shadow inventory will eventually — quickly or slowly — see the light of day. That will probably push prices down, but it’s impossible to say whether it will be by a lot or a little.
How’s that for a Monday afternoon reading list?
What do 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008 have in common? They’re all among the top worst years for home sales since the Census Bureau started tracking them.
Here’s the full list:
2011 302,000 sold
2010 323,000
2009 375,000
1982 412,000
1981 436,000
1969 448,000
1966 461,000
1970 485,000
2008 485,000
1967 487,000
(Note: If you guessed “They were in the top-10 warmest years on record, you’d be wrong. 2011 was the 11th warmest, and 2008 was #12.)
We’ve released the 4th Quarter 2011 Virginia Home Sales Report, and for the second consecutive quarter there has been an increase in the annualized pace of home sales in Virginia.
Despite the improvement in the long-term sales pace, as shown above, median home prices have continued to decline in most regions of the state.
The increases in the pace of home sales have all taken place in price ranges under $200,000 – pictured above – with higher price ranges showing anywhere from a 3% to 24% decline over the past year.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for a significant new law to help struggling homeowners reduce their debt load.
He asked for new legislation that would give all homeowners who are current on their mortgages — not just those whose loans are backed by Fannie and Freddie — the opportunity to refinance at record low mortgage rates. (“No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks.”)
Right now, because home values have plummeted and so many people have lost income, refinancing may be impossible. A new law would remove the roadblock … at least for borrowers who are current.
Of course, there are issues and questions. Would these refinanced loans be backed up by Fannie/Freddie/FHA? Is that putting taxpayers at risk? (Answer: Probably not, because it’s only for people who are making payments, so we’re not talking about overly risky loans.)
But just in case, the Obama Administration wants to impose a fee on the financial institutions that got us into this mess — money that would be used to alleviate any losses.
And speaking of those companies, the President also wants to create a task force to prevent future mortgage fraud by lenders. (“Some financial firms violate major anti-fraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat offender. That’s bad for consumers, and it’s bad for the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals who do the right thing.”)
Obviously, these two plans — easier refinancing, fraud prevention — aren’t expected to solve the housing issue alone. There is no magic bullet or single, simple policy that will. But NAR, among other organizations, recognized them as important steps.
