October 24th, 2007
Realtors’ report more bad news for sellers
Homeowners with “For Sale” signs in their front yards can tell you everything you need to know about the residential real estate market: It’s tough to move a home.
Homeowners with “For Sale” signs in their front yards can tell you everything you need to know about the residential real estate market: It’s tough to move a home.
Countrywide Financial Corp. is a giant in the mortgage-lending business. The company, in fact, originates more mortgage loans than does any other. So when Countrywide on Oct. 23 announced that it would take extra steps to help borrowers who are facing serious jumps in the interest rates on their mortgage loans, it’s a big deal.
Nearly 70 percent of homeowners in a recent survey said that homeowners associations are a “major headache” or a “minor annoyance.” The associations have such a bad reputation, that 25 percent of the respondents to the survey had never lived under the rules of one.
Hopefully, there are a lot more than seven things my readers don’t know about me, but here are seven that aren’t too embarrassin.
Agents need not worry as much about an overpopulated industry: It looks like that October high will be the last membership record that the Realtors association will set for a long time. Ever since that month, the association’s membership numbers have been dropping.
Is it time for mortgage professionals to flee the home-lending business? If you’ve read the newspapers lately, listened to the radio, watched your network news or logged onto the Internet, you’d think so.
According to the CLEAN survey, 84 percent of U.S. residents say that the country should focus on the aggressive expansion of wind, solar and other renewable resources. The same percent agreed that homeowners should receive incentives for making their homes more energy efficient.
But people shouldn’t be too envious of the owners of these lavish homes. Selling a high-end home is a real struggle in today’s down residential market. How many buyers can there be for a house that retails for $135 million?
Fair Housing laws mandate that real estate agents are to help buyers find properties. They’re allowed to tell you prety much anything regarding the physical structure of the home you’re considering. But they are not allowed to interpret, and give their opinion, on local demographics.
Housing starts across the nation declined 10.2 percent in September. The reason, according to the National Association of Home Builders, is that builders have decided to reduce their inventories as the mortgage market continues its struggles.
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Written by Dan Rafter [email] for b5media.
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