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Showing posts with label Really. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Really. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

In Miami Housing Market, Cash Really is King

Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Friday, May 4, 2012, 8:16 AM
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[click to expand]

I wanted to illustrate how little of the Miami housing market today is financed with a mortgage. And despite that, sales activity is trending higher. Counter intuitive but a reflection of its two drivers of demand: investor at the lower end and cash buyers, often foreign, at the upper end.

Any thoughts on the FHA, Conventional financing cross over back in 2Q 2011?

I’m slowly starting to build our Miami chart archive.


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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Comment of the Day: "I really wish we would just...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, January 4, 2012, by Sally Kuchar

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? Previous: Prime and Pristine Marina Manse Would Like a Buyer


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Sunday, December 18, 2011

What Are Buyers Really Putting Down for a Mortgage?

Ask the Realtors, the Builders, even the Housing Reporters, and they'll all tell you that the biggest impediments to housing's recovery are higher credit underwriting standards. Mortgage application

Down payments are a big part of that, as most mortgage market experts will say you can't get those great low rates today without putting down at least 20 percent, and more if you need a jumbo loan.

That's why a new report from LendingTree listing the states with the highest and lowest average mortgage down payments was so surprising to me. It wasn't the states, but the cash down.

New Jersey came in with the highest average, but that average was just 13.76 percent, according to LendingTree. North Dakota boasts the lowest average at 12.29 percent. Still both are well below the 20 percent we all complain about.

Granted FHA (Federal Housing Administration) loans, which due to the government insurance, require very low down payments, and while they rose to a very large share of the market during the worst years of the housing crash, they have since fallen back to an approximately 20 percent share of originations today.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require at least 10 percent down, but then you have to pay private mortgage insurance to get the best rates.

"The reality is when you put less than 20 percent down, you have to pay for some kind of insurance to protect the lender from the higher risk that you'll default...but private mortgage insurers these days aren't always willing to do business with low down payments," notes a LendingTree spokesman.

If average down payments are this low, it raises concern over proposed mortgage industry regulation that would require a 20 percent down payment for a lender to be able to securitize and sell a loan fully into the marketplace. Lenders, like LendingTree, don't like it.

"If Federal regulators were to adopt the proposed 20 percent down payment requirement, a majority of borrowers wouldn’t be able to meet the standard given the findings in this report," said Doug Lebda, founder and CEO of LendingTree.

But what if the average that LendingTree is reporting, isn't what it appears to be?

"What we know is that 20-25 percent of mortgages nationwide carry down payments of 3.5 percent or less (FHA or VA) while most of the rest carry down payments of 20 percent or more (Fannie, Freddie and jumbo)," notes Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance. "So an average of 12 or 14 percent is not impossible, but it doesn't really mean that a lot of people are actually getting mortgages with those "average" down payments."

Don't you just hate it when real math gets in the way of a good lobby?

Questions?  Comments?  document.write("");document.write("RealtyCheck"+"@"+"cnbc.com");document.write('');And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick


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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Controversies: Michael Moore Widely Slammed For Having a Really Big House

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, November 14, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Moore_HouseLake.jpg
Photo via The Michigan View

Filmmaker Michael Moore, who was just described by a Village Voice blog as being "giddy with triumphalism over the burgeoning movement [of Occupy Wall Street] that half his remarks were delivered through high, breathy giggles," owns a 10,000-square-foot mansion on Torch Lake on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It's got a taxable value of nearly $1M and it may be worth twice that. Alas, lots of people are none too pleased.

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitman, led the charges, writing on his blog Big Hollywood: "No one begrudges Moore his wealth, but it is deceitful for him to claim poverty while encouraging class warfare among other Americans." Breitman mentions the fact that the area is considered by locals as the “third most beautiful lake in the world.”

Over on political blog The Michigan View there's this: "But calling Moore's lake property a "home" would be an understatement. This is a manor. A Kennedy compound. An ostentatious, big-foot show of wealth," adding, "Moore's hypocrisy is a perfect fit for a confused Occupy movement that boasts support from Big Labor, millionaire musicians and spoiled Harvard kids."

Concurring is Red Kingman over at Holland, Mich.-based radio station WHTC. In a blog post entitled "So typical of the left," Kingman details his shock at viewing Moore's house photos: "How can this be? Easy, it's how the left operates. They figure that their follers [sic] are morons and that they can tell them anything because the masses will believe it. What other explanation could their be for so many to heed the words of Mr. Moore while he himself is a multi millionaire?"

Finally the Daily Mail, ever the sensationalist, paints this picture: The spacious 10,000 sq ft property is a far cry from the scene of tightly-packed tents near Wall Street in New York City." Plus, a non sequitur: "The township is roughly 98 per cent white residents, according to statistics from 2009."

Meanwhile, fellow one-percenter Russell Simmons has Moore's back. On Friday, the he hip-hop mogul Tweeted, "99.99999 percent are not contributing anything. Thank michael moore kanye jayz 50cemt crosby stills and young for doing something"

· Exclusive Photos: Michael Moore’s Massive Michigan Vacation Mansion Beyond 99 Percent’s Wildest Dreams [Big Hollywood via The Atlantic Wire]
· Occupy Michael Moore: His Opulent Lake House [The Michigan View]
· So Typical Of The Left [WHTC]
· Luxury 99 per cent of Americans can only dream of...Michael Moore's stunning waterfront mansion revealed [Daily Mail]
· @UncleRUSH [Twitter]


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Sunday, September 11, 2011

Comment of the Day: "I'm trying really, really, really hard...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, September 6, 2011, by Sally Kuchar

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? Previous: A Ruined Credit Card Tycoon's Estate


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Saturday, September 10, 2011

Controversies: Today in really bad press, a...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, September 8, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

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Friday, September 2, 2011

Really Old Buildings: Newgrange, a curved monument in County...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, August 25, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

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? Previous: Round 3 Closed, Round 4 Imminent: Meet Your Final Four!

? Next: Katie Lee Moves On


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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Globe Trotting: Portuguese Farmland Residence Really Shows Off its Curves

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, May 25, 2011, by Sarah Firshein Photos: Iwan Bann via Freshome

Freshome is taking a look at House on the Flight of Birds, which not, in fact, the working title of Nicholas Sparks's new book but rather a terrific-looking modernist house in the Azores. Designed by Portuguese architect Bernando Rodrigues, the place was designed to block rain and wind prevalent in the region. Plus, there's an absolutely sick-looking roof deck with views of the beach. Have a look at the photos above.

· Bernando Rodrigues Arquitecto [official site]
· Stunning Ondulating [sic] Home in the Azores: House on the Flight of Birds [Freshome]


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Saturday, May 14, 2011

Dwelling: Gatsby House: Really Old Listing Photos Reveal Former Grandeur

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, March 10, 2011, by Sarah Firshein Photos via SPLIA via Old Long Island

Land's End, the Sands Point, N.Y., estate rumored to have inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's vision of Daisy Buchanan's house in The Great Gatsby, has surely seen fairer times. The colonial revival is spending its final days as a decaying, peeling mess as it waits to be razed and turned into a development community. But like all Stanford White-designed properties built during the turn of the 20th century, it once had serious grace and grandeur, as proven by an old listing brochure posted on blog Old Long Island. We're awaiting confirmation of what year it's from, exactly, but it lists the house (as well as its on-grounds caretaker's cottage and two greenhouses) for $2.5M—and that includes "all furniture, drapes, linens, complete service of English threat silver and Baccarat crystal for 48, furnishings in all bldgs." To boot: we're assuming the brochure is from far before November 2009, when Land's End hit the market for $30M. In the mean time, have a look at the really terrific photos above.

UPDATE: Old Long Island estimates the photos are from the '70s or early '80s, before Land's End was purchased in 1983.

· Gatsby House to Become True "Valley of the Ashes" Development [Curbed National]
· When 'Kidd's Rocks'/'Land's End' Was For Sale [Old Long Island]


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Thursday, May 5, 2011

PM Linkage: Dolores Park Shenanigans; Don King's Gaudy Digs; Really Nice Closets; More!

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Monday, May 2, 2011

That's Rather Hideous: Things Are Really Looking Up in This Texan Contemporary

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, March 4, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Move over, Michelangelo! The real ceiling fun is happening in Dallas, where a 14,670-square-foot estate on the market for $12.5M is all about what's happening overhead. Said "exquisite ceiling treatments," as the listing describes them, pervade the eight-bedroom behemoth, which also includes a media room, great room, master great room, and very mysterious-sounding "project room." While each ceiling varies wildly in color, tone, and scope, unity is achieved by the overstuffed La-Z Boy loungers that pepper the space. Have a look above.

· 10660 Strait Lane, Dallas [Trulia]


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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Penthouses: What Happens in Vegas Really Does Involve Mirrored Ceilings

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, April 19, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

For those with a footing in the strange, strange world of interiors and architecture, there is no greater feeling of Nirvana than when the design of a space melds seamlessly with its surroundings. And so such a feeling came to pass when we stumbled upon this penthouse in Veer Towers, one of the condo buildings in the relatively new Las Vegas mixed-use development CityCenter. Designed and recently completed by Mark Tracy of local firm Chemical Spaces, the space looks like what would happen if someone tried to stuff the entire strip inside a glassy aerie, complete with shimmery blue mosaics on the floors, walls, and ceilings; 120 linear feet of RGB LED lighting that runs around the penthouse's entire perimeter; a custom triangular-shaped mirrored ceiling designed to accentuate "the neon shining through the windows"; and "a chandelier encased in a blue glass cube." Plus, here's something one doesn't ordinarily see mentioned in project descriptions: a "main party area."

· City Center Penthouse by Mark Tracy of Chemical Spaces [Contemporist]
· Chemical Spaces [official site]


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Friday, April 15, 2011

PM Linkage: Really Big and Cool Garage Sale in Berkeley; Bike Party; Fancy Bathrooms; More!

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox.

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Saturday, March 19, 2011

That's Rather Strange: Someone Really Must Love Midcentury Seating...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, February 3, 2011, by Sarah

· Nick Baxter Tattoo Galleries [official site]


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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Friday, January 28, 2011

Saturday, January 22, 2011

What MA Foreclosure Court Ruling Really Means

Now that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has upheld a lower court's ruling that Wells Fargo [WFC  Loading...      ()   ] and U.S. Bancorp [USB  Loading...      ()   ] did not have the proper paperwork to foreclose on two homes, the question is what that means for the broader mortgage market and the future of millions of foreclosures in or about to be in process? Not only does this decision affect individual foreclosures, but it throws into question the entire mortgage securitization process.

Paul J. Richards | AFP | Getty ImagesWe've spent a lot of time on this blog discussing the process of how loans were divided, mixed, bundled and sold over and over during the heat and height of the housing boom.

The issue in contest over foreclosures now lies with the "note," or the IOU on the mortgage. The mortgage is the security that says the house is the collateral. Ownership of the note is critical because that note must be transferred when the mortgage is traded around. During securitization a process called "endorsements in blank" are used, so that mortgages can be transferred quickly. But you still need that note when you foreclose.

"This is really about endorsed/assigned in blank," says JT Smith of Aristar Funding. "Judges didn’t understand and transfer taxes were not paid. This is going to get very ugly. The mortgages became like bearer bonds in that whoever had possession of original wet copy was the owner, and if you didn’t have that you could not foreclose. Then if you did why didn’t you pay transfer taxes?"

"Many people might look at this and say 'I can get my house free and clear if I just contest the foreclosure and get a favorable judge that sides on my side.”

Paul Miller
FBR

It's exactly what Prof. Adam Levitin told me way back in October:

"The mortgage is still owed, but there's going to be a problem figuring out who actually holds the mortgage, and they would be the ones bringing the foreclosure. You have a trust that has been getting payments from borrowers for years that it has no right to receive. So you might see borrowers suing the trusts saying give me my money back, you're stealing my money. You're going to then have trusts that don't have any assets that have been issuing securities that say they're backed by a whole bunch of assets, and you're going to have investors suing the trustees for failing to inspect the collateral files, which the trustees say they're going to do, and you're going to have trustees suing the securitization sponsors for violating their representations and warrantees about what they were transferring."

So now what?

95 percent of troubled borrowers currently do not contest their foreclosures, Paul Miller of FBR tells me. He sees this less about the specific case as the perception of this case:

"If you see more and more of these headlines, many people might look at this and say 'I can get my house free and clear if I just contest the foreclosure and get a favorable judge that sides on my side. All of the sudden I have a free mortgage.' That’s not what’s going to happen in this case," Miller said in an interview. He believes these two homes will eventually go to foreclosure.

In fact, this Massachusetts case may not be exactly as the headlines are screaming.

The American Securitization Forum, immediately after the ruling, put out a statement saying, "The ASF is pleased the Court validated the use of the conveyance language in securitization documents as being sufficient to prove transfers of mortgages under unique aspects of Massachusetts law.

Importantly, unlike the lower court, tithe Court also said assignments of mortgage can be executed in blank, as long as a complete chain of transfers can be shown through the applicable deal documents." ASF says those documents were not introduced in the lower court and that the lower court would have ruled otherwise if they had.

"The ASF is confident securitization transfers are valid and fully enforceable," concludes the ASF's Executive Director, Tom Deutsch.

That remains to be seen, as lawsuits abound over this very issue all over the country. Clearly investors didn't like the ruling, as they sent shares of bank stocks into a despair spiral. This may be the final Massachusetts court ruling, but it will not be the final word in this chapter of the foreclosure mess.

Questions?  Comments?  document.write("");document.write("RealtyCheck"+"@"+"cnbc.com");document.write('');And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick

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