Team Thayer Property Servicing

Housing Demand Is Going Up!  Demand for single-family housing reached its highest level since June 2013, having picked up momentum after Labor Day, according to Redfin’s Housing Demand Index for September 2016 . According to Redfin, buyer demand rose by 13.3 percent over-the-month in September up to a level of 105, its highest level in three-plus years, after nearly 32 percent more potential buyers toured homes and nearly 27 percent more potential buyers made offers. A reading of higher than 100 for the Redfin Housing Demand Index indicates stronger or higher-than-expected demand, while a reading of lower than 100 indicates weak demand. For September 2015, the reading was 101. This data indicates that there is a healthy pool of buyers ready and willing to purchase a home as long as they find the right one, according to Redfin. “Buyer demand gained momentum after Labor Day when a pop of fresh listings hit the market,” said Redfin chief economist Nela Richardson. New li...

A recent report from ATTOM Data Solutions, parent company for RealtyTrac, found that although men may make more money than women, women do a better job of avoiding foreclosure. ATTOM reports that in order to determine this information, they looked at the public property records for more than five million single-family home and condos nationwide. Specifically, it is noted that overall male homeowners have slightly higher foreclosure rates compared to female homeowners. This is represented by 73 out of 10,000 male homeowners in foreclosure compared to 72 out of every 10,000 female homeowners. Following this trend married men and widowers both have significantly higher foreclosure rates than married women and widows. Broken down further, it was shown that 83 out of every 10,000 married male homeowners are in foreclosure. This is compared to 66 out of every 10,000 married female homeowners. It was also shown that 112 out of every 10,000 widowed male homeowners were in foreclosu...

With less REO properties available for investors, declines in REO sales triggered a further decline for national cash sales. Not all states experienced the same level of decline though, according to  the latest Cash Sales and Distressed Sales Data Report from CoreLogic . Cash sales accounted for 29.7 percent of total home sales in July 2016, down 1.9 percentage points year over year from July 2015. Prior to the housing crisis, the cash sales share of total home sales averaged approximately 25 percent. CoreLogic reports that if the cash sales share continues to fall at the same rate it did in July 2016, the share should hit 25 percent by mid-2018. REO sales, no surprise, had the largest cash sales share in July 2016 at 57.6 percent. Following behind, resales had the next highest cash sales share at 29.4 percent with short sales close behind at 28.1 percent and newly constructed homes at 15 percent. While the percentage of REO sales within the all-cash category remained high,...

Foreclosure timelines declined over the year in the third quarter, a first in RealtyTrac’s reporting history, according to the latest Foreclosure Market Report released Thursday by ATTOM Data Solutions, the parent company of RealtyTrac. RealtyTrac has been reporting foreclosure timelines since 2007. It took five fewer days to foreclose a home in the third quarter of this year than in the third quarter of last year, according to RealtyTrac, which reported an average foreclosure timeline of 625 days in Q3 2016. This momentous decline was “the final nail in the coffin of the foreclosure crisis,” according to Daren Blomquist, SVP at ATTOM Data Solutions. “The decrease in the average foreclosure timeline indicates that banks have worked through the bulk of the legacy foreclosure backlog in most states – with a few lingering exceptions – and that most of the foreclosures being completed now are relatively recent defaults that are more efficiently progressing through the foreclosure...

Foreclosures and foreclosure inventory are definitively down. Compared to a year earlier, the foreclosure inventory nationally in August was 30 percent lower, while the actual number of completed foreclosures was down by more than 42 percent, according to  CoreLogic ’s  August 2016 National Foreclosure Report . In raw numbers, there were 37,000 completed foreclosures in August. A year ago, there were 64,000. The national foreclosure inventory included approximately 351,000 homes with a mortgage (about 1 percent) compared with 499,000 homes last year. The numbers made August’s foreclosure inventory rate the lowest it's been since July 2007. CoreLogic also reported that the number of mortgages in serious delinquency (90 days or more past due, including loans in foreclosure or REO) declined by 20.6 percent from last August. The decline was geographically broad with decreases in serious delinquency in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Over the year, Florida had twi...

This week the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Failla v. CitiBank that debtors who file a statement of intention to surrender property in bankruptcy cannot later contest a foreclosure action, and bankruptcy courts have broad power and authority to sanction violations. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit’s ruling eases foreclosures in that circuit because, first, it means that a debtor who discharges mortgage debt by surrendering property can’t oppose creditors who then try to foreclose in state court, and second, it speeds that process. Specifically, bankruptcy courts can order debtors who surrender property to drop their opposition to foreclosure. According to  a report from Bloomberg BNA , this case involved husband and wife David and Donna Failla, who defaulted on their mortgage in 2009 and subsequently filed for bankruptcy in 2011. The couple then agreed to surrender their house to discharge the mortgage debt, but fought Citibank's foreclosure proceedin...

Each state differs in what it requires sellers to disclose. In fact, only one disclosure is required by the federal government: whether there’s any lead-based paint on the property, and that applies only to structures built before 1978. Read between the lines of a disclosure report with these tips that let you know what to look out for and why. How old is your roof? You see on the disclosure statement that the roof is 8 years old, but that doesn’t tell you much — unless you know the typical life span of a roof or whether life span depends on roofing material. Roofs can last anywhere between 10 and 50 years. “The traditional tar-and-gravel roofs typically have a much shorter life span than almost any other roof material,” says Michael Thompson, an  Oakland, CA , real estate agent. Tar-and-gravel roofs usually last 10 to 20 years. The popular composition shingle roofs usually last about 20 years, and the clay roofs that you see on...

1. The name of your street People typically prefer the street they live on to have a name versus a number. It’s true nationwide (with the exceptions of New York, NY, and Atlanta, GA, where there is no difference, and Denver, CO, where numbers are favored). According to a study by Trulia,  “street” is the least expensive address suffix  by price per square foot, and “boulevard” is the most expensive. 2. Your house number Ever heard of house numerology? This is the practice of assigning a single-digit number to your home based on its address. Let’s say your address is 1219 Main St. Add 1 + 2 + 1 + 9 to get 13. Then add 1 + 3. Your house would be 4: good for investments and security but bad for adventure and excitement. While this type of house numerology may be passed off as a superstition, buyers who subscribe to this theory may overlook potential homes because of their numerology calculations. However, whether or not you’re into numerology,...

The current pace of home price appreciation, considering that inflation is below the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent, is probably not sustainable, but the housing market is not in immediate danger of collapse similar to 2008, according to the  S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller National Index for July 2016  released Tuesday. The index is just above half a percentage point from its all-time high—reached in 2006 during the bubble—and home prices appreciated by 5.1 percent over-the-year in July, slightly higher than June’s pace of 5.0 percent. The three cities with the highest over-the-year home price appreciation in July were Portland (12.4 percent), Seattle (11.2 percent), and Denver (9.4 percent). “The S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller National Index is within 0.6 percent of the record high set in July 2006,” said David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Seven of the 20 cities have already set new r...

Rick Sharga, CMO for Ten-X, spoke with DS News at the 2016 Five Star Conference and Expo to discuss current foreclosure trends and their impact on the investment sector of the market. Sharga became CMO of Ten-X in January 2016, after spending two years with the company (then branded as Auction.com) as an Executive Vice President. One of the country’s most frequently-quoted sources on real estate, mortgage and foreclosure trends, Sharga has appeared on the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, ABC World News, CNBC, FOX, Bloomberg and NPR; briefed government organizations such as the Federal Reserve and Senate Banking Committee; and corporations like JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Deutsche Bank. Prior to joining Auction.com, Sharga was an Executive Vice President for Carrington Mortgage Holdings, which owns and operates multiple businesses in the mortgage, real estate and securities industries. Sharga also spent eight years at RealtyTrac, where as senior vice president he ...

REO sales are not what they used to be. In fact, in June, REO sales hit their lowest point in nine years, according to a new report by CoreLogic . Overall distressed sales in June accounted for 8 percent of U.S. sales. REOs accounted for 5 percent, which is a far cry from January of 2009, when REOs made up 30 percent of U.S. home sales. REO sales in June were 2 percent below last June and at their lowest for any month since September 2007. While distressed sales play an important role in clearing the housing market of foreclosed properties, they sell at a discount to non-distressed sales, and when the share of distressed sales is high, it can pull down the prices of non-distressed sales. With this in mind, REO sales continued decrease contributes to the home price increase of 5.3 percent seen earlier this month. California had the largest improvement of any state from its peak distressed sales share, falling 60.6 percentage points from its January 2009 peak of 67.5...