Foreclosed 3 times in 5 years!

Stay the hell away from this house! Seriously, someone put the whammy on this thing. It's triple jinxed. 27684 Fairmont in MoVal has gone through 3 foreclosures in 5 years. If that's not a record it has to at least be tied.

Purchased new

Dec 15, 2004

Sold (Public Records)

$380,000

Foreclosed
Jan 18, 2006 Sold (Public Records) $351,000

Sold at the peak as REO

May 22, 2006

Sold (Public Records)

$430,000

Foreclosed two years later
Apr 15, 2008 Sold (Public Records) $198,817

Sold again as REO

Aug 29, 2008

Sold (Public Records)

$260,000

Foreclosed AGAIN
Aug 12, 2010 Sold (Public Records) $211,806

And now it's listed for $240k. That's seems about $40k too high to me and Zillow actually agrees with me. But I wouldn't buy this thing, it's freeking hexed!

And this is why you better be buying for the long term

This is a pretty good read about a guy that bought and a couple of years later wants to sell. Big losses!

Losing BIG

Let me preface this by saying that I never wanted to buy a home. I knew the financial risks, the fact that in most cases you have to stay in a home a long time to even have a chance of making it a profitable investment, and that a home can take a lot of effort and money to maintain. My wife, on the other hand, just couldn't fathom the idea of not purchasing a house once our son was born even though we had lived together happily in various apartments for almost 10 years. While I tried in vein to explain the many downsides to home ownership, I just couldn't break through to her, and therefore gave in as any good husband should. Big mistake!

Three years after purchasing our home in the spring of 2008, my wife now sees the light and finds the idea of home ownership as repugnant as I always have. Due to a multitude of reasons and factors, we decided to put our home on the market. It's now been over a year and we've yet to sell, but when we do, we stand to lose a boatload of money. As hard as it is to believe at times, and while the two often correlate, sometimes happiness really is more important than money.....

Skip ahead again to the present. With continued real estate market issues, we now have our home listed at $249,000, a full $45,000 under our purchase price. Now you might be asking yourself why we don't just take it off the market and wait out this rough patch. It's a good question, one that I have asked myself a multitude of times, and one that's hard to answer without a person being in our situation. Let's just say that being closer to my ailing mother in Washington, our happiness, and the opportunity to be out from under what to us is a heavy burden, is worth the loss, be it a big one. So get ready for the numbers.

Even if we sell our home for the full asking price, which I don't count on happening in this market, it will be well under the price we paid three years ago.

- Loss of $45,000 on price of home
- 5% Realtor's commission on $249,000 is $12,450
- 3% closing costs on $249,000 is $7,470
- Total losses on the sale of the home at its current price would be just under $65,000.

This doesn't even factor in the increased costs of owning a home as compared with the apartment we were renting for $780 a month with free heat, water and trash. Things like annual property taxes, homeowner's insurance, increased utilities, repairs and maintenance, interest on our mortgage, and similar costs add additional tens of thousands of dollars to our losses, unless you want to consider them costs of the opportunity to live in a house.

I'll take it!

Another notch down or teaser short sale listings? I have to wonder with some of the listings popping up. Up in Norco Hills (Bretton Gate) there are 2 new short sale listings under $400k. One of them is decked out with a pool, putting green and stables. 1457 Foxtrotter is the house I speak of. This 3900 s/f 5 bedroom house is pretty darn nice and I cannot see any lender letting this go for the $400k that it's listed for. Based on recent comps this thing should easily fetch $550k or more. Then there is 230 Haflinger listed at $350k. Again based on comps it's probably worth $450k. These two should get a lot of attention and probably a lot of offers too. It will be interesting to see if they actually sell for anything close to listing price. If they do, they instantly put all the recent buyers a good $100k underwater!

Feb's numbers from DQ

The DQ report for Feb is out. The sale numbers are terrible however the median in the IE managed to inch up slightly over January (that's fairly normal). YoY median is down slightly though. It's fairly obvious that a very high percentage of the market is investors. 32% of sales were cash! And I would bet it's a higher percentage in the IE..........................

Southern California’s housing market remained sluggish in February despite relatively strong demand from investors and others paying cash for homes. Prices appeared fairly flat as many potential home buyers stayed on the sidelines and waited – whether for a sign values have bottomed, job security has improved or credit has loosened, a real estate information service reported.

Last month 14,369 new and resale houses and condos sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties. That was down 0.6 percent from 14,458 in January, and down 6.4 percent from 15,359 in February 2010, according to DataQuick Information Systems of San Diego.

The total number of homes sold last month was the lowest for a February since 2008, when 10,777 sold, and the second-lowest since 1995, when 12,459 sold. Last month’s sales fell 19.5 percent short of the Southland’s average February sales tally – 17,848 – since 1988.

Last month’s distressed sales – the combination of sales of foreclosed homes and “short sales” – accounted for well over half of the resale market.

Foreclosure resales – properties foreclosed on in the prior 12 months – made up 37.1 percent of resales last month, up from 36.8 percent in January but down from 42.4 percent a year ago. Over the past year foreclosure resales hit a low of 32.8 percent last June but since then they’ve trended higher. Foreclosure resales peaked at 56.7 percent in February 2009.

Short sales – transactions where the sale price fell short of what was owed on the property – made up an estimated 19.8 percent of Southland resales last month. That was up from an estimated 19.7 percent in January, 18.4 percent a year earlier, and 12.0 percent two years ago.

The abundance of distressed homes for sale continues to attract unusually high levels of investor and cash-only buyers. Buyers who paid cash accounted for a record 31.7 percent of February home sales, paying a median $200,000. That was up from 30.4 in January and 30.1 percent a year earlier. The February cash level was the highest for any month in DataQuick’s statistics back to 1988. The 10-year monthly average for the percentage of Southland homes purchased with cash is 13.1 percent. Cash purchases are where there was no indication in the public record that a corresponding purchase loan was recorded.

At the county level last month, the overall median sale price fell on a year-over-year basis in four counties and was unchanged in two. Declines from a year ago were logged in Orange (-1.7 percent), Riverside (-1.0 percent), San Diego (-4.3 percent), and Ventura (-1.4 percent) counties, while the median was the same as a year ago in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

The median paid for the largest home-type category – resale single-family detached houses – fell year-over-year last month in Orange (-3.1 percent), San Diego (-3.1 percent) and Ventura (-9.6 percent) counties. The other three counties recorded annual gains ranging from 2.6 percent in Los Angeles and Riverside counties to 3.6 percent in San Bernardino County.

The typical monthly mortgage payment that Southland buyers committed themselves to paying was $1,174 last month, up from $1,128 in January and down from $1,180 in February 2010. Adjusted for inflation, current payments are 48.1 percent below typical payments in the spring of 1989, the peak of the prior real estate cycle. They are 57.4 percent below the current cycle’s peak in July 2007.

	Sales Volume			Median Price
All homes	Feb-10	Feb-11	%Chng	Feb-10	Feb-11	%Chng
Los Angeles	5,034	4,736	-5.90%	$315,000	$315,000	0.00%
Orange	1,986	1,903	-4.20%	$417,000	$410,000	-1.70%
Riverside	3,199	2,842	-11.20%	$197,000	$195,000	-1.00%
San Bernardino	2,095	1,974	-5.80%	$150,000	$150,000	0.00%
San Diego	2,465	2,330	-5.50%	$322,000	$308,000	-4.30%
Ventura	580	584	0.70%	$350,000	$345,000	-1.40%
SoCal	15,359	14,369	-6.40%	$275,000	$275,000	0.00%

More Mortgage Mod news

State attorneys general have presented the nation’s five biggest banks with a list of demands that could drastically alter the foreclosure process and give the government sweeping authority over how mortgage servicers deal with millions of Americans in danger of losing their homes.

Under the blueprint, banks would be prohibited from starting foreclosure proceedings while a borrower was actively trying to lower the interest rate or ease other terms of the home loan, a process known as a mortgage modification.

Any borrower who successfully made three payments in a trial modification would be given a permanent modification. When a modification was denied, it would be automatically reviewed by an ombudsman or independent review panel.

The proposed changes, which will be discussed by the attorneys general when they meet in Washington early next week, would compel the banks to treat each borrower in default individually.

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I don't see how they can force the lenders to do this but who knows anymore. It will certainly get a lot of borrowers excited about the prospect of finally getting a loan mod.