Chase Bank is expecting the housing market to fully recover, and will be ready with an amped-up lending sales force when it does.

Think the sky is still falling in the housing market? Chase Bank doesn’t seem to think so, with its recent announcement that it will hire 1200 new loan officers by the end of 2010.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (Chase Bank) will increase its sales force by a whopping 60% with these new additions, which are to be spread across 23 states including California, Florida and Texas, and with an emphasis on certain large metro areas like New York City and Chicago. This sales force of newly-minted loan officers will help Chase acquire more business in both the homebuying and refinance sectors of the loan industry.

“With nearly 5,200 bank branches – one of the largest networks in the country – we need to ensure each branch has seasoned mortgage professionals to help meet the needs of their communities and is well-positioned when the housing market fully recovers,” says Dave Lowman, head of home lending at Chase. The new loan officers are to work with personal bankers, real estate agents and builders, as well as with their own network of homeowners to build Chase’s portfolio of home loans.

Huh… “when the housing market fully recovers” he says… and this planned expansion is set to be complete by the end of 2010? Sounds like good news for the housing market indeed!

House and Senate agree to extend Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA loan limits through 2010.

Federally-funded home loan limits were temporarily increased in 2008, with limits up to $729,750 for high-cost areas. That increase was set to expire at the end of this year, which would have dropped the size of loans eligible for GSE and FHA funding to $625,500, so both the House and the Senate have agreed to extend the higher limits through December 31, 2010.

In California, more than 80 percent of all loans are financed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans and many California regions have the higher $729,750 loan limit in place. The extension of the higher loan limits for these federally-funded loan products is expected to help maintain the positive signs we are now seeing in California’s mortgage market.

According to Robert E. Story, Jr., chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), ”Given the lack of a private secondary mortgage market, FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac are pretty much the only game in town. Extending the current loan limits through 2010 will allow more loans to qualify for these important programs and will help keep mortgage credit more accessible and affordable for qualified borrowers.”

Declining housing inventories and deadline for federal tax credit spur home sales.

With the declining inventory of homes available for sale in the Santa Clarita Valley, it’s no surprise that the number of homes sold in the Southern California region fell during August while the median prices rose.

Santa Clarita real estate stats for August 2009 show that we have less than one month’s worth of inventory available for homebuyers to choose from, which creates a competitive situation and thus higher prices as homebuyers bid against each other for the available homes.

According to Dataquick, 21,502 new and resale homes sold in the SoCal Region, which includes Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties, during August 2009.  This number is down 10.8 percent from 24,104 in July 2009, and up 11.0 percent from 19,366 in August 2008. On top of this, August 2009 was the 14th month in a row with a year-over-year sales increase.

Although the sale of foreclosures (bank-owned or REO homes) accounted for 38.8 percent of the August resales activity, it was down from 40.7 percent in July and down from 45.5 percent in August 2008. However, this was partly due to the increase in the number of non-foreclosure resales.

So-called jumbo loans, or loans above $417,000, were used for 15.6 percent of the August 2009 SoCal home purchases, up from a low of 9.3 percent in January 2009. This percentage was as high as 40 percent of all home purchases before the credit crunch hit two years ago.

Homebuyers are also scrambling to take advantage of the $8,000 federal tax credit, which expires shortly, and this too is creating more demand for housing in the Santa Clarita Valley. The credit expires on November 30, 2009, and is only valid if you close escrow on or before that date. If you open escrow prior to November 30 but don’t close escrow by then, you will not be eligible for the credit. With that in mind, if you’re wanting to get your $8,000 in Federal funds, you’ll need to be looking for your home now in order to close escrow on time to collect that refund!

Santa Clarita Realtor Linda Slocum is a Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) and Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) specializing in Santa Clarita residential real estate and short sales. You can reach her at 661.670.0349 or at Linda@SantaClaritaRealEstateBlog.com. To search for Santa Clarita homes, use our neighborhood search tools or visit HoneyStartPacking.com.

Santa Clarita real estate inventories continue to decline as summer comes to a close.

It’s interesting to review the Santa Clarita real estate trends once in a while to get a good overview of how our local real estate market is faring in contrast to what the media would like us to believe. Remember that all real estate is local, and the trends that we see in Santa Clarita are not necessarily the same as what we’ll see in the entire Los Angeles County or Southern California areas.

When we look at median prices for single family detached homes sold in Santa Clarita during the last year (including Canyon Country, Castaic, Newhall, Saugus, Stevenson Ranch and Valencia), we see that the median price has only gone down by 9% as compared to August 2008. Median prices for single family detached homes was $410,000 in August 2009 vs $450,500 in August 2008. The median prices is defined as the middle value in a range of sold prices, i.e. half of the properties sold for more than the median price and half sold for less.

Meanwhile, the number of homes for sale in the Santa Clarita Valley has declined significantly from August 2008 to August 2009, with a whopping 51% decline in the housing inventory for single family detached homes. For purposes of this graph, the number of homes for sale represents the number of homes that were available for buyers to purchase during the month, not the number of homes for sale as of the last day of the month.

While the number of homes available for sale has been declining, the number homes that are under contract has been increasing by about the same ratio. As of August 2009, there were 47% more homes under contract than there were in August 2008. This is largely due to the lengthy process involved in getting short sales approved and closed, since it can take months for the bank to approve the short sale, and then it typically takes another 30 days after approval for the buyer to close escrow.

Short sales also skew the data for the number of homes available for sale, since many Realtors are still not in compliance with the MLS rules stating that a home should be removed from ‘active’ status when the seller signs a buyer’s purchase agreement and submits it to the bank for approval of the short sale. This means that the number of homes for sale is an inflated number, and that buyers are wasting their time looking at homes that are already under contract.

The months supply of inventory represents how long (in months) it would take to sell the remaining inventory at the present (monthly) sales rate. With the months supply of inventory at only one month as of August 2009, that means that at the current rate homes are selling there will be no homes for sale within one month if no more homes are listed for sale. Admittedly this is somewhat of a narrow-minded view of the inventory situation, since not all homes listed for sale will sell during the next month without price reductions or other changes, but statistically there is only one month’s worth of homes available for sale as of the end of August 2009. This is quite a change from August 2008, where there was a 7-month supply of housing inventory. And, assuming that many of the homes showing as available for sale as of August 2009 are short sales with contracts already submitted to the bank, the months supply of inventory is actually lower than calculated.

If you’re looking to purchase a home in the Santa Clarita Valley or if you’re thinking of selling and want to see what homes are selling for in your neighborhood, you can search for homes using our handy neighborhood search tools. The low inventory of homes for sale means a higher demand for the homes that are available for sale, so don’t expect well-priced homes to be available for very long.

Santa Clarita Realtor Linda Slocum is a Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) specializing in Santa Clarita residential real estate and short sales. You can reach her at 661.670.0349 or at Linda@SantaClaritaRealEstateBlog.com. Data is extracted from the SoCalMLS and is deemed reliable, but is not guaranteed.

Low housing inventories in the Santa Clarita Valley mean that buyers continue to compete against each other for available homes.

The number of homes for sale in the Santa Clarita Valley remains very low as we approach the Labor Day weekend.

Here’s a quick snapshot of Santa Clarita real estate activity as of September 1, 2009:

Detached (single family) homes:

• Available for Sale: 384
• In Escrow (includes Pending and Backup status): 638

Attached homes (condos and townhomes):

• Available for Sale: 139
• In Escrow (includes Pending and Backup status): 336

Total homes (detached and attached):

• Available for Sale: 523
• In Escrow (includes Pending and Backup status): 974

Of these homes, it’s likely that a large percentage of the “available” homes already have multiple offers on them, since many Realtors are not complying with the MLS rules stating that short sale listings should be changed to backup status as soon as the seller (not the bank) has accepted an offer. These homes can remain in active status for months as the banks wind their way through the lengthy short sale approval process.

The low real estate inventory in Santa Clarita means that many buyers are finding that it’s difficult to get an offer accepted on a home, since they are often competing against several other buyers for the same home. This means that the buying strategy needs to be much different than it was when the market was still slow-moving and there were plenty of homes to choose from. Having a highly-qualified Realtor and lender on your team are critical in this market, both for guidance and for negotiating power when you do submit an offer on a home. Patience is often needed as well, since a lot of the homes currently available for sale are short sales, and thus you may have to wait a few months before your offer is accepted by the bank.

Santa Clarita Realtor Linda Slocum is a Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) specializing in Santa Clarita residential real estate and short sales. You can reach her at 661.670.0349 or at Linda@SantaClaritaRealEstateBlog.com. Data is extracted from the SoCalMLS and is deemed reliable, but is not guaranteed.

Foreclosure activity remains relatively low for the Santa Clarita Valley area.

Foreclosure auctions in Santa Clarita remain relatively low compared to much of the Los Angeles area for the first quarter of 2009. Canyon Country continues to have the most foreclosure activity, with 130 foreclosures in zip codes 91351 and 91387 combined.

Santa Clarita Foreclosure Map First Quarter 2009

Of the 265 zip codes within the Los Angeles area, Santa Clarita ranks as high as 34 and as low as 151 for total foreclosure activity within a single zip code, with Canyon Country’s zip 91351 being the highest and Stevenson Ranch and Westridge zip code 91381 being the lowest. 

With various incentives and moratoriums being issued at both the federal and state level, it is unclear whether this decline in forecosure activity will continue, or if we’ll see a surge in foreclosure activity now that the federal stimulus package is in place. It seems that banks are getting more proactive in granting loan modifications in recent months, so hopefully more homeowners will be staying in their homes than in prior months. Short sale activity also remains high, with homeowners choosing to sell prior to the foreclosure auction in order to have less of an impact on their credit.

Foreclosure data and map courtesy of PropertyShark. All data is deemed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed.

New foreclosure auctions continue to decline in the Los Angeles area.

New foreclosure auctions in the Los Angeles area declined by 18% during the first quarter of 2009 as compared to the fourth quarter of 2008, according to data provided by PropertyShark. This brings the current foreclosure activity close to the level that we saw during the first quarter of 2008.

The Palmdale Lancaster area still tops the charts as the zip codes with the highest amount of foreclosure activity within the Los Angeles area. The San Fernando Valley areas of Sylmar, Pacoima, Reseda and Panorama City continue to show relatively high amounts of foreclosure activity as well, but not nearly as high as the top zip codes in Palmdale (93550) and Lancaster (93535), which have a combined total of 586 new foreclosure for the first quarter of 2009. There were 2,403 total new foreclosures for the Top 15 zip codes for the first quarter of 2009, with zip codes 93550 and 93535 representing over 24% of that total.

Santa Clarita remains off the Top 15 zip codes for foreclosures once again, with zip code 91351 topping the Santa Clarita foreclosure list. Zip code 91351 is ranked at number 34 with 71 new foreclosures for the quarter. Santa Clarita’s zip code 91381, representing primarily Stevenson Ranch and Westridge, came in the lowest for the area this quarter with only 18 new foreclosures.

Santa Clarita single-family home sales continue to increase as inventories begin to drop.

Single-family home sales in the Santa Clarita Valley were up by 10.1% in 2008, with total sales of 2,194 vs 1,993 homes sold in 2007. Bargain-hunting buyers, whether purchasing homes to live in or as investment properties, are driving the market with multiple offers becoming very common in certain price ranges. December 2008 sales in the Santa Clarita Valley were up a whopping 68.4% over the December 2007 numbers.

However, with the good comes the not-so-good… Most of the homes being sold are “distressed properties”, which are either short sales or REO’s (bank owned). This means that someone had to be forced out of their home in order for you to pick up a bargain. Granted some people want to be “forced” out of their over-leveraged homes, especially those who refi’d during the hot market and are fully aware they can walk away from loans they obtained to buy vacations and other luxuries. Unfortunately, many people who simply had a string of bad luck, including illnesses and job losses, are being caught up in this tidal wave as well.

The good news is that as lenders continue to be more liberal in granting loan modifications to keep people in their homes, this should mean that fewer families are forced out of their homes and into apartments. There is some speculation that the inventory of bank-owned homes will spike in the upcoming months as banks pull the plug on homes they put in limbo while the Feds decided how to handle the bail-out rules… only time will tell if this is true.

Meanwhile, prices and interest rates remain low, which means that buyers who could only afford a dinky condo a few years ago can likely get into a single-family home instead. The inventory of 1,334 active listings as of December 2008 represented only a 4.8-month supply, with many of those homes being “unsellable” given their current price and condition. This inventory level is a 36.5% decrease from the prior year, and a 10.3% decrease from November. Analysts consider a 5-6 month supply of homes to be a “balanced market”, so this is definitely a good sign.

For buyers looking for a newer single-family home in the under-$400,000 range, the good pickings are rather slim, especially if you’re wanting to avoid the lengthy processing time for short sales. Many of these homes are receiving multiple offers within 3 days after being listed on the MLS, with buyers out-bidding each other eBay-style to get the homes they want.

If you’re a buyer looking to pick up a good bargain, be prepared to see some pretty “icky” homes, since short sales and bank-owned homes are not always in the best condition. It’s best to have a budget in mind for carpet replacement as well as interior paint, and a good maid service isn’t a bad idea either. Some banks are authorizing carpet replacement in order to get their REO homes to move more quickly, but it’s up to the listing agent to get this done, and quite frankly not all Realtors want to go to the trouble of obtaining the bids required for this task.

If you’re thinking about buying a home and are not sure if you have good enough credit, talk to a good lender to find out for sure. Even buyers with no credit or not-so-good credit are getting qualified to buy homes via the FHA programs. Sure, there may be a few more hoops to jump through in the process, but isn’t it worth it to get a home at a bargain-basement price?

Buying a home under the current market conditions requires a lot of patience and persistence, as well as a qualified Realtor to keep the process moving along. With a mixed market comes a mixed bag of hurdles to overcome, including listing agents who don’t understand the short-sale process and appraisers who are making up numbers and low-balling everything just to be on the “safe side”, as well as lenders who are either not up-to-date on the current offerings or just don’t want to fight the dragons to get a loan processed through. Just keep in mind that you’ll be able to do a big Happy Dance after escrow closes on your new home, knowing that you’ve gotten a good deal and possibly even slayed a few dragons in the process!

Looking to buy or sell a home in the Santa Clarita Valley? Contact Santa Clarita Realtor Linda Slocum at 661.670.0349 or email her at Linda@SantaClaritaRealEstateBlog.com.

Homes sales in Southern California area are up 65% for September 2008 as compared to the same period last year.

The good news for the Southern California economy is that homes are selling once again. September 2008 home sales in the Southern California region were higher than in any month since December 2006. and the year-over-year gain was the highest for any month since 1988 according to DataQuick.

Although this increase is astounding, everything must be looked at in context to get the true picture of the real estate market. September 2007 sales represented a record low, since changes in the lending industry had bumped up the rates for jumbo mortgages the month before. And 50% of the homes sold in September 2008 had been foreclosed on sometime within the prior year.

“More impressive was that this September’s sales volume bucked the seasonal norm and rose above August,” says DataQuick president John Walsh. Foreclosure resales by county continues to tell an interesting story, as Riverside County once again tops the list at 68.9%. Los Angeles County is near the bottom of the list this month, with foreclosure sales at 39.1%.

With the higher level of foreclosure resales comes a decline in prices. The median price for the SoCal region dropped to $308,500, which is the lowest since May 2003. However, the median price never tells the complete story, since it is affected by regional price depreciation, relatively slow high-end sales, and the rising market share of foreclosure resales, which tend to sell at a discount. Also, remember that the Palmdale-Lancaster area continues to dominate the foreclosures in the Los Angeles County region. For 3rd quarter foreclosure (trustee sale) stats, click here.

Santa Clarita single family home sales statistics for August 2008 and 2007

The Santa Clarita real estate market is showing some signs of recovery, with new escrows for single family homes for the month of August up by 120 vs August 2007, and active listings down by 619. New listings were 348 in August 2008 vs 506 in August 2007, for a decrease of 158. The ratio of new escrows to new listings has improved as well, with the number of new escrows representing 75% of the number of new listings in August 2008 vs 28% in August 2007.

Homes are still taking some time to sell, with average days on market at 115 days in August 2008 vs 90 days in August 2007. This is partly due to short sales, which generally remain as active listings until an offer is accepted by the bank. This approval process can take 30 days or more, depending on the bank (or banks) involved.

Sales were relatively constant, with 199 sales in August 2008 vs 186 sales in August 2007. However, the median price of single family homes sold was down by $200k in August 2008. However, this number may be a bit misleading, since the median price is affected by both the price level of homes sold (lower priced vs higher priced) as well as the price reductions that have taken place in this timeframe.

The good news is that homes are selling, and that investors are starting to jump back into the Santa Clarita real estate market. The not-so-good news is that a lot of these homes are short sales and bank owned (REO), which is an indicator that there are still some troubled homeowners out there. However, the percentage of truly troubled homeowners (meaning that they have a true financial crisis) vs the homeowners who just want to “bail” so they can buy a larger home at a lower price, is hard to determine. Also hard to determine is the number of homeowners who are having trouble making mortgage payments due to “resets”, or mortgage rate adjustments, vs those who did cash-out refi’s for $200k or more and now want to walk away from that free and clear via the short sale process.