As the home sales price increased for the third straight month, some housing analysts are hoping that the market is approaching the road to recovery.

The median home price reached $314,250 in June, the highest price level since October last year. It marked a jump of 6.5 percent from the median sales price in May 2008, but it is still far below the median sales price in June 2008.

Housing market analysts in the San Diego area explained that the median price has jumped up because the pace of properties getting into foreclosed home list inventories has slowed down.

However, housing analysts contend that the slowdown is only temporary, as several foreclosure moratoriums were implemented in California. The latest foreclosure moratorium is the three-month notification regulation for defaulting mortgages.

Nevertheless, most large lenders in California have already earned the right not to implement the foreclosure moratorium regulation because they already have crafted loan modification schemes that passed the standards of state regulators.

State officials ruled that lenders can get exempted from the new three-month foreclosure moratorium if they have already developed and are already implementing state-approved loan modification schemes.

A lecturer at the San Diego State University explained that the gain in the median sales price and in the foreclosed home list price in June was an encouraging sign, but it is not a definite sign of approaching market recovery. He also mentioned that home purchases traditionally increase during summer because it is the time many parents move closer to their children?s schools.

In June, home sales reached 3,692 units, an increase of 14 percent compared to sales in May and an increase of 20 percent compared to sales in June last year.

Based on the same data, the median resale price in June, including median foreclosed home list price, was $350,000, an increase of 7.7 percent compared to May this year, but represented a drop of 13.6 percent compared to June last year.

The median sales price for pre-owned condo units was $210,000, marking a jump of 5.5 percent compared to May this year and represented a drop of 19 percent from the May 2008 price.

According to an economist at the National University System Institute for Policy Research, the jump in median house prices, especially foreclosed home list prices, is an indication that the market is nearing the start of its recovery. Many struggling Californians hope so.

San Diego Foreclosed Home List Prices Rose is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

REO property listings are swamped with foreclosed office buildings, retail centers, apartment buildings and industrial buildings. Industry experts noted that Denton County experienced tremendous foreclosure increase in four commercial property types, with some going from zero postings the previous year to a significant gain this year.

Experts noted that some commercial foreclosure postings involved small and nondescript properties that were not in prime locations. They pointed out that commercial distressed foreclosures in Denton County were not that remarkable compared to other Texas counties, including Tarrant and Dallas.

However, the pace of foreclosure in Denton is faster than the other counties, experts explained.

For the first seven months of this year, the number of commercial foreclosures on Collin County?s REO property listings rose by 76 percent. According to industry experts, both Denton County and Collin County experienced significant increases in residential and commercial real estate markets for the last 10 years. That growth, they added, made these two counties the biggest contributors in the state?s foreclosure problem.

Meanwhile, REO property listings of undeveloped land properties showed that lending institutions have become selective in their issuance of loans for new development projects. Because of this, many development projects were delayed or stopped because land owners could no longer afford to finance these projects.

Two decades ago, majority of commercial foreclosures were prime real properties. Today, industry experts noted that an increasing number of properties owned by small businesses were on REO property listings.

On the other hand, note-purchasing of commercial repo property foreclosures increased this year. Results of a market survey showed that an average buyer could purchase these commercial and residential foreclosures for about 60 centavos on the dollar.

Industry experts agree that in order to control foreclosure, there is a need to control first the rising unemployment rate, which they do not expect to happen anytime soon.

REO property listings from January to July 2009 showed 13 apartment buildings, 8 office buildings, 25 retail centers, 5 industrial buildings and 68 land properties.

Commercial Foreclosures Crowd REO Property Listings is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

There are already 337 foreclosures filed in Wichita County in the first six months of the year, an increase from the 267 foreclosures filed in last year?s first six months. Since 2007, when the first half had 201 foreclosures, the six-month foreclosure total has been increasing.

On a month-over-month basis, the number of foreclosure filings in Wichita County increased in each of the first six months of 2009.

At current foreclosure rate, more homes are set to get included in foreclosure auction listings in Wichita Falls compared to last year, which had a total of 571 foreclosed units. In 2007, there were 432 foreclosed properties, some of which were sold in foreclosure auction events.

Housing analysts in Texas said Wichita Falls and some other cities in the state largely escaped the sting of foreclosure auction events in 2008 and in the first months of 2009. But more distressed foreclosure properties are expected in the coming months because of a significant number of company closures and laid-off workers in the past several months.

Gail Cunningham, public relations vice-president of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, said the number of unemployment checks being given out to Texans has increased and that unemployed homeowners are having difficulties allotting their unemployment benefits to their monthly loan payments.

Cunningham also observed that some homeowners have chosen to make their credit card payments instead of their monthly home loan payments, rationalizing that they are going to see their houses getting to foreclosure auction lists anyway. These homeowners who have given up on their mortgages, according to Cunningham, were now more intent on maintaining their good credit card records to help them survive the recession.

Based on data from the NFCC, foreclosure-related problems have spread to all levels of income. Also, most families are spending around 45 percent of their monthly income in paying unsecured debt, which is more than twice the ideal unsecured debt level.

The Consumer Credit Counseling unit of Wichita Falls is offering help to homeowners worried about foreclosures in partnership with the Credit Counseling Service of Greater Dallas.

Hope Now counselor Jeanine Pickett said that determined homeowners can save their houses from foreclosure auction listings. However, she expressed sadness that some have sacrificed their homes rather than their lifestyle.

More Homes Bound for Foreclosure Auction in Wichita Falls is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

During the first year of the housing crisis, foreclosure inventories were overloaded with homes located in low-income neighborhoods as these where subprime borrowers lived.

But the persistence of the worldwide recession extended the arms of foreclosures into the enclaves of the rich, as stock markets, financial multinationals and non-housing industries also collapsed. Even executives who were well-ensconced in their positions were affected by layoffs.

Previously, gated neighborhoods and more affluent communities were thought to be immune from foreclosure actions because people who lived in these areas obtained prime loans and had higher-income occupations and businesses.

In May, there were nearly 1,000 foreclosure listing homes sold, an increase of over 9 percent from sales in April, but represented a 36.7 percent decrease from sales in May 2008. There were 3,059 default notices, a 9.3 percent decline from April and a 2.5 percent drop from May 2008.

In May, sales of foreclosure homes in several affluent areas reached record levels.

In the Carmel Valley area, where most homes are priced around $676,500, a total of 44 default notices were sent to homeowners in May, an increase from the 14 notices sent in May 2008.

In the affluent coastal community of Del Mar, sales of foreclosure homes totaled 54 units.

For many months, affluent homeowners use their resources to withstand the effects of the foreclosure crisis, but as the recession persisted and worsened, their investments and income-producing businesses faltered.

Real estate analysts contend that foreclosure listing prices of houses in affluent neighborhoods will increase the level of median home prices in San Diego, even if the higher-priced homes are sold at a discount because of their rising sales pace.

In the neighborhood of Kensington-Normal Heights, out of 43 homes sold in May, 29 units were foreclosure listing sales. The median price was $304,000 a 17 percent decline from the price in May 2008.

In Hillcrest-Mission Hills, where most homes are priced around $416,000, out of the 39 home sales in May, 21 were foreclosure listing sales.

Housing analysts said that the major factors for the rise in foreclosure listing sales in more affluent areas are the loss of high-income jobs, collapse of businesses and the difficulty of getting jumbo home loans.

More High-End Foreclosure Listing Sales in San Diego is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

Nowadays, some executives who made deals on Wall Street are leaving their comfortable offices to make money from foreclosed home listings.

Three of these are Matthew Cooleen, formerly of Deutsche Bank; Laurence Pelosi, from Morgan Stanley; and Paul Staley, from Fortress Investment Group.

Cooleen, who handled mortgage-backed securities and credit derivatives at Deutsche Bank, has been purchasing properties in bulk from foreclosed home listings. With millions in ready cash for home purchases, he has already acquired $30 million worth of foreclosure homes in Nevada, California, Florida and Arizona through his Connecticut investment firm HudsonCross Financial.

Cooleen continues to explore foreclosure-battered cities looking for foreclosed home listings from where he could buy groups of ten to 200 distressed homes. He prefers buying in bulk because of the discounts that he gets from banks and other lenders.

He added however that only about 40 percent of the lenders he has negotiated with are willing to sell in bulk. The others prefer to sell their foreclosed homes to individual buyers so they can raise their prices.

Cooleen argued that if banks sell their properties in bulk, they can more quickly clear their repo homes inventories and help the housing sector recover.

Staley, meanwhile, learned from what he was doing as an executive of Fortress Investment. At Fortress, he purchased properties from foreclosed home listings. Later, he joined McKinley Partners which was starting to buy foreclosed houses in California.

Pelosi was also already involved in housing when he was working with Morgan Stanley. His job was to help close large-capital land and housing projects for the firm. He also later joined McKinley early this year.

McKinley is set to buy four houses in Pittsburgh, a small city in California. One of the houses it bought for only $84,000 was worth $412,000 in 2005. It will rent out the house for up to $1,200 and then sell it when the housing market improves. It also expects to earn around 5 to 7 percent from the rent.

McKinley has money to buy some more from foreclosed home listings. In addition, it also has financial backing from Oakland-based One California Bank, which committed to finance 50 percent of their purchases.

According to Barclays Capital, there are about 765,000 houses in foreclosed home listings nationwide as of the end of the first week of April. It expects the inventory to rise to around 1.3 million houses in 2010.

Ex-Wall Street Execs Earning from Foreclosed Home Listings is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

According to the National Association of Realtors‘ report, existing distressed single-family houses in the area posted a median price of $95,500, representing a 30 percent decline in the first three months of this year compared with figures the previous year.

However, local realtors claimed that the decline in median home sale price is not in line with the figures they are expecting. According to Realtor Association of the Sioux Empire Chief Executive Officer Barton Hacker, the median home sale price in the metro area declined by 7.4 percent in March, to $132,000.

Hacker argued that the housing market is not 30 percent down in price despite the increase in foreclosure rate in South Dakota. Data released by RealtyTrac showed that the state’s number of foreclosure homes in the first quarter of 2009 increased by 50 percent from the same period in 2008.

In addition, April foreclosure rate declined by 22 percent compared with March figures, but increase by 56 percent from the previous year.

Meanwhile, both national and local realtor organizations agreed that homebuyers in Sioux-Falls were seeking bargains and discounts in bank foreclosed home listings and houses made affordable by government incentives have allowed many homebuyers to purchase properties.

All these factors have put pressure on the area’s median home sale price, which, unlike the average home price, is not influenced by very low or high-priced sales.

On the other hand, Walter Molony of the National Association of Realtors clarified that the decline in home prices does not reflect the value of the housing market. He pointed out the drop in median sale price is occurring anywhere in the country.

Molony said that almost 50 percent of homes selling across the country are foreclosed houses. In addition, bargain and discounted homes purchased by first-time homebuyers accounted for almost 50 percent of the total number of houses sold.

Rise in Bank Owned Foreclosed Home Listings Pressuring Home Prices is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

And more and more homeowners in Boston, Massachusetts are starting to realize this dream as a growing number of nonprofit organizations and housing advocates are helping them buy back their foreclosed houses.

Some of these homeowners who bought back their repo properties refused to leave the premises and continue to find ways to recover their houses. With the buy back option, former owners were able to repurchase their houses at significant discounts because of the decline in real estate values.

Housing attorney Zoe K. Cronin of Greater Boston Legal Services said that nonprofit organizations are in the process of assisting and helping a lot of former homeowners buy back their foreclosed houses. She said that former owners are the priority to buy the houses in forclosure listings unless someone would be willing to purchase them at real market value.

Meanwhile, the buy back program is spearheaded by Boston Community Capital, a nonprofit with a goal to help create and develop healthy communities. Currently, it has 30 borrowers who are in the process of repurchasing their repossessed houses.

The buy back program works this way. Boston Community will purchase a foreclosed home from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and then after several weeks, sold it back to its original owner for the amount equivalent to what the borrower owed to the bank.

Boston Community Chief Executive Officer Elyse Cherry explained that the nonprofit wants homeowners and their families to remain in their houses and stop foreclosures because vacant and abandoned properties fall into disrepair, affecting other residents in the neighborhood.

For the past 25 years, Boston Community has already invested over $423 million to assist and help low-income neighborhoods across the United States.

Organizations like Boston Community are a great help to former homeowners because with damaged credit, they find it difficult to purchase a new house or repurchase their old houses.

The buy back program is one of the efforts undertaken to reduce the number of houses in foreclosure listings in Massachusetts. In 2008, the state?s foreclosure rates increased to 12,430, representing a 62 percent rise from 2007.

Owners Buy Back Houses in Foreclosure Listings is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

The so-called bidding wars were common only during housing booms, but in areas where many renters have been enticed by lower home prices, lower mortgage rates and the tax credit incentives to buy their first homes, they have been competing with real estate investors in bidding for bargain-priced but attractive homes listed in foreclosure listings.

In Sacramento, Prudential California Realty agent Cherie Hunt said her client competed against two investors to buy a three-bedroom house built in 2001. Hunt?s client won because she agreed to add $10,000 more to get to the winning price of $220,000, which is still much less than the $405,000 price of the house when it was bought in 2005.

In Santa Ana, southeast of the city of Los Angeles, Tamby Leonard said she has been looking and bidding for a home priced in the $300,000 range since January. She said good homes in foreclosure listings tend to be captured quickly by investors who have cash money. According to Altera Real Estate agent Ed Mixon, many first-time homebuyers are looking for houses in the $300,000 price range in Santa Ana.

Across the nation, home prices continue to drop as foreclosure listings get longer with added homes and as the lifting of foreclosure moratoriums show their effects on foreclosure listings.

Many housing markets, including New York City and South Florida, remain overloaded with bank owned foreclosure properties for sale.

This week, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that home prices across the country increased in February by 0.7 percent from January levels, but decreased by 6.5 percent from February 2008. The slight increase from January levels was largely due to increased sales from foreclosure listings in the West Coast.

Housing analysts expect housing markets in Washington, D.C. and California to recuperate faster than markets in areas overloaded with foreclosure listings, such as South Florida, which is battered with abandoned condos. Kenneth Rosen, head of the University of California?s Fisher Center for Real Estate, said New York?s housing market will take time to recover because of Wall Street?s collapse.

Housing analysts cite the affordability factor as one positive trend that arose from the foreclosure crisis. Nowadays, a family earning $52,800 can spend just one-fourth of the income for a home, a decrease from the 44 percent cut in the middle of 2006.

More Bids for Homes in Foreclosure Listings is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

During the boom times, people who were unable to continue paying their mortgage loans due to job loss or serious illness sold their homes easily through foreclosure listings or through auctions to pay their loans. In the past several months, home prices have fallen so low they are not even enough to pay the balance of the mortgage loans.

Lenders have been considering short sales because they have realized that in many cases, they are losing more when they go through the process of foreclosure and selling the assets through foreclosure listings.

When lenders foreclosed, they undertake processes that include filing documents in court, sending notices, coordinating with property managers and selling through auctions or foreclosure listings. In addition to the costs of these procedures, the foreclosure process also takes time especially if the homeowners undertake legal maneuverings to delay the process and allow them to stay in the repo properties for a longer time for free.

When lenders agree to a short sale, they agree to accept as full payment an amount lower than the mortgage loan balance. They lose in the process, but their potential losses in foreclosure could be bigger if the foreclosure process takes a long time and if their foreclosed properties stay in foreclosure listings for months or years.

According to Fair Issac Corp., handler of the FICO credit score, a short sale also damages an individual’s credit score, but not as much as foreclosures do. Borrowers also prefer short sales because they save their credit records and they save themselves from the pain of foreclosures and evictions.

Mark Pearce, deputy banking commissioner of North Carolina, said short sales across the country have soared by approximately 20 percent in the last six months. Pearce is one of banking officials running a nationwide foreclosure prevention organization collecting foreclosure and short sale information from mortgage servicers.

Additionally, David Knight, vice president of Wells Fargo’s mortgage servicing division in Fort Mill, said his bank’s short sales have tripled in the last 18 months especially in areas of Wells Fargo’s operations where job losses rose to unprecedented levels and where home prices fell from inflationary levels to bottom levels. These areas also had unprecedented numbers of properties that were thrown into foreclosure listings.

Some Lenders Prefer Short Sales to Foreclosure Listings is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

According to foreclosure tracking service RealtyTrac, about 3 million homes are expected to be added to foreclosure listings in 2009, an increase of three to four times the previous year.

Prices of homes in foreclosure listings range from twenty to eighty percent below the market value. With these prices, it is no wonder then that potential homebuyers flocked to foreclosure sales or foreclosure auctions.

However, homebuyers planning to purchase homes in foreclosure listings should take precautionary steps to avoid turning their investments into lemons.

Experts agree that the process of buying homes in foreclosure listings is riskier than purchasing properties the traditional way.

If you want to buy foreclosed properties, the easiest way to find them is through the Internet where foreclosure listings sites are posted featuring various foreclosed properties to choose from.

Find repo homes in areas with high rate of distressed properties, such as Arizona, California and Florida. These areas offer foreclosed properties at bargain prices.

However, do not just pick the least expensive property. You must take into consideration several factors such as the neighborhood where the property is located, the employment market and school district.

Buying a cheap property in an area with high unemployment and crime rate is not a good investment decision because home values in that neighborhood will take some time to recover.

Another best way to get a bargain deal is by buying from pre-foreclosure sales. This means that you purchase the property from the owners of distressed homes directly before it goes into foreclosure.

Homeowners during the pre-foreclosure stage are more than willing to sell their properties at any cost because they want to avoid the social stigma attached to the foreclosed property and the trouble of negotiating with lenders.

However, a little caution should be exercised on your part as some of the properties sold during pre-foreclosure stage may have hidden liens and back taxes.

You can also find best deals in foreclosure sales or auctions. However, another cautionary note, because properties sold at auctions are on as-is condition, you may find homes that needed major repairs and this may entail you to spend an undetermine amount of money to rehabilitate the property. It would be for your benefit if you have the home inspected first before signing the final deal.

Buying Homes in Foreclosure Listings Is Not Easy After All is a post from: Listings Foreclosures