Green Mortgage Group

Have you been searching across the internet looking for a crystal ball on the Bay area Housing market and what direction it is going? The fact is the only way you know when you have found the bottom of a housing market is when the market has already turnd and you missed your oppertunity. Here are some highlights of a great article in the Wall Street Journal outlining why the housing market has all ready bottomed.

The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now.

The boom made housing unaffordable for many American families, especially first-time home buyers. During the 1990s and early 2000s, it took 19% of average monthly income to service a conforming mortgage on the average home purchased. By 2005 and 2006, it was absorbing 25% of monthly income. For first time buyers, it went from 29% of income to 37%. That just proved to be too much.

Prices got so high that people who intended to actually live in the houses they purchased (as opposed to speculators) stopped buying. This caused the bubble to burst.

Since then, house prices have fallen 10%-15%, while incomes have kept growing (albeit more slowly recently) and mortgage rates have come down 70 basis points from their highs. As a result, it now takes 19% of monthly income for the average home buyer, and 31% of monthly income for the first-time home buyer, to purchase a house. In other words, homes on average are back to being as affordable as during the best of times in the 1990s. Numerous households that had been priced out of the market can now afford to get in.

Housing Market Finds Bottom…Link to article.

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Late last week lenders began pricing the new “Jumbo Conforming” loans as if they were the same as the usual Conforming loan.

The “Conforming Loan”- Is a loan up to $417,000 that was the standard before the economic stimulus package was introduced earlier this year.

The “New Jumbo Conforming”- is a loan limit that is $417,001-$729,750 scheduled to remain in effect through 2008.

So what we have to look forward to is a stimulus in the Bay Area housing market. This should help finance home that was otherwise sized due to the lack of standard jumbo financing. Last week the average jumbo conforming rate that I was seeing through financing companies such as Chase, Wells Fargo and IndyMac’s was 5.875%-6.250% up to $729,750…WOW. The Tri Valley should see the impact of the interest rate help in the very short term.

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FHA Action to Resume Despite Veto Threat 

The House of Representative was slated to resume consideration of a Federal Housing Administration refinancing bill this morning despite a veto threat from President Bush and efforts by Republican congressmen to disrupt House proceedings. The FHA bill (H.R. 3221) would refinance an estimated 500,000 borrowers with “underwater” mortgages into FHA-insured loans. It is a voluntary program that offers investors/servicers the option to refinance the loan if they agree to write down the principal amount to 85% of the current appraised value. The Bush administration contends that the FHA refinancing bill is a “bailout” for lenders and speculators that would lead to high default rates and losses to the FHA insurance fund. In a Statement of Administration Policy, the White House says the administration prefers an expansion of the FHA Secure proposal that would help 100,000 borrowers with underwater mortgages refinance into FHA loans. “These new FHA-insured loans are expected to commence in July following a 60-day comment period to the mortgage industry,” the SAP says. The administration announced changes to the FHA Secure program April 9, but lenders are still waiting for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release the underwriting guidelines and the rates for the mortgage insurance.

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Being responsible about your paper usage and paper purchasing is not just about saving trees.  In my past series outlining the use of electronic signatures (One of my first posts-please be kind) made a dramatic impact on the amount of paper waste during the loan process for myself and colleagues. The next step to reduce paper waste is you; your ability to help reduce waste at home is tremendous.The benefits of using less paper and/or using recycled paper products are many.  Recycling paper prevents unnecessary land filling of valuable resources.  Recycling paper and purchasing recycled content paper helps create American jobs.  And, in addition to saving trees, producing recycled paper uses less water and energy than paper made from trees.  Because we are using less water we see two benefits, the first being that the water can be diverted to other uses and the second being that the toxic substances found in the waste water from paper mills is dramatically reduced. 

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The Tri-Valley Sierra Club voted Monday to support the appeal of the Oak Grove referendum decision. The referendum supporters will be contacting other groups to gain support. The plan to gain larger Sierra Club chapters support and gain “much needed” legal advise on the process. This is another chapter in what looks to become a novel. For background on the Pleasanton Oak Grove history of events see articles below…

Pleasanton Weekly Oak Grove Update- Court Blocks Pleasanton Councils Oak Grove Action

Pleasanton Weekly Oak Grove Update- Oak Grove Developers File Suit

Pleasanton, Oak Grove Groups Square off Over Pleasanton Ridge:

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The practice of de-construction and un-building may be the next explosion across the US in the near future.  The Building Materials Association estimates that in the U.S., 315,000 to 360,000 tons per year of reused building materials are sold by reuse centers — not even 0.2% of the total waste from building activities each year.  Maybe during your next home renovation you may choose to deconstruct and help turn your project into a Green Remodel.

Enjoy the video-

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By a 46-21 vote, the House Financial Services Committee has approved a bill that provides the Federal Housing Administration with $300 billion in loan commitment authority to refinance “underwater” mortgages. The bill, crafted by the committee chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., provides mortgage investors/servicers with an option to refinance struggling borrowers into FHA-insured loans if they agree to write down the principal amount to 85% of the appraised value. The program is designed to be voluntary, and a new board composed of top government officials would oversee it. The Senate Banking Committee is slated to mark up a similar FHA refinancing bill on May 6.

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The market for Green homes and Green Real Estate companies has taken off. In an interview on CNBC the founder of EcoBroker gave the first interview discussing the facts of what the Eco-Broker designation means to Realtors and the Real Estate industry.  The demand for professional expertise on green topics in real estate, the consumers need to save money through energy efficiency and the interest in doing the right thing by the environment is the driving force in the Green Real Estate industry.

Going Green as an Eco-Broker in the Real Estate Industry…

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A trend I’ve noticed and been very glad to see is the implementation Green Business practices when selling Real Estate. These green practices include; Green MLS, e-cards, and electronic flyers to name a few. When my attention in the past was drawn to Avignon Community in Pleasanton a zero energy community and how these properties could be marketed and sold I never looked back.

I wanted to bring your attention to a great article I read about Eco-Real Estate Marketing. The article highlighted great ways to help market your property to Green buyers and make better use of technology for a Green Real Estate experience and sustainable marketing of your Green or Non-Green Real Estate. Enjoy. Eco-Real Estate Marketing

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One of the most significant steps the federal government has taken in its attempt to bring liquidity and stability back to the mortgage and credit markets was its March decision to expand the capacities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, allowing them to significantly increase the amount of mortgage securities that they can purchase or guarantee and, importantly, raising the limit on “jumbo” loans from $417,000 to as high as $729,750, depending upon the geographic region. Raising the jumbo limit was a key move because it will enable lenders such as Indymac to increase their lending in markets with high property values where many customers were finding it difficult to get a loan due to the inability of lenders to subsequently sell that loan to an investor. Read more »

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