Please read the following very carefully. It could save your life, if you’re in this situation.
“Have you ever been in a hotel during a fire? It’s a frightening experience, and you should start thinking about it. For instance, how would you have acted if you had been in one of these fires? %
Borrowers had to have 3% in the transaction. This will increase to 3.5%. Upfront MIP changes based on credit score and debt to income ratio. Down payment assistance from non profits will be discontinued. This is not entirely clear yet.
With these changes, any of the borrowers that are thinking of purchasing using FHA financing should make their move now. Some of these changes will take effect October 1, 2008.
Thank you, Gary Risler Vision Mortgage Capital
An Inspector turned Realtor 
? Thank you Tracy Griffin from Inspect-it First.
No matter how well you can picture your dream house and communicate your ideal to a Realtor, the house you finally fall in love with may have little resemblance to the image you started out with. But you have to begin somewhere, and a detailed wish list is a great head start. When you start looking at houses, this information will be valuable to a Realtor as he or she matches your requirements to available houses.
Visit a loan officer. The best way to learn what you can afford is to get prequalified for a loan. Your Realtor may recommend someone or you can just walk into the office of a local lender. You’ll walk away with a good idea of how your income, assets and liabilities translate into what you can afford, and it can also help your chances of beating out the competition in a sellers market.
Do the math. You can also do a simple calculation on your own. Broker wisdom says that monthly payments should be 25 to 33 percent of your monthly gross income. To calculate: Take your monthly income before taxes, including all sources, and divide it by four. Subtract from this figure the total amount you pay per month in debts. The result is the lower end of what you can reasonably afford to pay on a monthly basis. After deducting monthly homeowners insurance and property tax payments, you’ll see approximately what you can afford for your monthly loan payment.
Now that you have an idea of what you can afford, you can focus on whether you’re in the market for a condominium, co-op, townhouse, single-family detached home or – hey, it happens – a mansion that will accommodate 20 of your closest friends.
Any Real Estate questions ? Please call this Realtor: Gladys, at 610-972 3545
According to (CNNmoney.com)
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Sales of existing homes rose in July, according to the latest reading on the battered housing market by an industry trade group released Monday.
The National Association of Realtors reported that sales by homeowners in July increased to an annual pace of 5 million, up from the revised June reading of 4.85 million.
That’s better than the annual pace of 4.9 million that economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected, and it’s the highest pace since February. Still, July sales were down 13.2% from a year earlier.
Home sales were helped by falling prices. The median price of all single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops sold during the month fell 7.1% to $212,400 from $228,600 a year ago. Before the start of the current housing slump, it had been 11 years since prices fell compared to a year earlier.
At the same time, the single-family home median price fell 7.7% from a year ago to $210,900. The trade group has tracked those sales prices going back to 1989.
“Home prices generally follow sales trends after a few months of lag time,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist. “Still, inventory remains high in many parts of the country and will require time to fully absorb.”
Even as sales picked, up, the excess supply of homes on the market still rose in July. Realtors estimated that there are now 4.67 million homes available for sale, which represents an 11.2 month supply.
That is up from the 11.1-month supply in June, though NAR said the rise in inventories was due to a sharp jump in the number of condominiums on the market. Inventory of single family homes declined slightly, falling to a 10.6 month supply from 11 months in June.
“We expect more balanced conditions in 2009, and will eventually return to normal long-term appreciation patterns,” added Yun.
As a result of a battered market, President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act late last month. The bill includes a temporary tax credit of up to $7,500 for first-time home buyers who haven’t purchased a home in three years. (Please read more on the Tax Credit, in our Archive)
Qualified buyers must earn less than $75,000 – or $150,000 for a couple – after which point the tax credit begins to phase out. The Senate Finance Committee estimates that about 1.6 million people will use the credit.
“We hope the new tools in the hands of home buyers from the recently enacted housing stimulus package will spark a sustained sales uptrend in the months ahead,” said NAR President Richard Gaylord. “Buyers who’ve been on the sidelines should take a closer look at what’s available to them now in terms of financing and incentives.” “
The MLS stands for “Multiple Listing Service”. In our Area, for an example, we have The Lehigh Valley Association Of Realtors. In every part of the country, they have an Association of Realtors. All local Associations are under the Umbrella of The National Association of Realtors.
Realtors pay dues to the Association and it provides tools like a Multiple Listing Service, that is the Local MLS. It advertises to other Realtors the details of each listing (such as address, number of bedrooms, square footage, and whether the home has garages, a pool, a finnished Basement etc.) Other benefits, not limited to, continuing Education, Legal Support.
Some Realtors although few, don’t belong to the Association, therefore don’t get the Benefits it has to offer such as RPAC (Realtors Political Action Committee) etc…
A Reliable Association Realtor with Access to the MLS, can look up the pricing history, days on markets, and all the details related to a specific property that has been advertised in the MLS.
That information is made available to the public on some search engines. Some Information remains confidential labeled for Agent Only.
For further question on this, or any other Real Estates concern, please call this Realtor, Gladys at 610-972 3545.
“And that’s going to make it even harder for the staggering housing market to recover. According to CNNMONEY.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com ) — Prime mortgages are starting to default at disturbingly high rates – a development that threatens to slow any potential housing recovery.
The delinquency rate for prime mortgages worth less than $417,000 was 2.44% in May, compared with 1.38% a year earlier, according to LoanPerformance, a unit of First American (FAF, Fortune 500) CoreLogic that compiles and analyzes residential mortgage statistics.
Delinquencies jumped even more for prime loans of more than $417,000, so-called jumbo loans. They rose to 4.03% of outstanding loans in May, compared with 1.11% a year earlier.
And prime loans issued in 2007 are performing the worst of all, failing at a rate nearly triple that of prime loans issued in 2006, according to LoanPerformance.
“The extent of how bad these loans are doing is very troubling,” said Pat Newport, real estate economist with Global Insight, a forecasting firm.
Washington Mutual (WM, Fortune 500) CEO Kerry Killinger said last month that the bank’s prime loan delinquencies are on the rise. As of June 30, 2.19% of the prime loans issued by WaMu in 2007 were already delinquent, compared with 1.40% of prime loans issued in 2005.
Also last month, JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) CEO Jaime Dimon called prime mortgage performance “terrible” and suggested that losses connected to prime may triple. For the second quarter, the bank reported net charges of $104 million for prime rate delinquencies, more than double the $50 million recorded three months earlier.
Prime loans are just the latest class of mortgages to suffer a spike in failure rates. The first lot to go bad was, of course, subprime mortgages, whose problems set the housing meltdown in motion. Next were the Alt-A loans, a class between prime and subprime loans that doesn’t require strict documentation of a borrower’s assets or income.
Now, as prime loans are added to the mix, the resulting foreclosures could haunt the housing market for a long time, according to Global Insight’s Patrick Newport.
“Home prices will drop for quite a while – maybe several years,” he said.
Prices are already off nearly 20% from their 2006 highs, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index.
And there’s a strong inverse correlation between home prices and defaults, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.
“It’s a feedback loop,” he said. “Price declines lead to more defaults, which leads to more price declines.”
More foreclosures will add to an already massive oversupply of homes on the market. Inventories are up to about 11 month’s worth of sales at the current rate.
Indeed, about 2.8% of all homes for sale were vacant as of June 30, according to Census Bureau statistics. That’s up about 50% from three years ago, and near historic highs.
The failure of prime mortgages will also make it more difficult for new borrowers to find affordable loans – and that will slow sales even more. Lending standards have been tightening for months, but if prime loans start to look risky, lenders will be even more conservative about who gets a mortgage.
About 60% of the loan officers surveyed reported that they tightened lending standards for prime mortgages during the first three months of 2008, according to the April 2008 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices from the Federal Reserve, which is released quarterly.
That number will likely be even higher for the second quarter, according to Mike Larson, a real estate analyst for Weiss Research. “It’s already harder and more expensive to get loans,” he said. “Lenders pull in their horns when things go south.”
While easy credit fueled the housing boom, restricted credit is certainly contributing to the bust.
“Eventually,” said Newport, “time will break the cycle. Pricing will drop enough to attract more buyers, and inventories will decline.”
But there will probably more hard times ahead before markets come back into balance and recovery begins. 
”
Buyers with good credit & job ? Could that be a good time for you to buy? Any questions? Call this Realtor Gladys at 610-972 3545
My Friends in the Lehigh Valley Real Estates Market Beware, according to CNNMONEY
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Washington policy makers and housing industry insiders hope a new tax credit for first-time home buyers will get the moribund housing market moving again.
But most analysts agree that the program is more of a band-aid than a cure-all for the battered real estate market. What’s more, others are quick to point out that the credit must be repaid, which means it’s actually an interest-free loan that could get some homeowners in trouble.
“It’s one of those things that are more complicated than it seems at first blush, said Allen Fishbein, director of housing and credit policy for the Consumer Federation of America. “Consumers have to make sure they understand the credit thoroughly.
The $7,500 credit is for people buying their first homes, and was passed as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and signed into law in July. To qualify for the full $7,500, individuals must earn less than $75,000 annually, while couples may earn up to $150,000. Individual buyers with income of up to $95,000 and couples with income up to $170,000 are eligible for a partial credit.
The Senate Finance Committee estimates that about 1.6 million people will use the credit.
The housing industry pushed for the program. “Breaking the log jam of unsold homes is something we are very much behind,” said Richard Dugas, president of builder Pulte Homes, at a news conference to discuss the program. First time home buyers represented about 20% of the market for new homes in 2007.
Realtors are also behind the credit. “[It] will help chip away at inventory levels, stabilize prices and spur [sales] activity,” said Richard A. Smith, CEO of Realogy, the parent company of both Coldwell Banker and Century 21.
The industry has had success with tax credits in the past. In 1975, Congress passed a $2,000 credit for home buyers (about $8,200 in today’s dollars).
“Buyers flocked to market and cleared out a then-record inventory of homes,” said NAHB president Sandy Dunn. But that credit did not have to be repaid.
And the impact should extend beyond first time home buyers, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. A boost in demand for starter homes means that those sellers will be able to trade up to bigger, more expensive places, and so on up the chain.
Buyers who have not owned a home in the past three years can take a tax credit worth 10% of a home’s sale price, up to $7,500, whichever is smaller.
The credit is good for homes closed on after April 9, 2008 and before July 1, 2009, and can be taken on taxes filed during 2008 or 2009. Even buyers who bought a home before the bill passed, but after April 9, can claim the credit.
Unlike tax deductions, which only offset taxes by lowering taxable income, the tax credit is a straight dollar-for-dollar deduction of your tax bill. So a buyer who would ordinarily pay $8,000 in taxes would pay just $500.
It’s also “refundable,” which means if a buyer’s taxes are less than $7,500, the government will send them a check for the difference. For example, if a couple’s income generates a tax bill of $5,000, the government will refund all of that plus $2,500.
Buyers must start paying back the loan within two years, at a rate of no more than $500 a year for 15 years. When the the home is sold, any outstanding balance will be repaid from the profit; if it’s sold at a loss and the difference will be forgiven.
And some argue that mortgage lenders will take the credit into consideration, making it easier for buyers to get a loan.
“[The $7,500 reserve] will make borrowers less likely to fall into default,” said Ken Goldstein, an economist with the Conference Board, since it gives them a nest egg should they run into trouble. Still, that assumes that buyers will sock the $7,500 away rather than spend it.
Indeed, the credit comes with plenty of caveats from economists and industry analysts.
“It’s not going to provide first-time home buyers with cash up front,” said the Consumer Federation of America’s Allen Fishbein. “You have to apply to get the credit after the fact. There’s a delay before you get the financial advantage.”
And there are concerns that borrowers may treat the credit as a windfall, spending it as if it doesn’t have to be repaid.
“It may appear to be free money,” said Fishbein. “Consumers have to have their eyes open about how this works.”
Other economists caution that while the credit may be helpful, it’s hardly a solution to the crisis.
“It will not turn things around,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “Given the economy, it will only push a precious few first-time home buyers over the edge right now.”
Plummeting home prices will blunt any impact that the credit may have, according to Nicholas Retsinas, director of the Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. As far as he’s concerned, the market is simply too soft right now for a modest measure like this to make a big difference.
“The challenge right now is as much willingness to buy as affordability,” he said. “The market still has this psychological barrier because people think prices will be lower tomorrow. I don’t think this can overcome that barrier.”
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This Article is a Direct Quote From CNNMoney.com
CNNMoney.com) — Home building fell sharply in July to a 17-year low, according to government readings released Tuesday that offered fresh signs that the battered real estate market has yet to hit bottom.
Housing starts plunged 11% to an annual rate of 965,000 from a revised 1.084 million pace in June, according to the Census Bureau report. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast starts would fall to a rate of 960,000.
Permits – often seen as a sign of builders’ confidence in the housing market – tumbled 17% to an annual rate of 937,000 from a revised 1.138 million in June. Economists had forecast that permits would come in at 959,000.
The sharp percentage drop from June was due partly to a jump in multi-family home starts and permits during that month. Single-family home starts and permits slipped only slightly from the June level. But the single-family starts were also at a 17-year low in July, while single-family permits fell to a level not seen since the 1982 recession, reaching a rate of only 584,000 homes in July.
The sharp fall in building activity suggests that home building will continue to be a drag on the economy in the second half of 2008. Earlier this year, many economists hoped that building activity would bottom out this summer and start to show signs of improvement.
In the second quarter, the drop in home building took 0.6 percentage points off gross domestic product, the broad measure of the nation’s economic activity. It marked the 10th straight quarter that home building has been a drag on GDP.
But the continued drop in building could be just what the battered real estate market needs. One of the biggest problem for sellers is a glut of unsold homes on the market. Since demand for homes remains weak, the glut will only ease if fewer new homes are built.
In June, builders faced a median wait of 8.4 months to sell a completed home, the longest delay in selling time in 25 years, according to a separate Census Bureau report issued recently.
David Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, says he’s hopeful the historically low levels of single-family permits is a sign that the glut of homes on the market could finally start to decline.
Seiders said he’s hopeful that the market for new homes will hit bottom in late 2008 or early 2009. But he added that his forecast could prove optimistic given other problems, such as rising job losses and the credit crunch. And the continuing rise in foreclosures adds to the glut of homes available for sale, particularly in markets such as California and Florida.
“We’re dealing with a weakening economy in the second half of this year, and early ‘09 doesn’t look that great either,” Seiders said. “We don’t have any numbers that really show stabilization in the housing market yet.”
The government report on housing starts and permits comes the day after a survey of builder confidence by the National Association of Home Builders remained at a record low in August. Only 5% of builders said the current market is good, 8% said they expected a favorable market in the next six months and fewer than 2% said they were seeing strong traffic from potential buyers.
The downturn in housing and building has hammered the results of most of the nation’s major builders. Late last month Centex (CTX, Fortune 500), which is the No. 2 builder by revenue, reported a larger-than-expected loss and warned it was seeing no improvement in the home building market.
Most builders have reported larger than expected losses, although Pulte Home (PHM, Fortune 500), the largest builder by revenue, did slightly better than forecasts. Only one major builder, NVR (NVR, Fortune 500), has reported a profit through the current downturn, although its earnings have plunged.
As a group, the revenue of the nation’s eight largest home builders has plunged 37% over the last year. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are forecasting another 36% drop in revenue over the course of the next 12 months.
A longterm Giant, of the Lehigh Valley, and in the world, Mack Trucks in Allentown since 1905, is relocating to Greensboro North Carolina. Where it’s Mother Company, Volvo of Sweden has established successful headquarters’ roots.
This move although heavily “costing” to many Lehigh Valley individuals , businesses & Local Real Estates, is by design, to improve the company’s effectiveness and competitiveness.
According to it’s CEO, “the company’s restructuring, beginning later on this year and continuing through 2010, will result in 493 new jobs paying an average salary of more than $73,800.00 in addition to health and insurance benefits”
The company sold 9 percent of the heavy truck market. And employed 4,241 people.
Most likely, Mack Trucks will take up space on the Volvo Trucks campus near Piedmont Triad International Airport initially.
Some interesting releases from NC say that “For each year the company meets required performance targets, the state will provide a Job Development Investment Grant equal to 60 percent of the state personal income taxes resulting from the creation of new jobs. Should the company create the jobs called for under the agreement and sustain them for nine years, the agreement could yield as much as $8.5 million in maximum benefits for Mack Trucks.”
Mack is a Welcome Success to North Carolina and a Sad Loss to the Lehigh Valley, specifically Allentown.
I Personally, encourage any person relocating to an “unknown Area” to them, either into or out of the Greater Lehigh Valley Area, to check out locations that accept month to month leases. Move there, check the neighborhoods more thoroughly. People, safety, schools, entertainments, noise, polution etc…
It does not matter what y & Z tells you about the Area, it is ultimately your decision as to where you and your family would enjoy living.
Buying a home is a Big Investment; it also is a Longterm Commitment. Please be careful not to delve into a very serious mistake, basing the foundation of your move on someone else’s experience.
Ironically, on a smaller scale, I also discourage people from rushing into hanging pictures paintings and photos, on the walls. Live in the house for a month and two before you make a decision to start digging holes in the walls and ruining your paint. Make sure that the location is exactly where, you want everything to go.
Patience is a Rewarding Virtue. Good luck.
Please contact this Realtor: Gladys with any Questions or Comments.
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