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I’ve written a couple of posts where MERS electronically kept track of notes rather than recording the title at the required county
recorder offices throughout the U.S. Now, it is not only becoming a problem but a headache for many states.
Real estate agents may also now be required to issue a disclosure to buyers when purchasing a short sale or foreclosure indicating there could be a “cloud” on the title in regards to not only first but also second mortgages.
I haven’t heard of it becoming a problem here in Oregon because we weren’t as involved in the sub-prime mortgage market as many other areas. However, it takes one person to test the validity of their foreclosure to bring the problem to the forefront. We may still see a wave of issues here locally as well. You can read more about it here. There are many states that are having lots of problems because of the electronic tracking that MERS initiated. I wonder who thought of that great idea??
Laws are written for a reason. To determine chain of title, it has always been that a transfer of deed needed to be recorded along with the note, in the appropriate county. Afterall, that’s what closing is – recording.
Somewhere, someone got the idea to by-pass that law, make a lot of money and just keep track of the note rather than processing the required and necessary recording. Now it’s coming back to haunt everyone from title companies, lenders, attorneys, courts, real estate agents and not to mention sellers and buyers. Just one more chapter in this foreclosure crisis that everyone now is becoming aware of and we’re probably not through yet.
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The S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices for 20 metropolitan areas showed a 1% increase in the seasonally adjusted median price of homes from July to August. The index has posted month-to-month gains since June of this year.
Looking at the seasonally adjusted monthly data, 17 metro areas tracked by the index showed improvements in August when compared to July. Meanwhile, 19 out of the 20 markets showed moderation in year-over-year rates of decline. This data is not seasonally adjusted and the August increase shows that was a direct result of the spring-summer selling season and the first-time home buying tax credit. As of August, home prices across the United States are still at their pre-bubble levels of autumn 2003 with Portland showing a -12.5% decrease in values since the same time last year – August 2008.
Housing market analysts cited the Federal government’s $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time buyers as an important factor in the housing market’s recovery of late. I’ve been saying in most of my posts that Portland has also seen a better real estate market largely because of the tax credit.
John Tuccillo recently had this to say:
“Was the jump in existing home sales in September encouraging, misleading, or ho-hum? The answer is yes. It is ho-hum because the pending sales index predicted the jump. So there is nothing new happening in the housing market. It was encouraging because it was more good news about a housing market that is in real recovery.
The coming months will display a consistent positive movement in real estate. It was misleading because the additional sales were “borrowed” from 2010 because of the expiration deadline of the first time buyer tax credit. We will see sales drop as soon as the credit disappears. The state of the market is such now that even an extraordinary piece of data like a sharp monthly rise in sales can support any argument about the future of the market. Where is the truth? My intelligence from around the country tells me that we are somewhere between the last two explanations.
Where there are jobs, supressed demand is emerging and sales–unaided by extraordinary government subsidy–are happening. Yet, where there are no new jobs, the market is almost fully reliant on the tax credit. It strikes me that the best policy for real estate is to encourage in all possible ways the job creation that will guarantee a strong housing market and avoid getting addicted to a government handout that introduces yet another artificial element into the market.”
Although I am in favor of a housing tax credit to boost our market and economy, I do believe and have stated repeatedly in my blog, that until we see unemployment and foreclosures improve here locally, we won’t be seeing a significant or positive housing market in Portland.
ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. © Copyright 2008-2009 Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws. Based on a Blog at WordPress.
(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com).
UNEMPLOYMENT
I’m not here to debate how bad the unemployment figures are. The recent report was worse than expected and we continue to lose jobs. Until the job market improves, I personally don’t think our housing market will improve. There are ”housing experts” saying that this is the worst unemployment picture since the Great Depression. The job report shows the unemployment rate now stands at 9.8 percent- highest level hit since 1983. Another 263,000 jobs lost last month. Larry Summers recently stated that jobs are a lagging indicator and are 2 months behind a recession ending and the Administration won’t consider that a recovery has taken place until the job market improves.
Economist – Bill Conerly has said:
“One last comment on unemployment: look carefully at the historic pattern and you’ll see that the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, meaning that it starts to improve after the overall economy is already improving. As such, it does not prevent the economy from improving.
If high unemployment prevented a recovery from recession, then we never would have recovered from our first recession. But we’ve recovered from it, and from every other recession.
There are plenty of things to worry about. The high unemployment rate preventing a recovery is not one of those things.”
CBS News reported the other evening that any recovery is being clouded by the jobs report. If you’ve been reading my blog you know my concern about economists missing the mark and not knowing this recession was coming. Now comes a new book that says more or less the same thing. The economists should have seen this financial crisis coming and I’m not the only one who feels this way.
DELINQUENCY RATE AND FORECLOSURES IN PORTLAND
First American Core Logic ranks Portland as still having a low delinquency rate. Portland is considered to be a “Type 2″ which means a relatively low mean delinquency rate – well under 10% with little or no mass in high delinquency neighborhoods. Portland, Seattle and Charlotte, NC are in this “Type 2″ model.
First American CoreLogic also reports that Portland and Oregon continue to fare better than the national average but the picture is still bleak. Portland’s foreclosure rate in August was 1.8 perecnt, up from .7 percent a year ago. The Oregon foreclosure rate was 1.8 percent and the national average was 2.9 percent. The 90-plus-day delinquency rate in Portland and Oregon was 4.8 percent and nationally it was 7.1 percent.
Housing Wire says when the 60-plus day delinquency and serious delinquency trends were plotted against the foreclosure rates, delinquencies were shown to accelerate faster than foreclosures as loan servicers increase loan modifications and other workout efforts and moratoria cap the foreclosure rates.
© Copyright 2008-2009 Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.
ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate by Betty Jung is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a Blog at WordPress.
(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com.
The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that Portland, OR is one of the 10 cities most likely to have one of the biggest rebounds:
Which Cities Will See Biggest Rebound?
Which cities are likely to be the hottest post-economic downturn destinations for young, brilliant, and highly mobile workers? The Wall Street Journal surveyed six trend-spotting experts and they chose cities based on economic diversity, lifestyle and their own personal prejudices. Here’s the top-10 list:
1. Washington, D.C. (tie) 1. Seattle
2. New York
3. Portland, Ore.
4. Austin, Texas
5. San Jose, Calif.
6. Denver
7. Durham, N.C.
8. Dallas
9. Chicago
10. Boston
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Sue Shellenbarger (09/30/2009)
S&P/Case-Shiller
Many people place heavy emphasis on the Case-Shiller/S&P report that is published at the 
end of each month. If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I don’t. That is mainly because not only is the data 3 months behind, but because our data includes Clark County, Washington and not just the Portland-metro area, and doesn’t include new construction or condos.
Here’s a video from Bloomberg on the report along with the full S&P/Case-Shiller July 2009 report. Some experts believe that the housing market has hit bottom. The first-time buyers and lower range of prices (under the $417,000 conforming loan limit) are reducing those inventories and there are bidding wars in many areas of metro Portland. The mid and upper price levels of our market are having trouble selling and are sitting for sale longer.
Nationally, home prices are still 13.3% below July 2008, however the annual declines have slowed in all 20 cities for the sixth straight month. We’re right there with the rest of the cities at a -13.9% decrease. However, the index has risen at an 8 percent annualized rate in the three months to July, the best performance since early 2006. For the month of August 2009, the Portland metro area had a 2.7% increase in our average sales price. Our September 2009 RMLS™ statistics will be out around October 15. I have written a previous post on our August 2009 RMLS™ stats and you can view that here. The first day in October, I saw an enormous number of houses come off the market either as expired listings, withdrawn or cancelled vs. new listings coming on the market for sale. In addition, I’m still seeing many houses with price reductions.
The Case-Shiller index measures home price increases and decreases relative to prices in January 2000. Since 2000, Portland home values are up 48 percent. The base reading is 100, therefore, a reading of 150 would mean that home prices increased 50 percent since the beginning of that index or 2000. Portland’s index is slightly over the 150 mark at 150.99 showing a 1.1% increase in our housing prices from June 2009 and have increased for 2 months in a row according to the S&P/Case-Shiller report. The S&P/Case-Shiller says “…these figures continue to support an indication of stabilization in national real estate values, but we do need to be cautious in coming months to assess whether the housing market will weather the expiration of the Federal First-Time Buyer’s Tax Credit in November and anticipated higher unemployment rates and a possible increase in foreclosures.”
Housing Wire reports:
The number of homes sales in Portland, Ore. was at its lowest August level in 15 years, according to MDA DataQuick. There were 3,063 new and resale houses and condominiums sold in the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton metro area in August. That’s down 9.2% from July and the lowest level of August sales in the area since MDA DataQuick began tracking the region in 1994.
The monthly decline in sales nearly eclipsed July’s 9.3% monthly gain and effectively erased July’s 5.8% year-on-year gain, which ended a 40-month run of year-over-year declines. The year-on-year loss continued in August, with sales slipping 0.8% below levels seen in August 2008.
The median sale price for homes in the region was $242,200, up a 0.7% from July but down 10.8% from $271,500 a year ago and down 16.2% from the market peak of $288,858 in August 2007.
Previously foreclosed homes accounted for 15.5% of all resales in the region, up from 14.2% in July and up from 6.8% one year ago. During the month, 675 houses and condos went into foreclosure in the region, down 1.2% from July and up 92.3% from a year ago. The number of August foreclosures is 24% higher than the monthly average during the past year
© Copyright 2008-2009 Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.
ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate by Betty Jung is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a Blog at WordPress.
(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com.
HUD’s most recent quarterly report was issued the other day. Here are the highlights about metro Portland, Oregon:
- During the 12 months ending June 2009, job losses totaled 55,400 in Oregon. Oregon accounted for one-half the 38,200 manufacturing jobs lost in the region, due mainly to layoffs at Daimler AG and Intel Corporation.
- Regionwide employment declines occurred in nearly every sector, with two-thirds of the job losses recorded in the construction and manufacturing sectors. Government, education and health services, and information were the only sectors to record employment gains, up 21,000, 20,300, and 900 jobs, respectively. For the 12 months ending June 2009, nonfarm employment averaged 1.7 million jobs in Oregon. The regional average unemployment rate increased to 7.5 percent during the 12 months ending June 2009 compared with a rate of 4.8 percent for the same period in 2008. The average unemployment rate, which increased in every state in the region, was 9.4 percent in Oregon.
- Oregon registered the greatest loss in construction jobs, down 14,800 jobs.
- Oregon sales market conditions also remained soft during the 12 months ending June 2009. According to data from the local multiple listing services, the number of new and existing single-family homes sold in the 11 largest markets in Oregon totaled 35,900, a 29-percent decline compared with the number sold during the previous 12 months. During the same period, the average sales price decreased by 13 percent to $271,900. In the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Oregon-Washington metropolitan area, the number of new and existing homes sold totaled 21,100, down 34 percent compared with the number sold during the 12 months ending June 2008, and the average price decreased 11 percent to $298,800.
- Oregon, permits totaled 5,900, a decline of 2,100 homes, or 18 percent, from a year ago.
- In Oregon, 3,400 multifamily units were permitted, 1,200 fewer than the number permitted during the 12 months ending June 2008.
- In the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton metropolitan area, rental housing market conditions were balanced in the second quarter of 2009. According to Reis, Inc., the apartment vacancy rate was 5.8 percent, up from 5 percent in the second quarter of 2008. The average rent was essentially flat at $750 over the same period. Because of limited new apartment construction, rental markets in the Oregon metropolitan areas of Medford, Salem, and Eugene-Springfield remained balanced with apartment vacancy rates of 4, 5, and 5 percent respectively. A year ago, the vacancy rate was 4 percent in all three metropolitan areas. Between the second quarters of 2008 and 2009, average asking rents in these three areas increased between 1 and 2 percent, to $590, $620, and $700, respectively.
© Copyright 2008-2009 Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.
ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate by Betty Jung is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a Blog at WordPress.
(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com).
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