Tait Ave Home Sold In Los Gatos

You can do a detailed search for homes available for  sale in the  the Los Gatos Real Estate market here.

The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts, myself included, now contend it has done more harm than good.

If you have been reading my Los Gatos Real Estate musings you already know that since the program was announced in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people, but has largely failed to provide lasting relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.

As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.

This fact that credit scores are affected by modifications boils my brain!  The program was meant to help!   In fact, it is hurting too many people.   How are you going Read the rest of this entry »

Buying a home means you need to understand your credit score better and how it weighs in and out of your favor. This is true In Los Gatos and the Bay Area, more than most, due to the high priced Real Estate here.  Investors know this and so should you.   What will a finance company consider when you make an offer on that Los Gatos foreclosure you want to buy?

With all the misguided information flying around about loan modifications understanding these myths will prevent some misteps.

“Many Americans hold mistaken beliefs about credit scores,” cautioned  Ethan Ewing, who heads the free online consumer portal at Bills.com. “Misinformation on television and in hearsay from friends and neighbors only compounds the problem.”

Here are the top 10 commonly held myths surrounding credit scores:

Myth #1: A credit score is a credit report. The credit report is a detailed listing of all debts and payments, going back throughout an individual’s entire payment history, Ewing explained. For each entry, it shows the creditor’s name, amount owed, the highest balance owed, the available credit, whether the account is open or closed (and who closed it), the number of late payments and whether the account is in default. A credit score is a number between 300 and 850 that is based on complex formulas incorporating all the data in the credit report.   Most homes for sale in Los Gatos yield many offers so, you need to have the best credit score. Read the rest of this entry »

You can now do a short sale on your home and buy a new home without waiting three years.   Prior to the new guidelines you were unable to buy a home with a FHA insured mortgage following a short sale of your primary residence. download FHA Guideline PDF

If you were current when your short sale is made you have every chance of buying a new home according to the new guidelines from the Department of Housing

from FHA guideline-

Borrowers are considered eligible for a new FHA-insured mortgage if, from the date of loan application for the new mortgage

• All mortgage payments due on the prior mortgage were made within the month due for the 12 month period preceding the short sale, and

• All installment debt payments for the same time period were also made within the month due.

Lenders are not allowed to approve  a new home purchase  if… Read the rest of this entry »

The following homes in Los Gatos reported as closed (sold) this past week.  Congratulations to the new homeowners and the community they will certainly enjoy!

15400 VIA PALOMINO Single Family  4 bed(s) /3|1 bath(s)23,482 sq ft     Monte Sereno $2,395,000

16242 AZALEA WY Single Family  3 bed(s) /2|0 bath(s) 8,000 sq ft Los Gatos   $1,229,000

102 HOLLYCREST DR Single Family 3 bed(s) /2|0 bath(s) 7,070 sq ft  Los Gatos  $799,000

14225 LORA DR #102 Condominium 2 bed(s) /1|0 bath(s)     2,242 sq ft Los Gatos $345,000

These homes all sold for below their asking price from  High reduction of -9% for Lora Drive and low price reduction of 3% for Azelea Way.  Home sellers and agents in Los Gatos and surrounding areas should take heed of the substantial reductions made this week.    The days on market or CDOM are more relevant factors in pricing homes today than we have seen in the past few years.

This article  (here) is evidence our market is doing better than average.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Last month BofA chose to work with REOtrans, a leading transaction vendor to the mortgage industry, to advance and streamline foreclosure solutions by reducing them all together.

They are working to move the short sale idea into the mainstream RE sale arena. This is great news no matter what side of the Real Estate market you find yourself standing in.

The traditional Short Sale process has led to immense frustration and outright anger, not only here in California, but throughout the nation for all parties involved. As a Real Estate professional, having to negotiate short sales on behalf of distressed homeowners, I have learned that many people charged with Short Sale approvals agree…the short sale process, as it is implemented now, is ridiculous even archaic.

B of A has been the penultimate banking institution in the United States for decades and it goes without saying their agreement to work with REOtrans is a window into Real Estate sales for the near term. Read the rest of this entry »

Action Taken against 5 more Loan Mod Scammers

From the  California Bar Journal

State Bar prosecutors took action last month against five more lawyers under investigation for loan modification misconduct, bringing to 14 the number of attorneys who have resigned or been placed on involuntary inactive enrollment since creation of the bar’s Loan Modification Task Force in April.

“I am very pleased with the results being obtained by members of our Loan Modification Task Force,” said Interim Chief Trial Counsel Russell Weiner. “They have exceeded my expectations. Our office has been aggressively investigating and prosecuting attorneys alleged to have committed loan modification misconduct. Any attorney thinking that he or she can commit loan modification misconduct and get away with it for a significant period of time should think again.”

The Loan Modification Task Force has received more than 1,250 complaints and is investigating almost 250 lawyers. Each task force investigator oversees about 135 cases, and almost 20,000 attorney files have been removed from the offices of attorneys whose loan modification practices have been shut down.

California Bar Journal Article

According to the following article it seems it may become the rule rather than the exception.   This always reminds me that a short sale is the only way to go.

Read this article to learn about the possible new trend.

New FHA lender short sale guidelines

The Home Mortgage Preservation Program is now Turbocharged enough to help high Los Gatos mortgages hopefully.

In May the government stepped up the pace to modify mortgages to stave off the 10–12 million potential foreclosures looming on the horizon.   This was to be done first, by allowing homeowners to qualify for modifications on a temporary basis.  650,000 homeowners are now in that process.

However, only 2000 have been approved for modifications through the program.

Request Loan Modification .PDF

Chase Loan Mod Docs .PDF

GMAC Financial Statement .PDF

“We now must refocus our efforts on the conversion phase to ensure that borrowers and servicers know what their responsibilities are in converting trial modifications to permanent ones,” said Phyllis Caldwell, the newly appointed chief for the Treasury Department’s upstart Homeownership Preservation Office, in a statement released Monday.

The MakingHomeAffordable.gov Web site will include links to all required documents and an income verification checklist, as well as explanations of how the trial and conversion processes work. The Homeowner’s HOPE Hotline, at (888) 995-HOPE, will provide direct access to housing counselors

The temporary modification idea was meant to allow the homeowner time to submit documentation the lender would review to potentially grant an approval.   This has caused much anxiety on the part of the participants as evidenced in the following quote.

“Now it’s up to the banks to do their part to convert borrowers to permanent modifications,” said Michael Barr, an assistant Treasury secretary. “Servicers to date have not done a good enough job.”

We just don’t know what penalty the participating lender is facing if they do not comply with the pressure.   Without proof of substantial numbers of permanent modifications there is a real sense that this will just be another case of hot air.

This will lead to MORE foreclosures that may well have been prevented if the homeowner had time to seek out alternatives like a short sale or deed in lieu of foreclosure.

“If we don’t see a big increase in the permanent modification numbers, then there’s something seriously wrong with this program,” said Alan White, a law professor at Valparaiso University. “I can only assume the number is appallingly low.”

The Treasury Dept. began to publish reports naming those institutions that were lagging which proved to increase the numbers of temporary modifications from 235000 to 650000 by the end of July.

It is likely there will be another attempt to list their names if the number of permanent modifications does not rise soon!  Not quite Turbocharged.

There are new guidelines, now in place, that servicers are not going to like very much.

This is directly from the HMP press release …

Top servicers will be required to submit a schedule demonstrating their plans to reach a decision on each loan for which they have documentation and to communicate either a modification agreement or denial letter to those borrowers. Treasury/Fannie Mae “account liaisons” are being assigned to these servicers and will follow up daily as necessary to monitor progress against the servicer’s plan. Daily progress will be aggregated by the end of each business day and reported to the Administration.

If you or someone you know needs to get on board, forward this link to them. http://makinghomeaffordable.gov/index.html

Here they will find…

• Links to all of the required documents and an income verification checklist to help borrowers request a modification in four easy steps;
• Comprehensive information about how the trial phase works, what borrower responsibilities are to convert to a permanent modification, and a new instructional video which provides step by step instruction for borrowers;
• A toolkit for partner organizations to directly assist their constituents.

I think this is a mess that still needs cleaning up… and I am hear to watch ‘em.