Read Article: “Seattle-area homes remain strong”

Article from seattlepi.com

“Seattle-area home sales remain strong, report says”
The recent surge in the housing market remained surprisingly strong in the Seattle area . . .

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Read Article: “If You Don’t Buy a House Now, You’re Stupid or Broke”

Article from Business Week

“If You Don’t Buy a House Now, You’re Stupid or Broke”
Interest rates are at historic lows but cyclical trends suggest they will soon rise. Home buyers may never see such a chance again…

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Bellevue’s Washington Square Triples Condominium Sales

Bellevue’s Washington Square Triples Condominium Sales

Interest in Second Phase Development Spurs Sales; Not Homeowner Stimulus

Bellevue, WA (PRWEB) Nov. 24, 2009 New condominium sales at Bellevue’s Washington Square more than tripled in the past two months, offering the first sign buyers are coming back to the high-rise condo market in the Seattle region.

Washington Square, which has two towers of condominiums and 26 townhomes in downtown Bellevue, has suffered with the rest of the housing market due to the national recession, only selling one unit a month from January to August. From September to Nov. 1, however, sales totaled 26.

Increased sales have come since Wasatch Development, developer of Washington Square, announced preliminary plans for the second phase of the $1.2 billion, 10-acre downtown Bellevue superblock. Only one of the 26 buyers used the federal government’s first-time homebuyer credit of $8,000 to purchase a unit at Washington Square, which indicates the incentive program did not artificially inflate sales.

“Confidence in condos is coming back,” said Mike Nielson, chief operating officer, for Washington Square. “Since September 1, we’ve sold 26 units. Last year during the same period, we sold one. Now with Fannie Mae and FHA approval, we’re seen as a safer product, banks can make favorable loans and buyers can now purchase with as little as 3.5 percent down.”

Washington Square Bellevue’s First FHA Certified High Rise

Last week, Washington Square became the first high-rise condominium project in Bellevue to obtain Federal Housing Administration or FHA certification, which makes it easier for prospective buyers to get insured loans, which can carry more favorable terms. Since the recession, condominium buyers have found it difficult to buy condos because banks have been unwilling to take the risk on condos, particularly in markets with a glut of units.

To obtain FHA certification, condominium projects have to meet a stringent set of criteria. When they do, it means lenders may be more willing to give a buyer a loan and terms that make it easier for them to qualify. For instance, rather than paying 10 percent to 20 percent as a down payment, buyers can put as little as 3.5 percent down. Those seeking FHA loans also may get that down payment from family members and have a higher debt-to-income level than those required by conventional loans.

Contact: Mike Nielson, Washington Square at 425-974-7078 or michaeln@netwastach.com, or M. Sharon Baker at 425-890-9105.

About Washington Square

Washington Square is a 10-acre development in the heart of downtown Bellevue, WA orchestrated by Wasatch Development. Two 23-story condominium towers along with 26 townhomes were completed in 2008, the project’s first phase. Plans for the superblock’s second phase will be unveiled in 2010 once approved by The City of Bellevue. The second phase includes 650,000 square feet of office, hotel and retail development and parking on the southwest corner of the superblock and will be developed with a partner. To learn more visit www.washingtonsquareliving.com

About Wasatch Development

Founded in 1988 by Dell Loy Hansen, Wasatch owns and manages more than 50 multi-family residential communities and approximately 3 million square feet of commercial space throughout the western United States. Outside of Washington Square, the company is developing more than 2,000 residential units and a hotel and convention center in Utah, which opened for business in 2009. In addition to its real estate holdings, Wasatch owns 17 business companies that support its core real estate business.

Wasatch has offices in Salt Lake City, Utah; San Diego, Calif.; Scottsdale, Ariz. and Bellevue, Washington, and with its subsidiaries maintains a real estate portfolio of more than $1.4 billion in assets. You can learn more at www.wasatchgroup.com.

Newly Expanded Homebuyers Tax Credit

Helpful Chart Showing the Newly Expanded Homebuyers Tax Credit

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Keeping You Informed

Up to date info on the Green River Valley flooding issue

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Pending home sales hit 6th straight increase

From CNNmoney.com

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This week, your home inspector will have to be licensed

From seattlepi.com

This week, your home inspector will have to be licensed

By LARRY LANGE
SPECIAL TO SEATTLEPI.COM
AUGUST 31st, 2009

(Editor’s Note: Home inspectors who have practiced their trade since before mid-2008 can continue performing inspections until July 1, 2010, so long as they complete requirements for state licenses by that date. This story did not make that clear.)

Sharon Mann, a 30-year real estate agent, thinks the most important piece of a home-buying transaction may be the inspector who checks out the house for the buyer, looking for that bit of mold or rot that could cause a problem.

One who does the job well, she says, will go to maximum lengths to find out what might be wrong even with a new home: testing every electrical socket, turning on every faucet and slipping into the crawl space to make sure there aren’t any plumbing leaks when the bathtub is full of water.

“It’s like insurance for the buyer, the last stop where they can have more information about the property than they’ll ever have,” said Mann, who works at Re/Max Realty.

But not all inspectors are that thorough, Mann says, and starting Tuesday all of them in the state must have a license to do their work and show they know how to do it.

Inspectors don’t always catch potential problems and can leave home buyers stuck with big unplanned expenses once the problems are discovered even after inspectors were paid hundreds of dollars for their work. Consumers began complaining to state lawmakers, who last year approved the law that requires the licenses.

Before the licensing law passed “basically anybody could declare themselves a home inspector,” said state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, chairwoman of a Senate committee that approved the law.

The hope is that the new license requirements — written tests and two years of experience and 100 inspections or 160 hours of classroom and supervised field training — will give consumers more assurances that inspectors are reliable.

“It doesn’t guarantee the client’s going to get a good job, but it makes it highly probable that they’ll get somebody that does know…how to do the inspection,” said Walter Crow, an inspector and owner of Amerispec in North Seattle.

There’s no requirement that homes be inspected before they’re sold, but the number of inspections has grown since the early 1980s. Real estate agents say now they’re used in 90 percent of home sales.
Inspectors can’t tear out walls or remove furniture to get clearer views of things. But they can check and test accessible things such as plumbing, electrical and drainage systems and look for signs of trouble such as rot or structural damage.

The state Department of Licensing estimates there were about 1,500 working inspectors statewide before the economic downtown put a dent in property sales and reduced the amount of work.
Inspectors, often working with real estate agents, charge fees that can range from $350 to $450 to examine a home, depending on its size.

Inspectors submit reports to prospective buyers investigating a property or to an owner preparing to sell.

Most come up with things needing some kind of repair or that can be used to negotiate a price downward. Because of what the inspections can reveal “we for the most part we always recommend a buyer get a home inspection,” said broker Jim Conlan at Century 21 North Homes Realty.

Occasionally some aren’t as thorough as they should be. Mann said she’s sometimes surprised how fast some inspections are done, by inspectors who won’t go so far as to examine a crawl space.

“There’s no way an inspector should be off your site in two hours, and if there’s a crawl space it’s three hours,” Mann said.

Owner Scott Mallard of Madison Properties in Issaquah said his company had to repeat the inspection of an apartment because one inspector “was not very thorough.” The second inspector “found material defects to the extent that the purchase and sale was not executed. Relying on the information of the first inspector would have been a very expensive mistake.”

“I have been wanting (inspector) licensure for some time,” Mallard said.

Under the new law all working inspectors will have to be licensed effective Tuesday, and all of them must take an examination before being licensed. Inspectors with at least two years’ experience, who’ve performed at least 100 inspections before the law took effect, can get a licenses after passing the test without further training.

But less experienced people must complete the written exam and complete 120 hours of approved classroom instruction and 40 hours of field training supervised by a licensed inspector.

The law requires inspectors to provide written reports of each inspection, and all inspectors must complete at least 24 hours of updated instruction before renewing their licenses every two years.

The inspection licenses, administered by the state Department of Licensing, don’t sanction inspectors’ checking houses for destructive insects such as termites or carpenter ants unless they hold separate state pest-inspection licenses; otherwise the can mention pests and leave confirmation to other experts.

The state Department of Licensing has been processing home-inspection license applications since July 1. Program manager Rhonda Myers said “close to 400″ have applied and most of those were experienced and will be licensed by Tuesday.
The department will maintain a list of licensed inspectors and a record of complaints and violations by each one. The department can revoke a license and fine an errant inspector for violating the law, or for a complaint. The number and type of complaints that would draw a fine aren’t yet clear.

The state also has standards of practice for inspectors.

Inspectors say the new requirements may eliminate some from the business, though “we’ve already lost a few because of the economy,” said Jeff Williams of WIN Home Inspections. Losing inspectors could mean less competition in the business “but I don’t think there’s going to be a shortage,” said David Pioli, an inspector based in Bothell.
“I think there are still enough competent people in the field, and once the market rebounds some I think people will still get service,” Pioli said.

Crow, the Seattle inspector, said the licensing creates “a lot of hoops you have to jump through” but he thinks it’s a good idea “even though I have to pay to get a license.”

He said there were “a lot of people running around that called themselves inspectors who had little prior knowledge of construction or anything to do with housing or construction in general. There’s no guarantee but (licensing) will do a whole lot more to getting people that do good job and know how to do it.”

Welcome to the bottom: Housing begins slow rebound

From The Associated Press

Welcome to the bottom: Housing begins slow rebound

By ADRIAN SAINZ, DAVID TWIDDY, DANIEL WAGNER, ALEX VEIGA (AP) – Aug 1, 2009

It was — note the past tense — the worst housing recession anyone but survivors of the Great Depression can remember.

From the frenzied peak of the real estate boom in 2005-2006 to the recession’s trough earlier this year, home resales fell 38 percent and sales of new homes tumbled 76 percent. Construction of homes and apartments skidded 79 percent. And for the first time in more than four decades of record keeping, home prices posted consecutive annual declines.

A staggering $4 trillion in home equity was wiped out, and millions of Americans lost their homes through foreclosure.

Now take a deep breath and exhale. The worst is over.

By every measure, except foreclosures, the housing market has stabilized and many areas are recovering, according to a spate of data released in the past two weeks. Nationwide, home resales in June are up 9 percent from January, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Sales of new homes have climbed 17 percent during the same period. And construction, while still anemic, has risen almost 20 percent since the beginning of the year.

Even home prices, down one third from the top, edged up in May, the first monthly increase since June 2006.

“The freefall is over,” says Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The problem is that, Baker, like many economists, expects the housing market will “be bouncing around the bottom” for the second half of the year.

There are also real threats that could poison this budding recovery. The unemployment rate, which is 9.5 percent, is expected to surpass 10 percent, leaving even more homeowners unable to pay their mortgages. Mortgage rates could rise, making homeownership less affordable. And the federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers, which as lured many into the market, is set to expire on Nov. 30.

“As long as jobs are being lost, regardless of all the federal programs out there to help the borrowers, you’re still going to have problems in the housing market,” says Steve Cumbie, executive director of the Center for Real Estate Development at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

True, but when you’ve got bidding wars for foreclosures in places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles, it’s time to call the bottom.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press

First-Time Homebuyers Race to Beat Deadline for $8000 Tax Credit

From CNBC

Samantha Kielar is scrambling to find a house in Colorado before the doors slam shut on an $8,000 first-time buyer’s tax credit she needs for her downpayment or home repairs.

The clock is ticking fast. Qualified borrowers need to have house offers accepted by the end of September to assure lenders enough time to beat the Nov. 30 federal deadline to close deals, industry executives said.

“I am willing to settle for something” to finish buying quickly, said 20-year old Kielar, who works at the Denver County Jail, and is a part-time student. The tax credit carrot “is speeding up the process,” she said, adding that “$8,000 could help remodel the house, redo carpets and cabinets.”

For loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which require a minimum 3.5 percent downpayment, the $8,000 can be also be applied upfront toward the purchase rather than later on tax returns like other mortgages.

The National Association of Realtors projects 350,000 additional first-time buyers will own homes thanks to the tax credit, said spokesman Walter Malony.

First-time buyers are injecting life into the most severely battered housing market since the Great Depression.

Home sales have risen for three straight months, a ray of hope after three years of tumbling sales that swept prices down more than 30 percent on average and drove record foreclosures.

The state of housing is critical to the overall economy. While stabilizing, housing is unlikely to quickly recover as long as unemployment stays at the highest rate in more than a quarter century, most economists agree.

But various federal stimulus offers, mortgage rates that sank to record lows in April and pockets of economic strength make home buying more fathomable.

Odete Gomes, a 30-year old women’s wholesale clothing buyer in New York City living with her parents and six-year old son, said the soon expiring tax credit “kicked me in the butt to not lose this opportunity” to buy her first home.

“Especially now with the government helping you a little bit, you just gotta go for it,” she said.

Affordability, Obstacles

Average 30-year home loan rates of 5.29 percent in the past week were above the all-time low of 4.78 percent set in April, but much lower than 6.52 percent a year ago, said home funding company Freddie Mac.

Rigid credit standards will prevent the type of wholesale lending that fueled a record home sales and price spree early this decade.

Still, distressed prices, plenty of available properties and low borrowing costs should keep housing from falling apart anew once the home buyer credit disappears, said Gregory Miller, chief economist at SunTrust Bank in Atlanta.

“These programs are giving housing a boost,” he said. “When the tax credit expires, the housing market should have even more legs under it” and gain traction on affordability.

“Housing is on a sustainable path,” Miller added. “We have those who wanted to buy before but couldn’t afford the price, and those who would have bought before but couldn’t sell the existing house. Both of those groups are lined up to buy now.”

The real estate industry is making a full-court press to get the Obama administration to extend the program, though health care and other priorities may derail those efforts.

Realtors said many borrowers remain unaware of the credit and its expiration date.

“There needs to be an extra rush by buyers, because the transactions need to close by Nov. 30 and that will put some types of transactions in peril,” said Sherry Chris, president and chief executive of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate in Parsippany, N.J.

Once aware, some potential first-time buyers, who tend to be younger and have less savings, will be unable to clean up their credit enough to get loans approved for the deadline.

Documentation has intensified since the financial crisis spawned by massive losses on loans made when standards were lax. The process has been prolonged as a result.

Gomes, who with a friend is buying a new $280,000 home in Newburgh, New York with an FHA loan, has an estimated closing date of Sept. 30, almost two months from purchase commitment.

Some transactions, including foreclosures and short-sales, take much longer to complete.

Property owners are also expected to sweeten offers to lure potential buyers to capitalize on demand spurred by the tax credit in its final stages.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if sellers started coming out of the woodwork and began to offer incentives and began to become a little more proactive in selling their homes,” Chris said.

Copyright 2009 Reuters

Home Sales Rise Most In 10 Years

From CNBC

Home sales rise most in 10 years

Sales of existing homes rose 7.2 percent in July, industry group says, with first-time buyers rushing into the
market and foreclosed properties going at fire-sale prices.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. housing market is improving quicker than expected, with home resales in July posting the largest monthly increase in at least 10 years, as first-time buyers rushed to take advantage of a tax credit that expires this fall.

The National Association of Realtors said Friday that home sales rose 7.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.24 million in July, from a pace of 4.89 million in June. It was the fourth-straight monthly increase and the highest level of sales since August 2007. Sales had been expected to rise to an annual pace of 5 million, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

“The housing market, with today’s strong rise in sales, has decisively turned for the better,” said
Lawrence Yun, the trade group’s chief economist. Sales of foreclosures and other distressed properties made up about a third of all transactions last month, down from nearly half earlier this year. In places like San Diego and Orlando, buyers are snapping up foreclosed properties at deep discounts, and real estate agents are pressing banks to release more foreclosures onto the market. Those sales helped drag down the median sales price by 15 percent to $178,400.

First-time buyers must complete their sales transactions by the end of November to take advantage of a tax credit of 10 percent of the purchase price, up to $8,000. The real estate industry is lobbying Congress to get the credit extended.
“It would be unfortunate to see the momentum halted,” Yun said. The inventory of unsold homes on the market rose to 4.1 million, from 3.8 million a month earlier. That’s a 9.4-month supply at the current sales pace, unchanged from June.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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