When the next housing bust hits, blame the bankers | Cross River Real Estate

The U.S. economic recovery is being endangered by a slowing housing market, as prospective homeowners with lower incomes and credit scores are finding it nearly impossible to get a mortgage.

Six years after the collapse of home prices, the mortgage-lending industry is going through an upheaval. Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, -0.04%  has the largest share of the mortgage market, but CEO John Stumpf in an interview with the Financial Times last week said his company would be unwilling to lend to lower-income borrowers and those with relatively low credit scores. That is, unless regulators made it more difficult for investors to force banks to repurchase securitized loans.

“If you guys want to stick with this program of ‘putting back’ any time, any way, whatever, that’s fine, we’re just not going to make those loans and there’s going to be a whole bunch of Americans that are underserved in the mortgage market,” Stumpf said.

He was referring to loan-repurchase demands by Fannie Mae FNMA, +0.85%Freddie Mac FMCC, -0.28%  and private investors.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, +0.17%  CEO James Dimon, during a July conference call, said the bank’s volume of loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration was “way down,” and that the bank had “lost a tremendous sum of money on the FHA,” which had disputed roughly a third of all insurance claims.

“We want to help the consumers there, but we can’t do it at great risk to J.P. Morgan, so until they come up with some kind of safe harbors or something, we’re going to be very, very cautious in that line of business,” Dimon said.

Even Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said in June: “It is difficult for any homeowner who doesn’t have pristine credit these days to get a mortgage,” which was one of the causes of the limp housing recovery.

The pace of home-price increases has slowed for the first time since 2008, according to the latest data from Case-Shiller released last week.

Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. HOV, +1.06% which builds homes in planned communities, said today that for its fiscal third quarter ended July 31, net contracts for new homes declined 6.3% from a year earlier, and its cancellation rate increased to 22% from 18%. CEO Ara Hovnanian said “the housing industry remains in the early stages of a recovery,” which is a remarkable statement, considering how many years have passed since the financial crisis.

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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/when-the-next-housing-bust-hits-blame-the-bankers-2014-09-04?link=kiosk

Housing market getting ready to grow | Cross River Real Estate

Citing recent “encouraging economic and housing data,” analysts from Fitch Ratings expect an accelerated upturn in housing in the remainder of 2014.

In Fitch’s The Chalk Line report for Summer 2014, Fitch analysts Robert Curran, Monica Delarosa and Robert Rulla write that the projected growth in housing will last throughout 2015 and lead to a much stronger year than 2014 is proving to be.

“Demographics, attractive affordability/housing valuations, and a slow, steady easing in credit standards should sustain and ultimately accelerate the upturn,” the analysts write. “The latest economic and housing macro statistics are generally encouraging.”

The analysts say that 2014’s performance is fighting an uphill battle after an unexpectedly strong winter put a significant dent in the housing market in the first few months of the year.
“The spring selling season was underwhelming enough that this, along with more guarded expectations for the next few months, will lead to more modest growth for macro housing statistics before the year is through,” said Robert Curran, Fitch’s managing director and lead homebuilding analyst.


read more....



http://www.housingwire.com/articles/30745-fitch-housing-market-getting-ready-to-grow

Orlando Bloom Leaps His Way Into $5M Franklin Street Loft | Cross River Real Estate

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Actor Orlando Bloom has a lot to be happy about: his involvement as the bow and arrow-wielding elf Legolas in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, his son with ex-beau model Miranda Kerr, and now, his new home. The Post reports that Bloom picked up a three-bedroom loft in Tribeca's Sugarloaf Condominium at 155 Franklin Street for $4.875 million. Maybe Bloom first set his sights on the 1882 building when director Peter Jackson was living in its penthouse—now where Taylor Swift hangs/cries on her guitar. The Post says Bloom was wooed by the loft's cast-iron columns, exposed brick walls, and wood-beamed ceilings. Sigh, if only it were that easy.


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http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/06/19/orlando_bloom_leaps_his_way_into_5m_franklin_street_loft.php

6 Housing Trends That May Surprise You | Cross River Homes

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the new regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, announced Tuesday that they would loosen lending rules to make credit more available to Americans.

Whether this will take the sting out of rising interest rates and help the housing market for the remainder of the year is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, here are six trends you need to know if you stumble into a real estate conversation at your next neighborhood party:

Home prices are through the roof. Prices continue to rise this year, albeit at a slower pace than last year. The median existing single-family home price was $191,600 in the first quarter, up 8.6 percent from $176,400 in the first quarter of 2013. The median existing single-family home price increased in 74 percent of markets, as measured by the National Association of Realtors, with 125 out of 170 metro areas showing gains based on closings in the first quarter 2014, compared with the first quarter of 2013. The housing price bubble is especially pronounced in California and at the higher end of the market.

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/6-housing-trends-may-surprise-213200468.html

Rising food, housing costs push up U.S. inflation | Cross River Homes

Rising food, housing costs push up U.S. inflation | Reuters

Luxury Digs Stake out New Turf | Cross River Real Estate

Market forces are changing the shape of luxury locations, expanding borders to enlarge the supply of million dollar plus homes just outside of historically affluent neighborhoods. Unlike homes at the other end of the price scale where inventory shortages fueled double digit price increases, the new growth is a result of the reviving economy

Coldwell Banker Previews International® released its first Luxury Market Index, which analyzed U.S. cities with at least 25 home sales of $1 million and higher in 2013 and ranked the best performing markets by a number of factors including annualized sales in units, volume, average and median sale price.

Topping the list was Woodside, Calif., home to venture capitalists and international entrepreneurs, was the top performing luxury market for 2013 based on critical metrics including annualized sales in units, volume and average and median sale price. Two other hot Silicon Valley communities, Portola Valley and Hillsborough, Calif., ranked in the top five, with all based less than 30 minutes from the Northern California corporate headquarters of Apple, Facebook and Google.

Inventory is very tight in markets like Woodside, a reserved community with many homes hidden down long tree-lined driveways and private lanes, where 24 of Forbes’ richest people in America own property. Much of Woodside is owned by Stanford University, which is selling any land. With inventory low, the ultra-wealthy are flocking to other surrounding suburbs in the region, including Portola Valley, Hillsborough and Atherton depending on their lifestyle needs.

But unlike lower tiered markets, inventory is not the real powerhouse behind today’s Silicon Valleyu boom. Rather, the exploding tech economy, which is creating immense wealth on a daily basis when start-ups get bought out and new venture flourish.



http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2014/04/luxury-digs-stake-out-new-turf/

Painted vs. Stained Kitchen Cabinets: Help for Deciding | Cross River Real Estate

One of the biggest decisions you will make when choosing cabinets is whether they should be painted or stained wood. The choice you make will have a huge bearing on how the cabinets will look and how they will hold up.

I went to two cabinet shops —the larger Canyon Creek Cabinet in Monroe, Washington, and the smaller O.B. Williams custom shop in Seattle — to get expert perspectives on the choices, which don’t end once you’ve settled the stain-versus-paint debate.

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Painted Cabinets

When you choose painted cabinets, they will usually be assembled with materials that accept and hold paint well, such as poplar, veneered plywood or MDF.The key is having a nice, flat surface, free of knots and heavy grain patterns.

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Some cabinet manufacturers perform all the finishing work on their cabinets in-house.At Canyon Creek, an elaborate system of spray booths, ovens and an overhead drying line make it possible to finish hundreds of cabinets a day. Cabinets leave the plant boxed and ready for installation.

 

 

 

 

http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/23429308?utm_source=Houzz&utm_campaign=u458&utm_medium=email&utm_content=gallery1

Renovated Sag Harbor Property is Ambitiously Priced | Cross River Real Estate

12 Breezy Drive Sag Harbor

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We do wish brokers would stop using "new construction" to mean anything other than a house just built from the ground up. This place has been newly renovated but isn't new construction. The results are really beautiful, we must say: kitchen lovely, baths gorgeous, everything fresh and bright and stylish. The price even includes the furniture (indoor and outdoor), artwork and accessories. But has it been overimproved? The property sold in October 2012 for $415,000. Now the asking price is $2.185M. Sorry, we just can't see it. There's less than half an acre of property (0.47 acre) in an unexciting area of Sag Harbor. Thoughts?
· 12 Breezy Drive [Elliman]


http://hamptons.curbed.com/archives/2014/03/06/renovated_sag_harbor_property_is_ambitiously_priced.php

Nextdoor used by ‘countless’ real estate agents to cultivate leads | Cross River Homes

Nextdoor used by ‘countless’ real estate agents to cultivate leads | Cross River Homes | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

Elliman’s Oren Alexander to co-list $95M property | Cross River NY Homes

Elliman’s Oren Alexander to co-list $95M property | Cross River NY Homes | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

NJ’s priciest listing comes with 2 barns and a silo | Cross River NY Homes

NJ’s priciest listing comes with 2 barns and a silo | Cross River NY Homes | Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor

New Zealand Stops a Housing Bubble | Cross River Real Estate

Perhaps the Federal Reserve has something to learn from the central bank of New Zealand about how to manage a mortgage market. Unlike the Fed, which has been sharply criticized for having failed to keep the U.S. housing bubble from expanding, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is sounding the alarm over rising housing prices and imposing limits on mortgages.

Risks associated with excessive increases in house prices, and the potential that the bubble might burst, have become a major threat to the country’s financial system, the Reserve Bankwarns.

The New Zealand housing market is indeed heating up. Over the past year, house prices in Auckland have risen 17 percent, and in Christchurch, they’re up 8 percent. Those two markets account for half of home sales across the country.

Relative to income, New Zealand housing prices are now more than 20 percent above their historical average. International organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development share the Reserve Bank’s concerns that real estate may be overvalued.

So what is the central bank in New Zealand doing about it? In October, it put a limit on high loan-to-value mortgages. Each bank must see that no more than 10 percent of its new mortgages finance more than 80 percent of a house’s value. Before the limit took effect, such mortgages had reached 30 percent of new originations.

Such limits on high loan-to-value mortgages are becoming more common internationally; Canada, Israel, Singapore and Sweden are among the countries using them. And they have been found effective “in containing exuberant mortgage loan growth, speculative real estate transactions, and house price accelerations,” according a June 2013 IMF review of studies. During downswings, the review found, such measures can reduce“fire-sale dynamics” and loan losses.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-18/new-zealand-stops-a-housing-bubble.html

Calgary’s real estate market keeps humming along | Cross River Homes

Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor » Blog Archive » Calgary’s real estate market keeps humming along | Cross River Homes

Where the Next Huge Real Estate Bubble May Be Building | Cross River Real Estate

Bedford New York Real Estate | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul Realtor » Blog Archive » Where the Next Huge Real Estate Bubble May Be Building | Cross River Real Estate