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Sacramento, CA
Each of the home buyers that I have been working with wonder if “Games” are being played by agents and the banks.
Phone calls I receive from other home buyers tell me their Realtors tell them to offer more money than what the houses are listed for.
Appraisals are not coming in at value.
There are two reasons for this phenomenon, appraisers being used are out of the area where the house is located (although if they are good at their job, this should not present a problem), and the other reason is home buyers are driving the prices up.
Do you have some of the same questions below…
- Has Obama’s hold on Foreclosures caused a false sense of bottom?
- Have investors and home buyers worried that there won’t be anymore foreclosures?
- Are home buyers driving up the value of homes?
- Will loan modifications end up foreclosures in the years to come?
- Will the banks trickle out the foreclosures or let them infiltrate in mass?
- Will unemployment continue to rise past 11.1% in Sacramento?
- Will the new Short Sale and Foreclosure be caused from unemployment?
- Is the new foreclosure a 20 year loan with fixed rate?
What I have been noticing are investors paying cash and paying more than the property is worth thereby driving the prices upward. My guess is that these are first time investors.
Even Sacramento Short Sales have gotten into the game with multiple offers jacking up the true value of the property. Some listing agents are notorious for underpricing a house in order to receive multiple offers…a bit of a bait and switch, I’d say. As a Short Sale listing agent are you REALLY surprised that buyers are writing more than one offer?
We have houses where agents are removing the key from the lockboxes so other buyers don’t have the opportunity to view the property and the saga goes on…
Agents not returning phone calls, not properly updating the MLS and a few agents not apparently knowing how to handle a Short Sale.
This causes much trepidation with home buyers. Oh, and did I mention that come banks when accepting the home buyers offer are reducing the contingency period to 5 days, the appraisal to 10 days and charging $200 per diem for every day not closing on time?
It’s the Wild, Wild West in Real Estate these days…
In my opinion we are at a false bottom just bumping along the bottom and not quite there, yet. There are plenty of foreclosures yet to come. The projection of an upward swing, I believe won’t happen until the end of 2011. I’d love to be wrong but that’s the way I see it.
And frankly, if we have more Sacramento layoffs past the 11.1% figure (this figure does not even reflect all the furlough State workers), I believe we will see more foreclosures from homeowners loosing their jobs who have good mortgage loans with fixed interest rates. You don’t qualify for a Loan modification if you don’t have a job.
Did you happen to see the Sacramento Bee story: Interactive: California wave of lost jobs:
Layoffs from Jan 2008-May 2009
- Sacramento County 4,713
- Placer County 2, 188
- El Dorado County 212
- Yolo County 1,757
Check out the Unemployment in California as presented by the Sac Bee just through May 2009.
What are your thoughts, when do you see the bottom happening? Do you think we will see a turn around in 2011 or sooner?
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