Real Estate Information Archive

Fannie Mae has launched pilot projects in Phoenix and Orlando intended to reduce foreclosures by pre-approving short sales, agreeing on a price and the loss it will take prior to a deal even being made. It is hoped the program will improve the popularity of short sales among real estate agents.

Property professionals initially had welcomed short sales but soon found the process to be a frustrating one--due to squabbling about the sale price and slow approval times by the mortgage companies--that often ended with no sale at all.

"Short sales have received such a bad reputation among real-estate agents that, as a portion of the overall mortgage market, they have gone down," says Tom Popik of the research firm Campbell Communications, whose November survey of realty practitioners found that agents had to wait as long as 8.1 weeks to receive a response from the lender on a short sale. That was nearly double the 4.5 weeks the process took earlier in the year.

Fannie Mae's pilot will focus on homes that are listed at less than the mortgage balance and carry a Fannie Mae-backed loan serviced by Countrywide Financial Corp.
If it proves successful, the concept could be expanded to other geographical areas and additional lenders. There are concerns, in the meantime, about the program's success, with real estate agents noting that property prices could decline before the pre-approval is issued.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Nick Timiraos (01/09/09)

Get a Free market report for your Home by clicking here

By MITCH ALBOM • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • December 13, 2008

We have grease on our hands.

You have blood.

Kill the car, kill the country. History will show that when America was on its knees, a handful of lawmakers tried to cut off its feet. And blame the workers. How suddenly did the workers — a small percentage of a car’s cost — become justification for crushing an industry?

And when did Detroit become the symbol of economic dysfunction? Are you kidding? Have you looked in the mirror lately, Washington?

In a world where banks hemorrhaged trillions in a high-priced gamble called credit derivative swaps that YOU failed to regulate, how on earth do WE need to be punished? In a bailout era where you shoveled billions, with no demands, to banks and financial firms, why do WE need to be schooled on how to run a business?

Who is more dysfunctional in business than YOU? Who blows more money? Who wastes more trillions on favors, payback and pork?

At least in the auto industry, if folks don’t like what you make, they don’t have to buy it. In government, even your worst mistakes, we have to live with.

And now Detroit should die with this?

In bed with the foreign automakers

Kill the car, kill the country. Sen. Richard Shelby, Sen. Bob Corker, Sen. Mitch McConnell, your names will not be forgotten. It’s amazing how you pretend to speak for America when you are only watching out for your political party, which would love to cripple unions, and your states, which house foreign auto plants.

Corker, you’ve got Nissan there and Volkswagen coming. Shelby, you’ve got Hyundai, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and — like McConnell — Toyota. Oh, don’t kid yourself. They didn’t come because you earned their business, a subject on which you enjoy lecturing the Detroit Three. No, they came because you threw billions in state tax breaks to lure them.

And now you want those foreign companies, which you lured, and which get help from their governments, to dictate to American workers how much they should be paid? Tell you what. You’re so fond of the foreign model, why don’t you do what Japanese ministers do when they screw up the country’s finances?

They cut their salaries.

Or they resign in shame.

When was the last time a U.S. senator resigned over a failed policy?

Yet you want to fire Rick Wagoner?

Who are you people?

More money for the lords of Wall Street

There ought to be a law — against the hypocrisy our government has demonstrated. The speed with which wheelbarrows of money were dumped on Wall Street versus the slow noose hung on the auto companies’ necks is reprehensible. Some of those same banks we bailed out are now saying they won’t extend credit to auto dealers. Wasn’t that why we gave them the money? To loosen credit?

Where’s your tight grip on those funds, senators? Where’s your micromanaging of the wages in banking? Or do you just enjoy having your hands around blue-collared throats?

No matter what the president does, history will not forget this: At our nation’s most uncertain hour, you senators stood ready to plunge hundreds of thousands of American families into oblivion. Leave them unemployed, with no health care, on public assistance. And you were willing to put our nation’s security at risk — by squashing the manufacturing base we must have in times of war.

And why? So you could stand on some phony principle? Crush a union? Play to your base? How is our nation better off today now that you kept $14 billion in the treasury? Are you going to balance the budget with that?

Don’t make us laugh.

Kill the car, kill the country. You tried to slam a stake into our chest; you don’t realize how close you are to the nation’s heart. Shame on your pettiness. Shame on your hypocrisy. This is how lawmakers behave two weeks before Christmas? Honestly. What has become of this country?

In our current Buyer’s market, the type of Home that is selling has shifted from the traditional profile of the past 20 years. It is therefore important to understand where your home fits into the overall market activity. Although traditional owner occupied homes make up a majority of the current homes available for sale, the majority of the homes being sold are bank owned or financial hardship related sales. This puts downward pressure on values and causes pricing to take a more significant roll in marketing. As a traditional seller, in order to stand out in a crowded field, (made even smaller by the Buyer’s focus on bank owned) flexibility on pricing, terms, Lease vs. sale, or lease to own becomes imperative.

Click here for an interesting graphic showing these changes.

HOPE for Homeowners, a federal program to allow the replacement of up to $300 billion in underwater U.S. mortgages with federally backed FHA financing, began accepting applications under a legislatively authorized expansion.
 
To qualify, borrowers must be spending more than 31 percent of their income on mortgage payments. Loans made this year are excluded, except for those completed on Jan 1. Borrowers must have made six months of payments on their loans.
 
Lenders must agree to participate and erase 10 percent of the Home's current value before the government will guarantee the mortgage. A concern among lenders is that investors in mortgage securities must take an immediate loss and can't recoup their lost money if home prices turn upward again.
 
The program is a "helpful step forward" in stabilizing the housing market and will help keep many families in their homes but it is not a cure-all, said Steve Preston, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the program.
 
Troubled borrowers should contact their lenders.

If you need help getting your property listed and sold, go to this link to get started.

A crash course in why it happened, how it's strangling the nation's finances and how it might work itself out.
 
1. It all began with cheap money. To prop up ailing economies early in this decade, central banks in the U.S. and Japan kept interest rates unusually low, which encouraged
speculation. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve lowered the federal funds rate -- the rate that
banks charge each other for overnight loans and a barometer for the cost of borrowing
money on a short-term basis -- from 6.5% in 2000 to 1% by mid 2003. Cheap money
quickly ignited a sharp rise in Home values in virtually every corner of the country.

2. Financial magicians made subprime loans golden. Banks and mortgage companies fed speculation in home prices by offering cheap credit to all comers, including those who would not normally qualify. What to do with these subprime loans? Package them with thousands of high-grade loans to sell to investors. To make the subprime loans attractive, underwriters bought insurance policies guaranteeing that the loans would be repaid. With insurance on the loans, credit-rating agencies stamped such paper as triple-A-rated debt.

3. The global economy became infected with poisoned debt. The loans came to investors as collateralized-debt obligations, or CDOs. A CDO is a huge package of loans sold in assorted segments -- known as tranches -- with varying interest rates and levels of risk. Buried inside the least-risky tranches were those subprime mortgages masquerading as trip e-A-rated debt because of their insurance policies. Companies that wrote the insurance policies on these mortgages assumed that default levels would be minuscule.

4. So much for those assumptions. Home prices tipped downward, setting off a chain reaction. All bubbles eventually burst. The Fed began raising short-term interest rates in 2003, eventually boosting the federal funds rate to 5.25% by the summer of 2006. As a result, adjustable-rate mortgages (particularly the subprime variety) began to reset at far higher interest rates, and in July 2006 the rise in home prices abruptly stopped. In fact, home values began a descent that continues to this day, in many communities averaging a loss of 15% to 30%. As borrowers realized their homes were worth less than the amount they owed on their mortgages, the default rate shot up.

 

5. Rating agencies lowered their assessment of those supposedly triple-A subprime loans to junk levels. The investment and commercial banks, pension funds, and other institutions that had bought the supposedly safe, triple-A-rated CDO tranches woke up to find their investments tainted by those poisonous subprime loans, which began to default at alarming rates. Holders of these CDOs found it all but impossible to know what they were really worth. And when they tried to sell them, there were few buyers -- the  beginning of a seize-up of U.S. debt markets.

6. A wave of write-downs on the value of those loan packages commenced. Financial accounting standards require banks and investment companies to "mark to market" the value of their assets each day. If it's impossible to value a security because there is no market for it, too bad -- make a smart guess. Starting in
2007, one financial institution after another announced a series of quarterly write-downs of hard-to-value and unsalable CDOs that turned into a financial tidal wave.

7. Financial institutions were revealed as vastly undercapitalized. As the quality of their debt portfolios deteriorated, investment banks wrote off billions of dollars of bad assets each quarter, causing their reserves to shrivel. Commercial banks are leveraged with perhaps ten times as much in assets as capital. But some investment banks leveraged themselves more than 30 to 1, to the point that should anything go seriously wrong with those assets, their businesses could fail. The same held true of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee more than $5 trillion in mortgage debt.

8. A cloud of suspicion and distrust enveloped financial markets. Surprised by these developments, investors large and small realized that stocks of supposedly stable financial institutions were in fact ticking time bombs and began selling their shares. Banks, which routinely lend each other money overnight, curtailed those loans because they began to lose faith in the value of the collateral the borrowing banks were offering.

9. The gathering storm set off a sickening wave of failures. One of the first banks to fail was California's IndyMac, which was a leader in subprime lending. Countrywide, the biggest mortgage lender, sold itself to Bank of America to avoid insolvency. This spring, Bear Stearns, the most overextended of the investment banks, failed, and the government arranged a forced marriage with JPMorgan Chase. Then in September, to avert a collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government seized control of them by putting them in a conservatorship that made Uncle Sam the explicit guarantor of mortgages they  owned or insured.

10. Lending of all sorts started to freeze up. First to coagulate, last winter, was the market for auction-rate securities. These are long-term debt securities whose interest rates are regularly reset, so that they behave more like short-term notes. With no buyers, investors in these notes were stuck. By September, even overnight loans among banks had dried up. And despite hundreds of billions of dollars in cash that central banks around the world pumped into banks' coffers, few banks put that money to work for fear it would be
needed to shore up their own finances. Recently, investors began withdrawing tens of billions of dollars from supposedly supersafe money-market funds, which invest in, among other things, short-term corporate debt.

11. And government could not steady the boat. Nothing that Washington tried -- lowering interest rates, flooding the economy with gazillions of dollars to keep the financial community afloat, rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- instilled confidence in financial institutions. When Lehman Brothers Holdings declared bankruptcy on September 15, fellow investment bank Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America to avoid being next to topple. That was followed by the government's rushed takeover of American International Group, the world's largest insurer, whose forays into insuring the repayment of billions of dollars in debt had drained its capital. Then the last two independent investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, found their own survival cast into doubt by plunging share prices.

 

12. Word of a rescue plan to take bad assets off the hands of financial companies is encouraging investors. The Bush administration's proposal, being crafted with congressional leaders, would create a federal agency to take hundreds of billions of dollars in "bad assets" off the balance sheets of financial institutions, for a price. Eventually, those assets that recover their value would be sold back into public markets. Conceivably, the ultimate cost to the government of this plan may not be that great. Word of this plan fueled huge rallies in the U.S. stock market on September 18 and 19.

13. Also helpful: Stable home prices are on the horizon. Throughout 2008, the year-over-year decline in home sales has been slowing, indicating that activity in the housing market could soon pick up. Meanwhile, the inventory of unsold homes has almost quit growing, and the months' supply of unsold homes is one-third of what it was at the start of the year. This matters, because only when prices stabilize will the wave of foreclosures crest and the extent of bad debt poisoning the balance sheets of financial institutions be known.

14. But the economy will suffer aftershocks for years. That's because banks have already lost $1 trillion to bad debt during this crisis, and some experts expect the losses to end up being twice that amount. Less capital means less money to lend and far stricter limits on credit to borrowers. Years could pass before banks can rebuild their capital to the levels that existed before this crisis. The shocks already felt could cause the economy to fall into recession; it's too soon to tell.

15. Don't lose hope. A financial panic causes people to lose their ability to reason. But just because a panic can end in utter economic disaster doesn't mean that it will. Just as banker J. Pierpont Morgan could quell the Panic of 1907 by walking onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and Buying bank stocks, so too could decisive government action contain the Panic of 2008. You may not know the outcome of this drama for weeks or months to come. Until you do, I’m guessing the best course of action might be ... to do nothing.

Or you might consider investing in Real Estate.  You already know that value has reached bottom so its a good time to buy.  AND no matter what, you still have something more than worthless paper should any of these companies we have invested in go belly up.  Stop by this link to get started with quick inventory search just to see whats out there for investment or new home.

 ECONOMIC RECOVERY ACT OF 2008

FEATURE	H.R. 3221 Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008
Amount of Credit	Ten percent of cost of Home, not to exceed $7500  Click Here for more info
Eligible Property	Any single-family residence (including condos, co-ops) that will be used as a principal residence.
Refundable	Yes.  Reduces income tax liability for the year of purchase.  Claimed on tax return for that tax year.
Income Limit	Yes.   Full amount of credit available for individuals with adjusted gross income of no more than $75,000 ($150,000 on a joint return).  Phases out above those caps ($95,000 and $170,000, respectively).
First-time Homebuyer Only	Yes.   Purchaser (and purchaser’s spouse) may not have owned a principal residence in 3 years previous to purchase.
Recapture	Yes.  Portion (6.67 % of credit) to be repaid each year for 15 years.  If home sold before 15 years, then remainder of credit recaptured on sale.
Impact on District of Columbia Homebuyer Credit	DC credit not available if purchaser uses this credit.
Effective Date	Purchases on or after April 9, 2008
Termination	July 1, 2009
Interaction with Alternative Minimum Tax	Can be used against AMT, so credit will not throw individual into AMT.

This credit is in effect now.  Get started looking at home.  Click here for direct MLS access for the Ann Arbor and surrounding areas.

There is a little know law that exempts a seller from having to pay the normal transfer tax (approx $8.50 per 1K of sale price) at closing if your tax assessment is less at the time of sale than when you purchased the property.

MCL 207.526 (t) provides an exemption from State Transfer Tax for the following written instruments:
A written instrument conveying an interest in homestead property for which a homestead exemption is claimed under either the school code of 1976, Act No. 451 of the Public Acts of 1976, being sections 380.1 to 380.1852 of the Michigan Compiled Laws or the state education tax act, Act No. 331 of the Public Acts of 1993, being sections 211.901 to 211.906 of the Michigan Complied Laws, if the state equalized valuation of that homestead property is equal to or lesser than the state equalized valuation on the date of purchase or on the date of acquisition by the seller or transferor for the same interest in property. If after an exemption is claimed under this subsection, the sale or transfer of homestead property is found by the treasurer to be a value other than the true cash value, then a penalty equal to 20% of the tax shall be assessed in addition to the tax due under this act to the seller or transferor.

Attorney General Mike Cox issued an important opinion this week clarifying the proper application of an obscure exemption contained in the Michigan Transfer Tax Act. The opinion, arising out of a request from Representative Martin Griffin (D-Jackson), should afford certain Home sellers immediate financial relief as Michigan’s real estate market continues its road to recovery.

Exemption “t”, as designated in the Michigan Transfer Tax Act, sets forth that a seller may seek an exemption from paying the state transfer tax if the following criteria are met:

With property values and corresponding SEV declining due to the struggling economy, home owners and real estate agents first took notice of the exemption’s possible applicability under the state transfer tax. However, absent an official interpretation, there was little awareness of its proper application.

The opinion from the Attorney General uses examples to show how the application would apply. One example illustrating application provides:

If the SEV of the principle residence when acquired in 2006 is $74,000.00 and the SEV when transferred in 2008 is $72,000.00 then criteria one and two above are satisfied. You can establish the true cash value by doubling the SEV at the time of transfer. In this case the true cash value is $144,000. If the sale price in 2008 is $140,000.00 then the sale does not exceed its true cash value. All three criteria are satisfied and the exemption would apply.

The Attorney General’s opinion provides immediate relief to home sellers already faced with the reality of declining value on their single greatest asset. The opinion also provides a uniform reading of the exemption that is necessary to provide consistent application among the various Registers of Deeds across the state as they are already receiving filings for the exemption.

Sellers should be cautioned that a request for the exemption that fails to meet all three criteria could bring a penalty equal to 20% of the tax assessed in addition to the tax due. Additionally, no similar exemption exists in the County Real Estate Transfer Tax Act.

A Nutshell Lesson for Your 10 Minute Presentation

 

 

With our Michigan economy and money supply tight, many people are looking for financial relief. Our 2008 tax assessments have arrived and while they have provided a reprieve for many, some tax payers are scratching their heads wondering, “They say my value dropped, so how can it be that my taxes have again gone up?”

This year, the assessors and Boards of Review have been swarmed by upset tax payers looking to land one of the few available appeal appointments in the next few weeks. Some cities have limited appeal hearings to 10 minutes. My purpose in writing this is twofold: first, to help those who have a case, prepare it; second, to help those who don’t, understand why they don’t so that they don’t waste their time trying.

 

There is one and only one question that typically matters with a Board of Review… do the SEV(State Equalized Value) or Taxable Value exceed 50% of the market value of the property? Things that are irrelevant and not actionable by the Board of Review include: taxes going up while values are dropping; and the fact that subject property taxes are higher than taxes of neighbors, the fact that a property owner feels her taxes are excessive. Even if the taxpayer is right, it doesn’t matter. What does matter for Board of Review purposes and for a decision that will affect this year’s taxes is that the taxpayer shows their new Taxable value is greater than 50% of the market value of their Home as of the December 31^st of the prior year.

 

Since 1994 Michigan property taxes have had 3 values:

            SEV = assessor’s estimate of 50% of the market value of your home.

            Capped Value=  the 1994 SEV (or the SEV from the year following the most recent transfer of ownership) plus annual adjustments for cost of living (CPI, not to exceed 5% in any year).

            Taxable Value= the lesser of the SEV or Capped and the factor that is multiplied times the city’s tax rate to determine property taxes.

 

In the late ‘90’s we had a little tortoise and the hare action as property values and SEVs were shooting up and Capped/Taxables were plodding along behind.  We’re seeing situations today where the tortoise has gotten close or even passed the hare. We rarely saw Capped values exceed SEVs. We are starting to see that now, with declining property values pulling down SEVs and cost of living increases lifting Capped values. It is especially common where there was a recent sale and “uncapping” followed by a reduction in the SEV by the Assessor.

 

SEVs are adjusted by our Assessors, while our Caps are statutorily adjusted according to the Consumer Price Index (2.3% for 2008 and roughly 2-3% in recent past years).

 

 

Back to appeals

While there may be a reason we may want to reduce our SEV (i.e. in anticipation of an upcoming sale), for most taxpayers, the number of most significance is the Taxable value. The other numbers may or may not mean anything to us, but our Taxable Value is the factor that the Assessor multiplies times our tax rate to determine our property taxes. To lower my 2008 taxes, I need to demonstrate to the Assessor and Board of Review that my Taxable Value exceeds 50% of the market value of my home as it sat on December 31, 2007. Be focused. For practical purposes, Nothing Else Matters!  I recommend you get a formal appraisal dated 12/31/07 that  you can use for the board of review and later if needed for the State Tax Tribunal appeal. It makes a presentation much easier and credible. contact me if you need a referral for an appraiser providing a discount.

 

It doesn’t matter that I think my taxes are too high. It doesn’t matter that I pay more than my neighbor whose house is 75% larger. It doesn’t matter that my taxes went up while my value (even according to the Assessor) dropped. Basically the only way I can get my Taxable Value and/or SEV reduced is to demonstrate to the Assessor and Board of Review that my Taxable Value or SEV exceeded 50% of the market value of my home as of December 31, 2007. Again the number of most significance for a reduction of this year’s taxes is  Taxable Value. Unless I can persuade the Board of Review that my Taxable Value exceeds 50% of the market value of my home, I won’t save anything on my 2008 taxes.

 

Assembling and presenting your case.

As the tax payer, it is my responsibility to collect the materials and present a case (in about 5 minutes) that will convince the Board of Review that my Taxable Value and/or SEV exceed 50% of the market value of your home. Some people choose to pull together recent sold information on their own. Some hire appraisers. Many who have existing relationships with good real estate professionals call on them for help.

 

Keep it clear and simple.

Walk in the door with a positive attitude. Be nice. Today you are a salesperson making a sales presentation. Your job is to make it easy for the Board of Review to see and agree with your point. You only have about 5 minutes to present and a few minutes to answer questions. Focus on Value. If you are bringing comparables or other visuals, make copies so each member of the Board of Review has a copy. Keep it simple and tight. Be logical, reasonable and friendly (you are asking the same of the Board members).

 

If you recently purchased your home and your SEV/Taxable are higher than they should be, it is important that you appeal your assessment in the year following your purchase. By doing so, you preserve what might be the most compelling piece of evidence you have in establishing its market value… the selling price of your home. By doing so in the year following your purchase you will also establish a new starting benchmark which may affect and reduce taxes this year and all future years you live in the home.

 

The purchase price of a home is not conclusive in itself. We need to establish: that the home was on the open market for a period of time; that the transaction was an arms-length transaction; that the sale price is the best indication of market value as of the date of the sale; and that due to market conditions, the value of the property as of December 31^st in the preceding year had not increased since the sale.

 

Results from Your Hearing

Appealing taxpayers typically don’t receive an answer while at the Board of Review hearing. Different Boards may work in different ways, but most often, taxpayers present their case and leave. Board members then review and discuss the evidence behind closed doors and make a decision that is then sent to the taxpayer via mail which arrives a few weeks later with directions for appealing the Board of Review decision.

 

As a community service, I have posted other articels and information under the tax category heading and would suggest that you review them. There are some helpful materials to help you understand this confusing subject.

 

There has never been a time when homeowners were more in need of professional help from a REALTOR®.  Please feel free to contact me any time at 734-996-0000 or [email protected]