Jul232012
Prime season existing-home sales plummeted 6.9 percent in West in 2012
The consensus among economists for June home sales was that sales volumes would continue to increase. Proving their fallibility, the consensus of economists was wrong — very wrong. June and July are typically the best months for sales volume in the prime selling season, and sales volumes dropped in every region in the US. A large decline in existing home sales is further evidence that the house price bottom the consensus of economists is also predicting is in jeopardy. Nominal prices are moving higher, but it isn’t based on the strength of demand, it is due to the restriction of supply. And with millions of homes in shadow inventory, weakening demand is not a good sign for the housing market. The consensus of economists may turn out to be right with their bottom call, but not for the right reasons. Further, there is a real chance, the consensus could be very wrong again.
If you can stomach a few minutes of NAr spin and bullshit, Lawrence Yun is below.
June Existing-Home Prices Rise Again, Sales Down with Constrained Supply
WASHINGTON (July 19, 2012) – Existing-home prices continued to show gains but sales fell in June with tight supplies of affordable homes limiting first-time buyers, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
The NAr spins endlessly. Notice they started on a positive note about increasing prices, then they dropped the bomb that sales volumes dropped. Further, after delivering the bad news, they immediately went into spin mode making excuses for the poor sales performance.
Total existing-home sales1, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, declined 5.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.37 million in June from an upwardly revised 4.62 million in May, but are 4.5 percent higher than the 4.18 million-unit level in June 2011.
A 5.4% decline in sales volumes in June is huge. I recently asked, Will dwindling housing supply cause resale prices to rise or sales volumes to fall? I think we have our answer.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the bigger story is lower inventory and the recovery in home prices. “Despite the frictions related to obtaining mortgages, buyer interest remains solid.”
Bullshit. All-cash investor interest for low-end properties remains strong, but demand among owner occupants using financing is dismal and showing no signs of improvement.
“But inventory continues to shrink and that is limiting buying opportunities.”
The lack of bank REO inventory being cleared out at reasonable prices is the main reason sales volumes have plummeted. When lenders were processing foreclosures at the maximum rate of market absorption, both first-time homebuyers and investors were eagerly buying up properties. 
Now that the inventory these two groups were buying is not being put on the market, sales volumes are plummeting. And sales volumes will continue to drop until this inventory returns. Cashflow investors will not raise their prices significantly because the rate of return doesn’t make sense at higher prices. First-time homebuyers won’t raise their bids because most of them can’t.
“This, in turn, is pushing up home prices in many markets,” he said. “The price improvement also results from fewer distressed homes in the sales mix.“
Prices are moving up slightly as evidenced by the dollars-per-square-foot measures I rely on. The median is rising considerably more because the lower priced homes are not in the mix.
According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage fell to a record low 3.68 percent in June from 3.80 percent in May; the rate was 4.51 percent in June 2011; recordkeeping began in 1971.
As I noted in the post Monthly cost of home ownership down over 50% from 2006, the dramatic decline in interest rates is creating the payment affordability buoying the market today.
The national median existing-home price2 for all housing types was $189,400 in June, up 7.9 percent from a year ago. This marks four back-to-back monthly price increases from a year earlier, which last occurred in February to May of 2006. June’s gain was the strongest since February 2006 when the median price rose 8.7 percent from a year prior.
This year’s seasonal rally was the first one which actually took us above last year’s dismal performance. 
The fact that this last occurred in 2006 shows just how long this bust has gone on, and how desperate the NAr is for something positive to spin from this.
Distressed homes – foreclosures and short sales sold at deep discounts – accounted for 25 percent of June sales (13 percent were foreclosures and 12 percent were short sales), unchanged from May but down from 30 percent in June 2011. Foreclosures sold for an average discount of 18 percent below market value in June, while short sales were discounted 15 percent.
Foreclosures do not sell for below market value. Foreclosures establish market value. Whatever a property sells for is market value.
“The distressed portion of the market will further diminish because the number of seriously delinquent mortgages has been falling,” said Yun.
The bullshit above would be true if not for a massive and growing shadow inventory.
The worst part about Yun’s statement is that he likely knows better. He is purposefully misrepresenting the dangers current buyers face because he doesn’t care what happens to them. He just wants to convince them to buy homes to generate commissions.
NAR President Moe Veissi, broker-owner of Veissi & Associates Inc., in Miami, said there’s been a steady growth in buyer interest. “Buyer traffic has virtually doubled from last fall, while seller traffic has risen only modestly,” he said. “The very favorable market conditions are helping to unleash a pent-up demand, which is why housing supplies have tightened and are supporting growth in home prices. Nonetheless, incorrectly priced homes will not attract buyers.”
Moe is a polished bullshitter. First, as I clearly demonstrated in the chart on mortgage originations above, buyer interest is low and unchanged. Buyer traffic which doesn’t become solid offers is meaningless. Further, the whole pent-up demand meme is nonsense realtors throw out whenever they have nothing else positive to say. To suggest that demand is what’s causing the tightening inventory is more bullshit. The demand is unchanged. It’s the supply of REO that has dropped off. He is right to point out that WTF asking prices from discretionary sellers do not attract buyers. Anyone who has looked at the MLS lately has been greeted with scores of ridiculous asking prices. Few of those are selling.
Total housing inventory at the end June fell another 3.2 percent to 2.39 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 6.6-month supply at the current sales pace, up from a 6.4-month supply in May. Listed inventory is 24.4 percent below a year ago when there was a 9.1-month supply.
A 6.6 month supply is still not a sellers market. The declining sales makes absorption that much slower.
First-time buyers accounted for 32 percent of purchasers in June, compared with 34 percent in May and 31 percent in June 2011. “A healthy market share of first-time buyers would be about 40 percent, so these figures show that tight inventory in the lower price ranges, along with unnecessarily tight credit standards, are holding back entry level activity,” Yun said.
The first-time homebuyer market is the market right now because the move-up market is dead. The first-time market is weak, and the only real strength in the market is from cashflow investors. And as I have pointed out before, this is not a group who will chase prices higher. Also, notice how Yun slipped in the bullshit about “unnecessarily tight credit standards.” Credit standards are necessarily tight to prevent massive taxpayer losses in a housing market completely dominated by government loan guarantees. The NAr keeps repeating this lie in hopes that someone, somewhere might believe it.
All-cash sales edged up to 29 percent of transactions in June from 28 percent in May; they were 29 percent in June 2011. Investors, who account for the bulk of cash sales, purchased 19 percent of homes in June, up from 17 percent in May; they were 19 percent in June 2011.
Investor demand is strong, and unless prices rise significantly or the supply completely dries up, investor demand will remain strong.
Notice below that Yun had to break out his thesaurus to find more words to describe how sales plummeted.
Single-family home sales declined 5.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.90 million in June from 4.11 million in May, but are 4.8 percent above the 3.72 million-unit pace in June 2011. The median existing single-family home price was $190,100 in June, up 8.0 percent from a year ago.
Existing condominium and co-op sales fell 7.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 470,000 in June from 510,000 in May, but are 2.2 percent higher than the 460,000-unit level a year ago. The median existing condo price was $183,200 in June, which is 6.9 percent above June 2011.
Regionally, existing-home sales in the Northeast dropped 11.5 percent to an annual pace of 540,000 in June but are 1.9 percent above June 2011. The median price in the Northeast was $253,700, down 1.8 percent from a year ago.
Existing-home sales in the Midwest slipped 1.9 percent in June to a level of 1.02 million but are 14.6 percent higher than a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $157,600, up 8.4 percent from June 2011.
In the South, existing-home sales declined 4.4 percent to an annual pace of 1.73 million in June but are 5.5 percent above June 2011. The median price in the South was $165,000, up 6.6 percent from a year ago.
Existing-home sales in the West fell 6.9 percent to an annual level of 1.08 million in June and are 3.6 percent below a year ago. The median price in the West was $233,300, up 13.3 percent from May 2011. Given tight supply in both the low and middle price ranges in this region, sales in the West are stronger in the higher price ranges.
Even the NAr acknowledges that the big jump in the median does not reflect the increase in values of individual properties. My $/SF data hasn’t turned positive over last year yet. We are up off the lows, but not by much.
The bottom line is that a significant decline in sales volume is because lenders have withdrawn the only affordable properties from the market. Potential homebuyers cannot simply raise their bids because the product gets scarce, so it isn’t a foregone conclusion that prices must go up. Most people stretch to get the most house they can for the money, and if prices go up, they must either substitute to a lesser quality home or chose not to buy. Right now, many are wisely choosing not to buy, so sales volumes are plummeting. Plus, I don’t see any end in sight. Nothing is changing that will bring more supply to the market. Little or no inventory and super low sales volume is the new normal.
Just in case anyone forgot how I feel about the NAr’s spin machine…
Since the recent market has been driven by speculative demand, NOT organic, it comes as no surprise that prime-season sales volume could plummet. In fact, it is to be expected.
Without growth, the debt cannot be repaid.
The states where people are fleeing in droves? Ohio, Alaska and California
http://www.businessinsider.com/where-americans-are-moving-2012-7
If you’re curious about where OC home prices are headed…. just follow capital flows…..
O.C. venture capital deals plummet in Q2 2012.
Venture capital investment in Orange County firms plummeted in the second quarter with the number of deals (6) down 65% and the the dollar investments ($49.2 million) down 86% compared with the second quarter of 2011, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
http://jan.ocregister.com/2012/07/20/o-c-venture-capital-deals-plummet-in-q2/80312/
I have a close friend who is a venture capital attorney. He was telling me the business was drying up, but I had no idea it was that bad.
All the VC capital is in the bay area (silicon valley)
If this were to pass, inventory would move through the system faster.
California looks to expedite short sale process
Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Stockton) recently introduced a bill to speed up the short sale process by requiring subordinate mortgage lien holders to make a decision on a short sale within 45 days.
McNerney’s bill proposes that if the lender does not make a decision within the given time period, the short sale will be approved on the 46th day.
The bill, titled Fast Help For Homeowners (FHFH) Act, received strong support from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
“Second mortgage lien holders frequently hold up and cancel the short sale transaction while trying to collect the largest possible payout in exchange for releasing the homeowner’s lien, even though the secondary lien holder often gets nothing if the home ends up going into foreclosure,” said NAR President Moe Veissi, in a statement. “While efforts have been made to improve primary lien holders’ response times, issues still abound with second and subsequent lien holders, and this legislation is a step in the right direction.”
The NAR also stated that its members continue to report delays in completing short sale transactions due to drawn out response times for whether or not an offer was accepted.
In a recent DS News interview with RealtyTrac VP Daren Blomquist, issues with second liens was also noted as problem for servicers when attempting to complete a short sale transaction.
The bill is cosponsored by Reps. Dennis Cardoza (D-California), Tom Rooney (R-Florida), George Miller (D-California), Jim Costa (D-California), Barbara Lee (D-California), and Richard Nugent (R-Florida).
I’m going to need a spreadsheet to keep up with all the new laws and their affects:
1) California Homeowners Bill of Rights
2) SB-1137
Plus, we will have all the changes in the from CFPB in 2013.
Don’t forget SB 1069!
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120SB1069
Effective Jan 1, 2013, the purchase money deficiency judgment protections now carry-over to rate-and-term refis. Only any amount cashed-out will be eligible for a deficiency judgment in CA.
As long as they specifically disallow cash-out amounts, I think this is a good law. It would certainly make your decision easier.
Wow, that big change…Need to add that to the list. Need to post that. Thanks.
Many now know banks are holding back inventory to keep prices steady and are willing to wait. Expect more declines.
Exactly. Buyers are not stupid. They know the product is out there, and they know the banks must sell it eventually.
More TARP news
Into the Bailout Buzz Saw
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: July 21, 2012
IT might seem remarkable that there’s more to say about our late Bailout Age. But there is more — a lot more.
Nearly four years after Washington began its huge rescues of banks with taxpayer dollars, an important player in this, one of the great financial dramas of all time, is offering a damning account of how the Bush and Obama administrations handled the whole episode.
He is Neil Barofsky. Remember him — the man whose job it was to police the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program? And his new account, a book titled “Bailout” (Free Press), to be published on Tuesday, is a must-read.
His story is illuminating, if deeply depressing. We tag along with Mr. Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, as he walks into a political buzz saw as the special inspector general for TARP. Government officials, he says, eagerly served Wall Street interests at the public’s expense, and regulators were captured by the very industry they were supposed to be regulating. He says he was warned about being too aggressive in his work, lest he jeopardize his future career.
And so Mr. Barofsky, who formerly prosecuted Colombian drug lords as an assistant United States attorney in New York City, is schooled in the ways of Washington. One telling vignette comes early on in his book, when he is advised by inspectors general in other agencies about how to do his job.
As Mr. Barofsky writes, he had assumed that his assignment to oversee TARP meant that he should be fiercely independent from the Treasury Department, and vigilant against waste, fraud and abuse. But after canvassing other inspector generals for guidance, he writes, he learned of different priorities: maintaining and possibly increasing budgets, appearing to be active — and not making enemies.
“The common refrain went like this,” Mr. Barofsky writes. “There are three different types of I.G.’s. You can be a lap dog, a watchdog or a junkyard dog.” A lap dog is seen as too timid, he was told. But being a junkyard dog was also ill-advised.
“What you want to be is a watchdog,” he continues. “The agency should perceive you as a constructive but independent partner, helping to make things better for the agency, so everyone is better off.” He also learned, he says, that success as an inspector general meant that investigations come second. Don’t second-guess the Treasury. Instead, “focus on process.”
Thus the collision course was set between Mr. Barofsky and a crew of complacent, bank-friendly Treasury officials. He soon discovered that the department’s natural stance of marching in lock step with the banks meant that he had to question its policies and programs repeatedly to ensure that taxpayers weren’t at risk for fraud and abuse.
“The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true,” Mr. Barofsky said in an interview last week. “It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”
To be sure, Mr. Barofsky and his team were up against a powerful status quo. And that meant that they ran into plenty of brick walls.
“Bailout” covers a lot of ground, running through attempts of the inspector general’s office to ensure that additional rescue programs suggested by the Treasury had safeguards in place to avoid conflicts of interest, collusion and fraud. One battle involved the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to get troubled mortgages off banks’ balance sheets by encouraging private investors to buy them using mostly taxpayer dollars. When the inspector general’s office recommended ways to protect against fraud and to fix other flaws in the program, Mr. Barofsky writes, the Treasury rejected the suggestions, maintaining that they would gut the programs and reduce participation.
Another skirmish involved the department’s ill-conceived loan modification plan, known as the Home Affordable Modification Program. When the Treasury began discussing the program’s outlines, Mr. Barofsky said he became concerned that it would open the door to fraudulent foreclosure rescue schemes, in which large upfront fees could be extracted from desperate borrowers eager to participate in what was supposed to be a free government program. When his office recommended fraud-prevention measures, several were ignored, he writes.
That looks like it would be a good book. I wonder what it will take to get people mad enough to take back our government?
Auction prices can be more than normal market. If the bank buys the RE at public/courthouse auction, that means that it raised the market to usually the note price. Now they have an asset that is valued at the FC price (or fair market of themself) and can extend the mark to fantacy price (as long as they don’t actually sell the property to another). If the bank actually sells the property a loss would likely be declared. Another trick (used for dot com advertisement) is to sell to Bank B for an high price and to buy from Bank B an equally set of high price properties. Thus raising the market prices and generating fees for those involved. The beat goes on.
If the bank withholds enough inventory to raise price, the heads can retire, cash out and let it explode on someone else’s watch.
What Yun says and does are just his job. To promote RE transaction for his NAR members. Do you expect the head of Ford or GM to say, it a terrible time to buy cars, especially our cars? Buy the Korean cars for they give better value?
California notices of default down to lowest level since early 2007
By Jessica Huseman July 23, 2012 • 1:45pm
Second quarter Notices of Default in California dropped to their lowest level since early 2007, according to a report from real estate data provider DataQuick. The decline comes as some of the worst mortgages originated from 2005 to 2007 are being burned off and short sales are becoming more common.
A total of 54,615 NODs were recorded on houses and condos in the second quarter, down 2.9% from the previous quarter and down 3.6% year-over-year. The number is the lowest since 53,943 NODs were recorded in second-quarter 2007.
The year-over-year drop was most noticeable in the Bay Area, where filings were down 13.4% to 8,572 from 9,893 a year ago.
“The foreclosure process has always been the sanitation department of the housing sector. It’s where financial distress is processed. The question is whether these lower NOD numbers mean that there’s less distress to process, or if we’re just seeing distress get processed at a slower pace,” said John Walsh, DataQuick president.
Walsh said the drag caused by the housing market is leading to some “interesting alternatives” to the foreclosure process, including the use of eminent domain to buy and restructure mortgages.
NOD filings fell last quarter in communities across home prices, but mortgage defaults were still concentrated in California’s least expensive neighborhoods. ZIP codes with median sale prices below $200,000 saw almost nine NODs filed for every 1,000 homes, while ZIP codes with $200,000 to $800,000 medians only saw 5.6 for every 1,000. For ZIP codes with median prices above $800,000, there were 2.2 NODs filed per 1,000 homes.
Most of the loans going into default continue to be from the 2005 to 2007 period. The median origination quarter for defaulted loans is still third-quarter 2006, which as been the case for three years, indicating that weak underwriting standards came to a point at that time.
Of the state’s larger counties, mortgages were least likely to go into default in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties, while the probability was the highest in Tulare, San Joaquin and Sacramento counties.
Trustees Deeds recorded was also down in the second quarter to the lowest level since second-quarter 2007. TDs saw a 27.8% drop to 21,851 from 30,261 the prior quarter, and a 48.5% drop from 42,465 in the second-quarter 2011. Only 17,458 were filed in second quarter 2007.
TDs were also the most concentrated in the least expensive neighborhoods, with ZIP codes with median sale prices below $200,000 seeing 4.3 homes foreclosed for every 1,000 existing homes. Only 1.9 per 1,000 homes in ZIP codes with medians between $200,000 and $800,000 were foreclosed on, and less than one — 0.5 — foreclosure took place for every 1,000 homes in zip codes with median sale prices $800,000 and above.
Foreclosure resales made up 27.9% of the state’s resale activity in 2Q, down from a revised 33.6% the prior quarter and 35.6% a year ago. Short sales made up 18% of statewide resale activity last quarter, down from an estimated 20.1% the quarter before, and up from 17.4% one year ago. The number of short sales last quarter was an estimated 20,141, up 13% from the prior quarter and up 10.2% from one year earlier.
Homes foreclosed on last quarter took an average of 7.7 months to get through the formal foreclosure process, beginning with an NOD. This is down from an average of 8.5 months the prior quarter and 10 months a year earlier.
At formal foreclosure auctions held in California last quarter, an estimated 40.1% of foreclosed properties were bought by investors or others that did not appear to be a lender or government entities — up from an estimated 33.4% the quarter before, and 28.3% in the second quarter of 2011.
[…] a deal die because the buyer can’t get financing. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAr, recently lamented about “unnecessarily tight credit standards” and “frictions related to obtaining […]
[…] There is record low existing housing inventory, so you think that with mortgage rates being so low that new homes would sell extremely fast. However, the number of months a new home sits on the market until it’s purchased by a buyer has increased. If fact new home sales for June has decreased. […]
[…] Prime season existing-home sales plummet 6.9 percent in West […]
[…] see a deal die because the buyer can’t get financing. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAr, recently lamented about “unnecessarily tight credit standards” and “frictions related to obtaining […]