New Homes in Spanish Springs, Nevada #renorealestate #realestate #renorealestate

An October 2021 snapshot of real estate activity in the Reno / Sparks #Reno #Sparks #Nevada #RealEstate

An October 2021 snapshot of real estate activity in the Reno / Sparks #Reno #Sparks #Nevada #RealEstate

Subprime Bonds Are Back With Different Name

(Bloomberg) -- The business of bundling riskier U.S. mortgages into bonds without government backing is gearing up for a comeback. Just don’t call it subprime.

Hedge fund Seer Capital Management, money manager Angel Oak Capital and Sydney-based bank Macquarie Group Ltd. are among firms buying up loans to borrowers who can’t qualify for conventional mortgages because of issues such as low credit scores, foreclosures or hard-to-document income. They each plan to pool the mortgages into securities of varying risk and sell some to investors this year. JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts predict as much as $5 billion of deals could get done, while Nomura Holdings Inc. forecasts $1 billion to $2 billion.

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Builders’ New Power Play: Net-Zero Homes

LAS VEGAS—Net-zero homes are going mainstream, if the home-building industry has anything to do with it.

The homes, which generate more electricity in a year than they use, have long been viewed as a niche product for the affluent who can afford custom homes. The chief problem is that it is expensive to get a home to net-zero status, and many customers aren’t willing to wait several years for their electricity-bill savings to cover the thousands of dollars they would have to spend on net-zero features such as solar panels and energy-efficient windows, doors and appliances.

But some builders, motivated by what they deem as rising demand from home buyers and state and local regulators, are aiming to change those perceptions by designing such homes for the mass market. Such a model home—the latest in the National Association of Home Builders’ annual New American Home series showcasing new-home designs —is on display this week in a hillside neighborhood 7 miles from the Las Vegas Strip as part of the trade group’s International Builders Show.

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Luxury home sales rise

Luxury home sales in the Denver area rose slightly more than 19 percent in November, compared with November 2013, according to a report released today.

A total of 81 luxury homes sold  in November, up from 68 in November 2013, a 19.1 percent increase, shows the report by Coldwell Banker Residential. The report is based on Metrolist data.

Meanwhile, the median sale price of a luxury property last month was $1.322 million, down fractionally from a year ago when it stood at $1.325 million.. November’s median sale price was up 5.2 percent from October.

Homes also sold at a faster pace on average in November than they did a year ago, and sellers received a higher percentage of their asking price on average.

                

http://insiderealestatenews.com/2014/12/15/luxury-home-sales-rise/

Bryan Lebo- December Update, AB284,& End Of Year Wrap-Up!

Bryan Lebo's December Update

Feds sue Bank of America for 'Hustle' loan fraud

Federal prosecutors slapped Bank of America with a $1 billion-plus civil mortgage fraud lawsuit Wednesday, accusing the bank of engineering a scheme that defrauded federally-backed mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the national financial crisis.

Feds sue Bank of America for 'Hustle' loan fraud

I'm not a bit surprised! AB284 Las Vegas

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Questions About Nevada's Shadow Inventory - 8 News NOW

LAS VEGAS -- Southern Nevada is ground zero for the foreclosure crisis and there is a debate raging about the so-called shadow inventory.

The term refers to the number of bank owned homes that haven't been put up for sale yet. Real estate agents and home buyers are anxious to find out if the banks are holding back, and when the market could be flooded with a new wave of foreclosed homes.

The National Association of Hispanic real estate professionals discussed the topic of shadow inventory in an effort to find out if the banks are just sitting on foreclosed properties.

"There's a lot of talk that we're holding off, that the banks are holding off on properties in order for them to sell them, and we wanted to clarify those points," said Omar Lopez, president of the Las Vegas Chapter and National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

Real estate agents and lenders pressed for answers about a possible foreclosure tidal wave.

"Right now, Wells Fargo has 134 properties in the state of Nevada. Our job is to rehab those properties, get them ready, and put them out as quickly as possible, " said Joel Sarmiento, regional servicing director of Wells Fargo.

The recession has been crippling to the Las Vegas markets and some fear more homes will go into foreclosure.

"The myth is actually there are tens of thousands of homes on the shadow inventory and they're all coming to the market, so we're hearing the numbers in terms of tens of thousands, but we haven't seen that," said Paul Murad of the Nevada Real Estate Commission.

Wells Fargo officials say its their goal to work with their customers so more homeowners don't face foreclosure.

It is currently a seller's market with homes getting multiple offers and selling faster.

Assembly Bill 284 effects

Notice Of Default filings dropped dramatically in October due to the Assembly Bill 284, and continue to be affected. We (Las Vegas) went from over 3,000 NOD filings per month prior to October to just over 100 currently! We are seeing a huge reduction in inventory! There are nearly 100 less REO properties on the market today as there was just 9 days ago!

AB284 Part II, 3 Months Later

As Home Buying Returns, Do Apartments Face a Bubble?

A huge surge in rental demand and comparatively little apartment supply created a boom in multi-family construction in the last year, but with the single family housing market slowly beginning to show signs of life, the concern among banks and investors is that all that supply will hit the market just as rental demand drops off.

Based on preliminary estimates of Q4 '11 activity, multi-family loan origination volume increased to $82 billion in 2011, up from $50 billion in 2010, according to Chandan Economics. Understandably, some lenders and investors are starting to ask questions.

"While 2012 should be another good year for apartment REITs, there is concern amongst some investors and managements that market expectations may be hard to beat," say analysts at Sandler O'Neill. "Based on discussions with managements, revenue growth should match sentiment but expense growth may be the wildcard."

Rents have been rising steadily as apartment vacancies drop and "rental nation" pervades consumer sentiment, but 2012 will likely not see as robust rent growth as 2011; housing affordability continues to improve and renting is becoming ever more expensive than owning.

"A stretched consumer is beginning to push back harder against rental increases, and new supply and a slowly healing single-family market will begin to equalize what has been a lopsided, renter-dominated housing market for over 5 years," say analysts at Green Street Advisors.

Mortgage applications surged 23 percent last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers association, although most of that was refinances. Another positive came from the NAHB's home builder sentiment index, which saw big gains in builder confidence, citing improved sales and buyer traffic. So is there real cause for concern about apartment demand?

"Only in some markets," says Sam Chandan of Chandan Economics. "Austin is a case in point. The supply response has been unusually strong there. Apart from specific cases like that, we do not anticipate a strong reversal in the rental bias until jobs accelerate markedly."

Since 2004, when homeownership rates peaked, the population of 20-34-year-olds grew by 2.8 million, according to researchers at CoStar Group, a commercial real estate information company. But the number of households shrunk by 300,000. In other words, younger Americans were doubling up with roommates or moving back in with their parents.

Mortgages

30 yr fixed 3.91% 3.96%

30 yr fixed jumbo 4.50% 4.58%

15 yr fixed 3.24% 3.39%

15 yr fixed jumbo 3.79% 3.93%

5/1 ARM 2.87% 3.17%

5/1 jumbo ARM 3.14% 3.27%

"This suggests big pent up demand - as much as 1.4 million new households within this prime renting cohort," says CoStar's Suzanne Mulvee.

We also have to remember that many Americans now have either damaged credit or not enough of a downpayment to qualify for today's low interest rate mortgages. That could keep them as renters for many more years, as credit standards aren't likely to loosen any time soon.

Pent-up demand will, like everything else in real estate, vary from market to market. In Washington, DC, for example, investors in multi-family are still very bullish, as home prices are strengthening and apartment supply is still limited. In other areas, like Las Vegas, where distressed homes are selling at big discounts, rental demand may wane more quickly for apartments, as those unwilling to buy choose to rent single family homes.

Another headwind to the multi-family sector could be more investors buying foreclosed single-family homes in bulk to rent. With federal regulators and the Obama administration seriously considering a program to sell bulk foreclosures owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, there could suddenly be a large supply of single family rentals competing against multi-family buildings. Again, that would largely be in the sand states, as there are far fewer foreclosed homes in major cities where apartments are and will likely continue to see big gains.

Home Affordability Offering Up 40-Year Deals

Home affordability is at 1971 levels, due to falling home prices and record low mortgage rates, pushing home ownership in reach to more families, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Home owners are bringing in nearly double the median income they need to cover the cost of an average home, HousingPredictor reports.

"With interest rates at historically low levels and markets across the country beginning to improve, home ownership is within reach of more households,” Bob Nielsen, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, said in a statement.

Home sales have been ticking up, according to recent reports by the National Association of REALTORS®, the National Association of Home Builders, as well as the Obama administration’s December Housing Scorecard.

However, some consumers are finding more stringent lending standards for getting a mortgage a roadblock to home ownership, and some housing experts have blamed tighter underwriting standards in recent years for continuing to hold back the housing market.

Home Affordability Offering Up 40-Year Deals

Pending Home Sales Highest in Over a Year-and-a-Half

Pending home sales continued to rise in November, reaching their highest level in 19 months, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported late last week.

The trade group’s index of signed sales contracts jumped 7.3 percent between October and November and is 5.9 percent above its level a year earlier. The last time the index was higher was in April 2010 as buyers rushed to beat the deadline for the homebuyer tax credit.

James Frischling, president and co-founder of NewOak Capital, says the latest results are likely to feed the view that there is a recovery going on in the housing market.

“This was an unexpected jump-up, with every region showing gains including a 15 percent increase out west, which has been the hardest hit area since the housing bubble burst,” Frischling noted.

Despite the strong gains atypical of the season, Frischling remains cautious. He says with contract cancellations above 30 percent, Realtors are keenly aware that it’s premature to conclude a housing recovery is underway based on November’s strong pending sales report.

Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, agrees that contract failures have been running unusually high.

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Pending Home Sales Highest in Over a Year-and-a-Half

Bank official says lessons learned from robo-signing

It's not the new Nevada law that has scared banks from filing notices of default.

It's lessons learned from the robo-signing scandal that emerged late last year, a Bank of America spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"We want to do everything properly," Jumana Bauwens said from Bank of America's corporate office in Los Angeles. "Before proceeding with foreclosure activities, Bank of America is ensuring that our processes are designed to be carried out in accordance with the new legislation in Nevada."

The main component of Assembly Bill 284, the law that took effect in October, requires that lenders filing a notice of default submit an affidavit stating they have the authority to foreclose on the property, basically that they own the actual note and deed of trust.

That has become a major obstacle for some lenders, particularly those in "judicial foreclosure states" such as Florida, New York and New Jersey that require court approval to foreclose. Foreclosures in New York take an average 986 days, compared with 379 in Clark County.

The new law has already throttled foreclosure proceedings in Nevada. Lenders filed 897 notices of default in Clark County in October, compared with an average of 4,453 a month from January through September, Discovery Bay, Calif.-based foreclosure information company ForeclosureRadar.com reported. The number fell to 259 through the first half of November.

AB 284 has affected all banks, Nevada Bankers Association President Bill Uffelman said. They are reviewing processes and procedures to make sure they comply with the law's requirements, he said.

"At least one community bank had to turn foreclosures over to outside counsel versus using in-house counsel, increasing their costs," Uffelman said. "Like all things that change, we will work through it."

ForeclosureRadar Chief Executive Officer Sean O'Toole said one section of the law appears to be specifically targeted toward Bank of America and its subsidiary, ReconTrust, which acts as the trustee in foreclosure proceedings.

The law says the beneficiary can't be the trustee, so Bank of America will have to find a new trustee in Nevada, O'Toole said.

Bank of America's Bauwens said ReconTrust served as trustee for most of the mortgages in hardest-hit states such as Nevada, Arizona and Florida. However, the bank uses other trustees and foreclosure activity should start moving forward in the coming months, she said.

PROTECTING HOMEOWNERS

The new law protects homeowners from improper foreclosures and protects the integrity of the homeownership system, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said.

It was crafted largely in response to unscrupulous business practices such as robo-signing that produced false documents used to justify improper foreclosures, she said.

"The significant drop-off in filings of notices of default may be attributed to the fact that robo-signing is occurring and now those servicers cannot legally foreclose or that foreclosure servicers are taking the time to re-evaluate their procedures to ensure compliance with the new law," Masto said in an email.

"Either way, one month of data is too early to draw any strong conclusions," Masto said. "In addition, we understand that complying with any new law requires businesses to make changes in their prior business practices, which may not be accomplished overnight."

Masto said the dramatic decrease in foreclosure filings -- which has thrown local real estate agents into a panic over future inventory -- is not an "indictment" of the new law.

She's confident that legitimate businesses pursuing proper foreclosures will devote the effort necessary to comply with the law. They will incorporate those requirements into their business practices, just as they did when they had to adapt to the new foreclosure mediation program several years ago, Masto said.

Officials from Wells Fargo had no comments on the law.

Wells Fargo is challenging the constitutionality of the Nevada's foreclosure mediation program. The bank has appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court an order from a state District Court that rewrites several terms of a defaulting homeowner's mortgage. Attorneys argue that the program violates not only the state's basic charter, but also the takings, contract and due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

WHO OWNS THE NOTE?

Mark Connot, real estate attorney with Fox Rothschild in Las Vegas, said the law is good in that it addresses the robo-signing issue. Beyond that, it remains to be seen whether there will be any significant and long-term impact on foreclosures, he said.

An important question revolves around the interpretation of the statute that requires an affidavit, based on personal knowledge and under penalty of perjury, that "the beneficiary under the deed of trust (bank or lending institution), the successor in interest of the beneficiary or the trustee is in actual or constructive possession of the note secured by the deed of trust."

The key phrase is "actual or constructive possession," Connot said.

Constructive possession is generally defined as the power to control and intent to control a particular item of property. An employee of the bank or lending institution will have to sign an affidavit that the lender is in constructive possession of the note.

"In essence, the person signing the affidavit would be stating that the bank or lending institution has both the power and the intent to control," Connot said. "The power to control is the element that will be litigated.

"Even if the note has been bought and sold several times," he said, "the present holder of the note probably has the power to control possession even if it does not have actual possession."

Contact reporter Hubble Smith at hsmith@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0491.

Housing Picture Expected to Brighten in 2012

Housing Picture Expected to Brighten in 2012

Better times are ahead for the real estate market in the new year, according to several forecasts and recent surveys.

Fiserv, a financial information services firm, predicts that 95 percent of the 384 metro areas it tracks will see prices rise in 2012. 

Many surveys and economists are forecasting a very modest increase for the housing market in the new year, but after several years of dropping prices and rising foreclosures, even the slightest increase would signal a glimmer of hope for the market. In a survey by MacroMarkets of 100 economists and real estate professionals, respondents reported home values will likely rise slightly at 0.25 percent in the new year.

The real estate market still faces a large backlog of foreclosures that it must work through in many markets. As such, price gains through 2015 will likely just be around 1.1 percent, according to the survey. However, this is a reversal after a forecast of 2.8 percent decline in median home values for this year.

Foreclosures continue to weigh on many markets and are preventing home values from stabilizing, economists say. 

"The water is very deep in the living room, but it's no longer getting deeper and is starting to recede,” says Mark Fleming, CoreLogic's chief economist. 

Low interest rates on mortgages mixed with more affordable housing for families in the median income range are expected help the market in its rebound in 2012, economists say.  

Source: “A Smaller House Will Make a Big Difference,” Money Magazine (Nov. 14, 2011)

Freddie could take more than a decade to unload REO inventory « HousingWire

Freddie could take more than a decade to unload REO inventory « HousingWire

Investors betting on recovery for Vegas housing market.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Las Vegas has suffered through the housing bust like few others places and still has further to fall. But these days many real estate investors and home buyers are betting that it's poised to stage a comeback.

Sin City's metro area led the nation in mortgage defaults for 22 straight months through August and home prices plunged a whopping 60% from their 2006 peak, according to RealtyTrac. And prices still have further to fall. Financial analytics company, Fiserv, projects home prices in Las Vegas could fall another 16% by next June.

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Investors betting on recovery for Vegas housing market. - Nov. 9, 2011

Generate Revenue With Rentals

Generate Revenue With Rentals

In This Video Bryan Lebo Sits Down To Explain Nevada Assembly Bill 284

A must see!

Las Vegas is uniquely at a perfect time to invest!

Las Vegas; it's the go-to place for real estate investors who want to clean up on rental properties.  Here is a article from CNN Money explaining why now is a great time.

From http://money.cnn.com:


Average home price (2011): $130,100
Projected home price (2014): $120,000
Gross rent (2011): $922
Projected gross rent (2014): $966


Las Vegas has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation -- and many of those former homeowners now rent!

"Much of the large workforce in the casino industry consists of renters; the home ownership rate is a low 55%," said Winzer.

While the rental market in Sin City remains robust, rents have been squeezed, falling about 10% since 2007.  Part of the problem is unemployment, which reached 12.4% in May, one of the highest rates of any U.S. metro area.


Winzer expects the rate to fall gradually and that should mean rents will start climbing again. All told, he forecasts Las Vegas residential investment properties will yield returns that are 4.7% above the national average.


There you have it!  There are more renters in the market and the prices of homes are low.  Investors in Las Vegas who rent out the properties they buy now will have a 4.7% HIGHER return than the 5.3% national average.