News About Properties – Page 118 – News about properties and real estate

Tampa entrepreneur’s mortgage lending gamble paying off

What are the odds of winning in a ravaged industry like mortgage lending, especially when you name your fledgling company after one of the biggest lenders to melt down in the Southeast?

For longtime banker and avid thoroughbred racehorse owner Jerry Campbell, that gambit has paid off like a glorious day at the track.

Since buying rights to the HomeBanc name out of bankruptcy court and raising $45 million in a public offering two years ago, Campbell’s Tampa-based institution has been on a tear.

The new HomeBanc’s assets have jumped 84 percent since January, from $100 million to $184 million, and the company is on track to pass the $200 million mark by year-end. This year, it opened two more bay area branches — in Westchase and Belleair Bluffs — giving the bank four branches in Tampa, one in Orlando and one in Sarasota.

Q&A with Jared Dalto [South Florida]

Q&A with Jared Dalto

For Jared Dalto, West Palm Beach’s true deals are in the short sales, where investors and owner-occupants are snapping up properties faster than ever.

Dalto sees the current market as a once-in-a-lifetime period to buy and says that people will look back at this time and wonder what they didn’t purchase more.

BS: What’s the market like in West Palm Beach these days?

JD: A lot of investors are buying, and a lot of people who couldn’t afford to purchase when prices were so high are buying. The average median sales price in April was only $230,000. I’m getting a strong sense from clients that now is the time to buy, and the waiting is over. When people see a property they like, they aren’t staying on the sidelines anymore. They’re coming in with strong offers because there’s a lot of buyers on the market and a lot of competition.

BS: What sort of properties are moving on the market?

JD: At the $230,000 range, you can find a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home from, depending on location, 1,300 to 2,000 square feet. There’s even some newer homes that will fall within that range. Some of these homes may even have pools. The new construction prices are coming down in price as developers realize they have to meet market value, like short sales and bank-owned properties that undercut the builders’ prices. The price has to come down to move inventory.

First-time homebuyers want to take advantage of tax credit in 2009

Q: My husband says we can get that first-time homebuyer tax credit, $8,000, for any house we buy this year, whether it’s new or old. I said I’d double-check. Is that for sure? — L.

A: The tax break isn’t quite this year. You’d better get moving. Whether a new house or an existing one is purchased, the closing must take place before Dec. 1.

These days, careful lenders may require extra time to approve a mortgage loan, and in addition, legal problems sometimes surface and hold up closings. You need to get the whole thing done — selecting the property, negotiating terms with the seller, arranging financing and arriving at the actual closing, settlement, transfer of title, by Nov. 30, 2009. That’s assuming, of course, that you meet the requirements.

Home Prices Rise in California Again

California’s median price for an existing single-family house rose for the third straight month, a sign that the state’s battered real-estate market may be bottoming out.

The median sales price increased to $267,570 in May for a California home, an increase of 4.2% from April, according to a report released Thursday by the California Association of Realtors. The inventory of unsold houses continued to drop, to 4.2 months’ supply in May compared with 4.6 months in April and 8.7 months in May 2008. Prices were still well below their year-ago levels, down 30.4% compared with May 2008.

One explanation for the increase in housing prices is that fewer foreclosed properties are among those being sold, said Kirk Lesh, an economist for California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting. Banks tend to sell foreclosed houses at lower prices than do people selling their own homes.

California’s real-estate market, the nation’s largest, is seen as a barometer of the U.S. economy. Housing prices soared during the boom, and their plummet during the market’s collapse resulted in massive foreclosures and fueled the recession. Economists say the state’s housing market will lag behind the nation’s in recovering, so any indication of improvement in California bodes well for the rest of the U.S.

Homeowner-association dues are not optional

Thousands of Americans who have generally kept up with their mortgages are still in danger of losing their homes because they made a fateful trade-off in this shaky economy — they let their homeowner-association dues slide.

Many homeowners are learning to their surprise that condo and neighborhood associations that oversee security patrols, mow lawns, plant flowers and clean the community swimming pool may have the right to foreclose when dues aren’t paid. That right is often written into the purchase agreement signed by the homeowner.

Among those who have been threatened with foreclosure is Lacey Pilat, who lost her job catering lavish corporate parties and nearly lost her two-story house in this Dallas suburb.

“Basically, our landscaper was foreclosing on the house,” said Steve Pilat, her husband. “That’s the way we looked at it.”

Condos squeeze deadbeat residents

Condos squeeze deadbeat residents

Rosa Mendoza’s upstairs neighbor quit making his condo association payments almost a year ago. He bought another home and let his unit slide into foreclosure.

What irks Mendoza — no, infuriates her — is that, as the foreclosure process drags on, the neighbor continues using the Miami Beach condo as a weekend getaway, even keeping his sailboat tied to the dock.

”What I would love to do is untie that boat of his and let it float away,” Mendoza said. “I would never do it, but I fantasize about it.”

Well into the second year of South Florida’s foreclosure crisis, deadbeat condo owners are taking a heavy toll on associations like Mendoza’s. Owners in or facing foreclosure often stop paying their condo fees that are needed to pay for essential utilities and services. That leaves other residents on the hook to pay the difference.