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Archives (page 32 of 372)

September 24, 2020

Mortgage Refinancing and Forbearance: Three Balls, You Walk, One Strike, You’re Out

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

One of the most consistent of the “old school mortgage bloggers” is Rhonda Porter in Seattle, writing over on The Mortgage Porter.  She offers no-frills information about mortgage markets, the kind of straightforward advice homeowners need.  Her blog is almost 15 years old.

I wanted to advise current homeowners why they should not accept the mortgage forbearance program, unless they drastically needed it and regret that I didn’t back in March.  The mortgage forbearance program was offered as a “no penalty”  break for homeowners– ask to suspend your payments and it’s automatically granted without any hit to your credit score.  While that part was true, many of my past clients found out that nobody would refinance their loan to a lower rate while they were in forbearance (it kinda makes sense, right?)

Fannie/Freddie offered specific guidance a few months ago; I’ll let Rhonda explain it:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac offered clarity with their new guidelines this week. If you currently have a conventional mortgage, it is a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage. Basically, if you opt for the forbearance program that’s being offered due to covid-19, then you may not be able to get a new mortgage until you have have made three months of on-time mortgage payments. If a borrower has stayed current with their mortgage, they may still be eligible for new mortgage. There may be some variances with this depending on what type of forbearance program you have entered into as well as lender underwriting overlays.

September 24, 2020

Zillow: Whatever you do. Don’t poke the bear. Lol. Poke!

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

It has been 8 years since I have regularly blogged here. During that time I have learned a lot, broadened what I do, and instead of working as an SEO constultant, I am working full time as the Director of Online Marketing with The Real Estate Group in Chesapeake VA. I still live in Southern Indiana, but I love working with roughly 250 of the best career minded agents and without a doubt led by the best broker owners that I have ever worked with. And I have met some great ones during my career. I probably should state here and I will with each post going forward that I am acting in my personal capacity and the views are mine alone and not that of my employers. (Do you know how difficult it was not to drop in a gratuitous Mike Pompeo reference here? Lol) –

I am not an Ivy League educated, MBA type. I am main street personified. So I look at things like Zillow’s announcement and the Notorious ROB’s response to it with a more practical and downhome point of view. (CLICK Here. Please read it before continuing. I’ll wait. 🙂 And be sure to see the menacing picture of the bear. 🙂 ) First off, I want to thank Rob for the transparency that he was paid to consult with Zillow on the PR response to this more. Many others might not have disclosed that. We all appreciate transparency.

But here from my perch just north of Louisville KY, in Southern Indiana, I would like to offer my response to his analysis. Boiled down he basically makes the case for “Real Estate Industry: OMIGOSH, WHATEVER you do, DON’T poke the bear!!! You will regret it! Zillow has (insert hushed tones) WALL Street Money! $2 Billion (end hushed tones) in cash. Ummm…okay Mitt Romney… but those of us on main street (and especially when we are not in Phoenix or one of the other cities that they iBuy in currently) might have a different view.

It does not take a Phd diploma on the wall to quickly calculate that even Read more

September 24, 2020

Overnight News: Why would the world’s dumbest real estate investor hire himself as his own broker? Because the emperor is definitely not naked!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“The money-making secret to real estate brokerage? Socialize the risks to the seller – not the broker.”

Yesterday’s big news? “The Incumbent” doubles down on dipshit. Dipshit-aficionados rejoice.

Housing Wire: Home prices post record two-month gain, FHFA says. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Redfin: Sacramento, Austin and Phoenix Are the Most Popular Destinations For People Searching For Homes Outside Their Metro Area. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Renovation loans get pandemic boost as homeowners want home offices. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Coronavirus pandemic fuels affordability crisis for homebuyers. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Dave Stevens: 5 reasons why mortgage rates are going to rise in 2021.

Seeking Alpha: Zillow Offers Will Expand Services in 2021.

Housing Wire: Zillow iBuying program brings real estate transactions in-house by licensing Zillow Homes employees.

Joanne Jacobs: Not indoctrinated, just ignorant.

City Journal: Merit on the Ropes.

Angelo Codevilla: Revolution 2020. Incidentally: CTRL-F ‘riot’; 6 found.

And our own Brian Brady! San Diego Union Tribune: I’m a Republican. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death is both a loss and a legal opportunity.

September 23, 2020

The news is not that Zillow is going to have agents. It’s going to have newbies for agents.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Housing Wire:

A Zillow spokesperson told HousingWire that these people are already employed with Zillow, and will be getting real estate licenses. Zillow said it will not be recruiting for these positions.

“The normal career path is real estate agent to barista, but Zillow’s changing all that!”

It’s a boiler-room job – in the same article, George Laughton says Zillow still won’t be getting its hands dirty. But boiler-room selling and legally-compliant real estate brokerage are two different things.

Whatever. This morning I wrote this to my favorite pricing algorithm, soon to be disintermediated by exuberant, clueless college grads:

Of course this was the plan all along. The funny part? They think they’ve lived through a downturn with Coronavirus. Now they get to play catch-a-falling-knife with their own inventory.

The press release reads like they think the local brokers, like Laughton, are hoarding all the good leads from the failures and fallouts. I hope that’s the reason, just because it’s extra stupid.

Note that the 18 or so local brokers who were not screwed today now know what they have coming.

All of the iBuyers working in Phoenix suck at resale marketing. They make bone-headed marketing errors, common to many poor listers, but they make them by the hundreds. Pulling even more of that work in-house, when Zillow is so bad at it, seems daft – even absent the opportunity to make thousands upon thousands of regulatory infractions.

Prove me wrong, Zillow? You look like nothing but dead money to me.

September 23, 2020

Overnight News: So what’s up with the listings that DIDN’T close?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“From a dog’s point of view, putting trees in houses is just begging for misunderstandings.”

When you report the great news about closed listings, what are you leaving out? News about the listings that didn’t close. There is huge demand for suburban, exurban and rural housing because demand has cratered for urban housing. Why? Mass exodus from vertical to horizontal. Why? Urban rioting.

See that? All the way from A to C with zero fatalities. Logic is only hard if you need it to be.

Housing Wire: Sales of existing homes surge to a 14-year high. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Existing home sales jump to 14-year high, as prices set another record. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Wow — 6 million existing home sales! However, context is key with 2020 housing market data. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Mortgage demand from homebuyers now up 25% from a year ago. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Daily Caller: ‘Financially Devastated’: 87% Of NYC Bars, Restaurants Couldn’t Make August Rent.

Joel Kotkin: Blue today, bluer tomorrow.

FEE.org: New Report Shows How Congress Has Screwed Over Young People.

Evie Magazine: Critical Race Theory Is The Root Of Our Current Unrest, And They’re Teaching It In Schools.

Forbes: Interventions Meant To Slow The Spread Of Covid-19 Have All But Stopped The Spread Of Flu.

City Journal: The Moral Case for Reopening Schools—Without Masks.

The Independent: Notre Dame cathedral update: Carpenters wow public with medieval techniques.

Departures: NYC’s Newest Proposed Building Would Be the City’s Tallest—And Will Act as a Carbon Emissions Filter.

September 22, 2020

A fun fact about #iBuyers? Every buy-box is redlining.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Totally not redlining!”

The image is a map of Zillow’s sold iBuyer homes in the densest parts of Metropolitan Phoenix.

See that Madonana-like shape running West from the I-17 Freeway. Looks like a pregnant single-mom, doesn’t it? The poster-child of fair-housing law, right there on the map.

Looks like redlining, doesn’t it?

I’ve been watching Zillow’s iBuying results for years now. It always looks like redlining. I warned them about it when I was working as a pricing algorithm.

Is it really redlining? It’s the further fruits of a buy-box that wisely avoids old, small and irregular housing. For all of me, Zillow’s buy-box is much too loose, but the net consequence is that much of the housing Zillow excludes is in contiguous neighborhoods emerging West from the I-17.

Is it really redlining? The neighborhoods Zillow and the other iBuyers exclude in Metropolitan Phoenix are far browner, blacker and redder than the neighborhoods they include. That’s redlining de facto, by disproportionate impact.

Is it possible for investors to work from a buy-box that does not redline in disproportionate impact terms? I don’t see how. The buy-box my investors work from is much more stringent, to the point that we only work in a few subdivisions, by now.

Is it possible for licensed real estate brokers to work as investors without committing hundreds of de facto materially-damaging fair-housing violations by means of redlining? I don’t see how.

That’s why investors should not be licensed, for one thing, but I think it illuminates how poorly thought-out are all the “black lives matterers” among the iBuyers.

Have fun when the lawsuits start – particularly since you’ve all already declared what racists you are.

September 22, 2020

Overnight News: CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“How can you tell the country is not being torn apart by rioting? Because Joe Biden is just fine!”

Sorry if I seem to be beating a dead horse, but the refusal of the “real estate industry” to admit the existence of the riots while writing all about their secondary consequences is my kind of fun. Hypocrisy abounds, alas, but hypocrisy on high is especially comical. The scum who presume to “lead” us have their homes and headquarters in the riot zones – could they be gaslighting the world until they can sell out? – yet somehow they purport to be amazed that urban counties are bleeding, suburban counties are bulging and moving vans are unobtainable. Jeepers! How’d that happen?

What’s the trick to assimilating the news – all news, not just real estate news? Read everything that seems worthwhile – and assume that everything you read is lying to you in ways you may not suspect. Certainly every story written about real estate results right now is lying, since none of them will admit to the impact – or even the existence – of the rioting.

United States Department of Justice: Department Of Justice Identifies New York City, Portland And Seattle As Jurisdictions Permitting Violence And Destruction Of Property. Riots!?! Who knew?!

Redfin: Affordable Areas Outside Big Cities Are Heating Up the Fastest As the Pandemic Changes Homebuyers’ Priorities. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Forbes: What’s Causing Home Prices To Skyrocket – Low Rates Or Wanting More Space? CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: Homeowners gain over $620 billion in equity in second quarter. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Home equity surges as demand soars and mortgage rates hover near lows. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

CNBC: Millions can’t pay rent. Landlords making less than $50,000 a year are caught in the middle.

MarketWatch: The COVID-19 lockdown is squeezing real estate from all sides and threatens to burst the housing and mortgage bubble.

The Federalist: Aftershocks Of Summer Riots Are Making Kenosha Scared To Rebuild.

The Ohio Star: NYU Prof Says More Than 20 Percent of Universities Could Fail Because of the Lockdowns.

City Journal: The Nemeses of Cities.

Yahoo News: Read more

September 21, 2020

Three facts about big-shot “real estate industry” executives and racism in America.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What’s funniest about the “real estate industry’s” riot-denial? Where are the riots happening?

Witness:

  1. Big-shot real estate industry executives deeply abhor the “systemic” racism in the real estate industry – even though they have not identified or paid fines for any specific, independently-verifiable racist crimes.

  2. America’s big cities have been beset by riots all Summer, resulting in the destruction of many homes and businesses and leading to a mass exodus from these communities to safer, more-suburban locales. We may be seeing the de facto abandonment of vast swaths of America’s housing stock. Homeowners who cannot flee will be hurt worst as prices plummet, with many of these stranded homeowners being black Americans – only just recovered from their last round of real estate haircuts.

  3. About this catastrophic exsanguination of the black middle class, the big-shot real estate industry executives say: Boo. Not quite so, alas: Instead, they have actively pretended none of this is happening.

Imputed, ephemeral, non-demonstrable racism? Right on it!

The actual destruction of the best of the best of black America? Crickets.

That’s how much black lives matter to them.

September 21, 2020

Overnight News: The new normal? 911 is a joke.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“They craved paradise, propped up another Pol Pot.”

What’s the really important news? Stock up on non-perishables, especially items with complex supply chains. And figure out how you’re going to eat, if the food deliveries are interrupted. Welcome to the Third World, y’all…

Forbes: More Homeowners Are House Rich As Equity Rises In 2nd Quarter. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Forbes: The Great Rent Strike Of 2020: Shaping The Future Of Commercial Lease Agreements.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: New look at police stats shows the spread of violent crime across Minneapolis this summer.

New York Post: Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio sure seem bent on pushing you to flee New York.

HotAir.com: Portland Emergency 911 Call Goes Unanswered For More Than An Hour And A Half.

The College Fix: As colleges go bankrupt due to COVID, higher education will actually get better: op-ed.

PowerLine: Princeton Squirms.

American Greatness: Americans Know What Time It Is.

September 20, 2020

My experiences with actual – not imagined – racism in real estate.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“I’ve had better haircuts, but never cheaper or faster…”

That’s me to the right, a certified selfie with today’s hair and today’s shave. I am my own barber, in the age of the Coronavirus, and I am delighted to say that I’m improving faster than I expected. A year from now I could be as good as awful or even barely-adequate.

But: I have been a Realtor for nearly twenty years, a broker/owner for fifteen. I have sold a few hundred homes and overseen or advised on the sale of hundreds of others. I have met with or spoken to thousands of customers, making hundreds of them my clients or tenants to the rental homes we manage. I am my only agent for now – I sub out anything that does not require a license – but, with my wife Cathleen on board or without her, we have always been scrupulous about fairness – not just fair-housing but fair-dealing as such. I hate predators. I never want to be one.

So what is my experience of actual, specific, objectively-real racism in real estate?

I once had an out-of-town investor in my car who said things I considered red flags, so I drove him back to his hotel. This is the same thing I do with irrationally optimistic investors – except I’ve met dozens of them.

Want more? When I first started, working as an apartment locator, I had a very racist elderly black woman as a client, but I just laughed at the things she said – and in the end she found a new place without me.

I have one more: We used to use a centrally-located Fidelity office for most of our title work. In those days, that was the “Spanish” office, the one where all deals that were to close in Spanish were sent. Over the years, I saw several contracts fall apart on Friday afternoons, with the whole family coming down to sign, only to find out that no one, until then, had told them what their monthly payment would be and how much cash they needed to close. Not Read more

September 20, 2020

Overnight News: “Systemic racism” in real estate? Demand specifics.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“My dying wish? Not to be dead. That won’t work, either.”

Is no news good news? It seems there is no real estate news, nor any other kind of news except Supreme Court news.

The Washington Examiner: Racist? Under Trump, black people and Hispanics join suburbs and home ownership up.

National Review: Systemic Racism? Make Them Prove It.

Townhall: How Woke CEOs Traded Our Future For BLM Approval.

City Journal: Show Us Your Systemic Racism, Princeton.

Those four stories together suggest a strategy: Until this weekend, since George Floyd was canonized, half of all real estate news has consisted of over-paid, over-fragranced corporate fatcats insisting that real estate is systemically racist – both the buying, selling and hypothecation of homes and the management of the brokerages and lenders.

Is that so? Demand specifics.

Demand that they back up their bullshit claims. We know they are lying on the transactions side: The fines are huge but they are almost never collected. Regardless, self-identified violators are required by law to document their violations – if any – to regulators. How many bellowing grand poohbahs have self-reported their purported fair-housing infractions?

If they are not lying about their own personnel management, why haven’t they resigned? If there is “systemic racism” in real estate management, the problem would be “the system” – the very over-paid, over-fragranced corporate fatcats making the specious claims.

Demand specifics – and assume the worst about anyone who will not provide them.

Daily Mail: UK, that is, where they know how to pack up a headline. Trump’s Supreme Court frontrunners: A mother of seven who adopted two children from Haiti and belongs to a Christian sect that inspired The Handmaid’s Tale – and a Cuban American whose father was stopped from becoming a lawyer by Castro.

Breitbart.com: Nolte: Passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Permanently Resets 2020 Election.

Daily Wire: ‘Evil Is Real’: North Carolina Police Officer Pens Heartfelt Resignation Letter To Community Amid ‘Unprecedented’ Exodus From Force.

City Journal: Heiresses on the Barricades.

September 19, 2020

Threaten riot and ruin on Twitter, it’s all good. But do not compliment a black actor.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I waited for weeks to find out Twitter can’t read. Who knew?

Twitter banned me, pending appeal, for praising the actor Forest Whitaker.

I waited from August 4th to September 17th for them to correct this obvious error.

So they didn’t.

I am still banned, pending my next appeal, ideally with someone who can read.

I don’t know if my account will ever be restored, and I don’t know if I will keep it if it is. I abhor the way Twitter does business – and not just with me – so it seems stupid of me to share content with them.

We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I am mentioned on Twitter and I am promoted-to by Twitter – this news they deliver by email, a platform they can’t ban… yet – but I cannot read or write on Twitter.

We care a lot.

September 19, 2020

Overnight News: Mocking Redfin about The Dystemperor’s New Unriots is funny – until you think about what our studied negligence is doing to the black middle class.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“Red Americans got rooked once and completely. Black Americans get rooked with every spin of the ‘economic cycle.’ That’s how you know Black Lives Matter.”

As I noted yesterday, these are not just riots we are seeing across the country, they are carefully-mismanaged riots. Where the police department is allowed to function according to well-understood crowd-control theory, there are no riots. Cf., e.g., Detroit. As with acknowledging the riots themselves, taking note of this deliberate mismanagement is useful: It is the key proxy signal needed to determine any given neighborhood’s RiotScore™.

Redfin: Housing Market White Hot After Labor Day: Home Prices Up 13%, Pending Sales Up 27%. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

Housing Wire: MBA: 11 million households fell behind on rent or mortgages in second quarter.

CNBC: Refinancing your mortgage will cost more thanks to an ‘adverse market’ fee.

Forbes: The Paradox Of The U.S. Black Home Ownership Rate.

John Wake is an old friend of mine and of BloodhoundBlog’s. He doesn’t address it here, but a further consequence of the rioting will be a decimation of black homeownership in the riot-wracked cities: The homes that were not destroyed are bleeding equity with every departing U-Haul van. The middle class is how we grow – as traders but also as neighbors. Strangers learn to love each other from trade – that’s how polyglot cities have always worked – but traders cultivate their neighbors by their good example. The social capital this Summer’s riots have destroyed far exceeds the physical damage.

So take just a moment, right here in the middle of the news, to reflect upon the hypocrisy of the so-called “leadership” of the so-called “real estate industry.” Redfin pimps an ugly, racist hiring preference for its Board of Directors and the grand poohbahs of the big brokerages actually promise wholesale violations of fair employment laws – all to make up for the “systemic racism” for which they are the actual and ongoing “system.” And yet, not one of them is standing up to defend the black middle class as it is being exsanguinated right before our eyes. We are “led” by scum – the sleaze Read more

September 18, 2020

Hey, big-talking big-datafied AI-enhanced machine-learning Realty.bots, give us what we really need: A neighborhood RiotScore.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If it’s not obvious, the big ugly question is my addition.

Redfin is back with new disinformation about the current national state of housing turmoil. It turns out it is not just the pandemic that has incited this frenzied reordering of housing priorities. No. Forest fires are responsible, too.

That is to say: Yet again: CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found.

I was snarking about yesterday’s disinfo on Facebook, thusly:

If #Redfin were of a mind to do something actually useful, this matters:

Some cities that might be considered riot-prone effected the time-honored policing strategy of taking the hotheads down fast and decisively, snuffing off the conflagration before it could start. Two I can think of are Detroit and Lancaster, PA.

My question: What is the relative difference in the riot-induced exodus in cities like that, compared to the ones which indulged their rioters?

That would be useful information – and a refreshing reconciliation with the truth. Simply classifying cities by their riot-friendliness would be a mitzvah.

And a friend popped off with this:

A riot score next to the walk score?

Bree-izz-illiant! A RiotScore is much more valuable than a WalkScore. If you’re running from trouble, how can you be sure you’re not racing from the frying pan straight into the fire?

Easy to compute. Redfin tried to pretend yesterday that that silly Red/Blue nonsense is meaningful. In fact, Blue cities (cities that are full of very red Marxists, so we lie and call them Blue) are surrounded by Blue suburbs, leading to a Blue-to-Blue exodus that is apparently confusing to people paid to be confused.

What matters more is the factor cited above: How do the local police respond to pre-riot activity? A riot is a critical mass of hotheads that is enflamed by one or more super-hotheads. Pinch off those match-heads right away and there will be no riot. Blue suburbs with reliable cops will have a very hot seller’s market. Those less vigilant will be eclipsed by Redder (less Marxist) exurbs further out.

Another obvious tell: Was the steely-eyed, up-through-the-ranks, by-the-book police chief recently replaced by a newcomer who is (check as many boxes as possible) black, hispanic, Read more

September 18, 2020

Overnight News: Riots? What riots?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

“The hardest thing to know is when, precisely, to pretend not to know…”

You got news? I got news: Present company excepted, the real estate industry seems to be terrified to talk about the riots. You know, the ones roiling the never-more-local real estate markets? Evidence abounds and none dare call it by its right name. The simplest explanation to fit the facts – is the one nobody wants to talk about. Very sad.

Redfin: Hot Housing Market Spans the Political Spectrum, with Prices Up Double Digits in Blue, Red and Swing Counties. CTRL-F ‘riot’; not found. Red and blue is stupid. Single-family versus multi is better, with average age of the community’s housing stock perhaps being the best tell. Elderly, vertical, mortar or steel: Down. Post-war, horizontal, stick and stucco: Way up. Real estate analysis is easy. Lying about the further consequences of rioting takes work.

Jalopnik: Ahem. Moving Truck Prices In LA And San Francisco Are Skyrocketing Due To Demand.

Housing Wire: First-time homebuyer activity decreased in Q2, but there’s still plenty of buyers out there.

CNBC: Government mortgage bailout numbers improve slowly, but the real test is ahead.

Housing Wire: Builder confidence reaches 35-year high in September.

Joanne Jacobs: Paying for at-home education.

RedState.com: Emails Reveal Nashville City Government Hid COVID-19 Info from Public to Keep City In Lockdown.

City Journal: Problem: Overcrowding.

Watts Up With That?: Irrefutable NASA data: global fires down by 25 percent.

Reason: Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: Homicide Stats Show “Minneapolis Effect.”

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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