The Real Estate Pulse

About half of San Fernando Valley Real Estate sales in August involved a home that had been repossessed according to MDA DataQuick. The troubling part of the news was that experts believe that the number of San Fernando Valley foreclosure sales will only continue to increase as banks continue to repossess more and more homes.

What we see in the news and read in the newspaper is that San Fernando Valley Real Estate sales are up and they are up of course but the value of the homes we own continues to fall further and further down.

And the banks aren’t going to let up… they’re going to continue to dump “assets” until they have enough cash on hand and until their balance sheets are balanced and our homes are worth virtually nothing.

I suppose the positive thing then would be that banks might actually then be willing to start making some loans again…

Hey it’s a good time to buy a home in the San Fernando Valley if you can find a bank to make you a loan. I believe I saw a stat somewhere that illustrated the price of San Fernando Valley Real Estate being back down to 2003 levels!

And like I said earlier there’s really no end in sight.

It’s great, I suppose, that sales are up but foreclosures are up as well and that just means that banks have an ever increasing inventory of homes they need to sell and at this point they’re willing to take a loss on a loan because they need the cash. At this point banks are just trying o minimize their losses…hell at this point a lot of banks are just trying to stay open!

Has the San Fernando Valley Real Estate market hit bottom?

Most experts would conclude that no the San Fernando Valley Real Estate market has not yet hit bottom and that prices will continue to fall but not at the dramatic rate of the past couple of years.

With San Fernando Valley Real Estate continuing to plummet many San Fernando Valley residents are wondering how the U.S. Federal governments takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will affect the value and sales of homes for sale in the San Fernando Valley…

Well one of the desired effects from the “Frannie” takeover was lower interest rates for home buyers and as of this week interest rates for 30 year fixed rate mortgages are down about 1/2 a percentage point as of this post.

So with interest rates down are more people buying San Fernando Valley Real Estate?

Not necessarily.

While the prices of homes for sale in the San Fernando Valley may be down, more and more potential home buyers are discovering that it’s getting harder and harder to qualify for a home loan in the San Fernando Valley these days.

Most lenders are now requiring a 15% down payment of the purchase price of a home for sale in the San Fernando Valley up from 10% from a while back and I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever see any interest-only loans again?

I can tell you right now most people will be unable to afford the 15% down payment for San Fernando Valley real Estate. If you can find a home for sale in the San Fernando Valley for about $300,000, you’ll still have to come up with a down payment of $45,000.00!

Fannie and Freddie Mac now have the guaranteed backing of the U.S. Federal Government and in a nutshell they’re making sure that the money they loan out these days has a very high probability of getting paid back. Sounds like good business to me but how it affects the San Fernando Valley Real Estate Market remains to be seen.