St. Louis Real Estate-Market Watch December 20th, 2009

Filed under: Real Estate News, St. Louis Market Reports

Real Estate-Market Watch  by Art Wagner @ Keller Williams Realty Southwest Saint Louis , Sunset Hills, Mo.
December 20th, 2009
The Anatomy of St. Louis Real Estate

The St. Louis Home for Sale Team provides a weekly St. Louis County and Bi-weekly St. Charles County Market and Jefferson County Market Watch Report to review and plug into your home buying or selling scenario.  Your questions and comments are welcome!

 The St. Louis Real Estate Market this week is preparing for Christmas with less active listings and less homes accepting contracts, dropping our pending ratio to just over 12 percent.  Our homes sold in the last six months has tapered off a bit, but still remains over 200 more than last year at this time.  Expired listings have increased a bit, as some homeowners will be staying off the market until after the holidays and after the first of the year. 

Those homeowners staying off the market may wish they hadn’t, as there are still a good number of  first time homebuyers in the market. 

From our partners at Gorman and Gorman Home Loans comes this real estate news update:

Last week the Federal Reserve kept the Fed Funds Rate at the 0.0% to 0.25% range and reiterated that interest rates will remain low for an “extended period.” The Fed did say that economic activity picked up since the last meeting in November. The statement went on to say that deterioration in the labor markets is abating.

One very important note – the Fed took the time to reiterate that their Mortgage Backed Security purchase program will end on March 31, 2010 as previously stated. There had been some speculation that the program might continue beyond the March 31st date, but the inclusion of this reiteration in the Fed’s Policy Statement leads us to believe that the Fed is trying to make it clear that this program will terminate as scheduled. Source: CNN/Money

The inventory of completed but unsold new houses fell to 239,000 at the end of October, according to the National Association of Home Builders. That’s the fewest since May 1971, when the inventory stood at 236,000. The months’ supply — that is, the amount of time it would take to sell the current inventory at October’s sales rate — fell to 6.7 months, which the NAHB says is “respectable.” The historic high was set in January, when the supply topped out at 12.4 months. Meanwhile, the inventory of unsold existing houses fell in October to 3 million, and the month’s supply dipped to 6.8 months. The supply of resale houses hit its cyclical peak in June 2008, when it reached 11 months. Source: National Mortgage News

Note:  Our Market Watch Report will not be published next weekend.

   WHO DO YOU KNOW NOW is facing challenges in our local St. Louis Real Estate Market?? We have unique solutions custom tailored for troubled homeowners, sellers and buyers.  Contact us for more information.

Posted by Art Wagner   |   Read More   |   Your Comments Are Welcome!   |   12.22.2009

St. Louis Real Estate-Market Watch December 13th, 2009

Filed under: St. Louis Market Reports

Real Estate-Market Watch  by Art Wagner @ Keller Williams Realty Southwest Saint Louis , Sunset Hills, Mo.
December 13th, 2009
The Anatomy of St. Louis Real Estate

 The St. Louis Real Estate Market this week heads for the Holidays with activity slowing just a bit.  Buyer activity is still very good, especially in the lower price ranges anywhere from $280,000 and down.  Why $280,000, you ask?

In the St. Louis Metropolitan area, FHA lending limits for single family homes are $281,000, and with a great number of buyers choosing to use FHA lending, it stands to reason that these price ranges will have the most activity.

One item to note is that for the second week in a row,  the “homes sold” in the past six months of 2009 have exceeded “homes sold” in the same time period of 2008 by 7.3 percent.  It looks as though some of the home buyer assistance programs are working.  

 Buyers in all price ranges are understanding the value in the marketplace right now and moving forward instead of waiting.  Buyers that are looking for “deals” and willing to do a little work to the home are also finding great bargains in foreclosures and short sales, thus keeping the buying activity moving along.

For would-be buyers that aren’t considering buying now due to lack of a down payment,  credit issues or any other reason,  we have discovered something that may be of help to you. 

We recently, this week, got involved with a program which allows a buyer to purchase a home with 100 percent conventional financing, no down payment, no closing costs, don’t need perfect credit, and at below market rates.

WAIT…I know what you are thinking….sounds too good to be true,  this is a scam, or it’s some “creative” financing arrangement.  NOT SO.

The program is provided through the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America,  NACA.  It is real,  and they have helped individuals throughout the country for the past 20 years become homeowners  through common sense approach to lending and anti-predatory lending assistance.

Check them out at www.NACA.com.  You will be amazed at how they can help.

   WHO DO YOU KNOW NOW is facing challenges in our local St. Louis Real Estate Market?? We have unique solutions custom tailored for troubled homeowners, sellers and buyers.  Contact us for more information.

Posted by Art Wagner   |   Read More   |   Your Comments Are Welcome!   |   12.14.2009

St. Louis Real Estate-Market Watch December 2009

Filed under: St. Louis Market Reports, Uncategorized

Real Estate-Market Watch  by Art Wagner @ Keller Williams Realty Southwest Saint Louis , Sunset Hills, Mo.
December 6th, 2009
The Anatomy of St. Louis Real Estate

The St. Louis Real Estate market this week continues with our Holiday slow-down in both seller and buyer activity.  

For a brief look back this year, we took a look at the change in list prices and sales prices for the past six months compared with the some six month time frame last year.  We found that average list prices fluctuated between 1 percent and 3 percent and sales prices fluctuated between 0 percent and 1.7 percent.  The big differences in all price ranges continues to be the number of days that a home stays on the market before it is sold.  Compared to the last six months of last year, days on market fluctuated between 13.6 percent up to 51.3 percent.

Take a look for yourself; you can download and print this comparison HERE 

Ben Bernanke speaks today, Monday, Dec. 7th which will give us a good idea as to what home loan rates will be doing in the near future.  He will be speaking at the Economic Club in Washington today.  This will be the first time we will hear from him since the better-than-expected jobs report came out last Friday.

The FED also meets next week for the final time this year to implement policy for the nation’s financial system.  There has been some talk of the FED raising the interest rates a bit sooner than previously thought.  That may have to change according to James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, as he beleives the Fed needs to pay attention to future asset bubbles.

Another concern is, What will happen to home loans if the Federal Reserve stops buying mortgage-backed securities next March?  If and when the program ends, rates will rise, but most financial observers say it is very likely they won’t skyrocket.  Keith Gumbinger, a vice president at financial publishers, HSH Associates, predicts that the end of Fed intervention will push rates up about three-quarters of a point for a 30-year conforming loan-somewhere in the mid-5 percent range.  By late 2010, Gumbinger says the rate will be closer to 6 percent.  Michael Larson, a real estate analyst at Weiss Research, is dubious that the Fed will actually end the  program.  He contends that the Fed will continue buying securities as long as the housing recovery is tenuous.  And as long as the Fed continues to donimate that market, “we’re not really going to move the needle on rates,” Larson says.  Source: Smart Money.
Information for this article has been contributed by our friends at Gorman and Gorman Home Loans.  Thanks, Guys!!

   WHO DO YOU KNOW NOW is facing challenges in our local St. Louis Real Estate Market?? We have unique solutions custom tailored for troubled homeowners, sellers and buyers.  Contact us for more information.

Posted by Art Wagner   |   Read More   |   Your Comments Are Welcome!   |   12.07.2009