Last Game of the Season?

From the Sacramento Bee:

[I]f this year is like the last two, the Super Bowl is now just the last game of the season, not the opening shot of the home- selling year. Indeed, there's a chance the peak buying activity of 2008 may have already happened.

In both 2006 and 2007, escrow closings – where all the paperwork is done and buyers get the keys – peaked in March, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems. That means the homes were likely sold sometime in January or early February.

A March peak isn't something the industry likes or wants to see again this year. In 2006, a March peak showed there wouldn't be a big spring rebound and proved the downturn was real. In 2007, the subprime crisis arrived in March and pushed down sales for the rest of the year.

So far this year, builders and real estate agents say they're seeing the usual rise in sales compared with December...Tina Wilks, who owns the midtown Sacramento office of Prudential California Realty, said investors, more than first-time buyers, are driving activity she's seen. Many are picking off houses repossessed by banks.

From publicradio.org:

[F]our years ago we bought an 80-year-old home in a nice Sacramento neighborhood. My wife, an escrow officer, and I, a notary public, were earning good money. We had every intention of staying here forever, but the subprime lending crisis has triggered another real estate meltdown. Now my wife's salary has been cut and her bonuses eliminated. My notary work has dwindled to a trickle. It becomes more difficult to make our house payment each month.

Financially it doesn't make sense to even try. We owe about $430,000 on the house. It's currently worth no more than $400,000. Selling isn't an option. Sooner or later we will probably give up another home to foreclosure. The interest rate is competitive, six and an eighth, and it's fixed until August of 2012. A sudden upward adjustment of our loan won't force us out. It's the sudden decrease in our incomes.

The Sacramento Real Estate Statistics blog digs a little deeper here.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Before the real estate bubble burst, Sid Dunmore ran one of the largest locally owned development enterprises in the region. The Dunmore empire built more than 22,000 homes from Elk Grove to Granite Bay to Nevada, making Dunmore a rich man. Yet like many other developers, Dunmore bet too heavily on a boom that was sure to end. That left his company, Dunmore Homes, with a glut of unsold property when the market crashed. After Dunmore sold it, the company filed for bankruptcy, listing assets of $280 million and liabilities of $250 million.

Dunmore is unlikely to end up in the poor house. As The Bee's Jim Wasserman reported in December, Dunmore stands to receive an $11.2 million federal tax refund for selling his company for a mere $500.

The same cannot be said for some of the families who bought some of his homes. In Elk Grove, as The Bee's Loretta Kalb reported Tuesday, homeowners in the partly finished Monterey Village subdivision are facing lawsuits and liens by several of Dunmore's contractors and suppliers.
...
Ultimately, the responsible party here is Sid Dunmore, who seems primed to benefit from a federal tax return but has remained silent on the predicament faced by people who purchased his homes. Dunmore has so far not responded to Kalb's efforts to reach him. If he continues to stay on the sidelines, it will serve as one more reason for lawmakers to get involved.

From the LA Times:

As home prices soared higher earlier this decade, the buying frenzy was fueled in part by what real estate industry experts now claim were exaggerated -- or outright fraudulent -- appraisals. A lawsuit filed by two couples this week adds a new twist: It claims that Los Angeles builder KB Home and a unit of lender Countrywide Financial Corp. pumped up appraisals in their Sacramento-area development to sell homes at higher prices.

One couple, Deborah and Lonnie Bolden, says they paid $70,000 more for their home than neighbors who used different appraisers. Their lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that KB Home and Countrywide "conspired with affiliated appraisers to generate fraudulent" appraisal reports.

From the Modesto Bee:

While lower mortgage interest rates might help some Americans refinance their home loans, Northern San Joaquin Valley homeowners are finding it more difficult because house values have plummeted. "If your current home value is less than your outstanding loan, you're dead meat," warned Paul Carroll, president of Carrollton Mortgage Co. in Modesto. Unfortunately, Carroll said, that's the case for many homeowners who are desperate to refinance their high-interest rate mortgages.
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It's getter ever harder to refinance in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, however, because the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) has designated this region as a "declining market." Because of that, Fannie Mae -- which buys mortgages from lenders -- has reduced its permitted loan-to-value ratio by 5 percent. So, homeowners who used to be allowed to borrow up to 95 percent of their homes' value now can't borrow more than 90 percent. The new restriction took effect for mortgage applications filed after Jan. 15.
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"There's a lot of people who are really stuck," said [George] Erbele, who's been in the mortgage business 19 years. "We probably used to be able to find mortgages for about 95 percent of people who requested loans, ... but now only 10 percent to 15 percent of the refinancing requests get approved."