'Fore!'closure

From CBS13:

The sounds of 'fore' on a local golf course may soon be silenced due to a foreclosure of sorts. Like many homeowners facing foreclosure, the owners of Wild Wings Golf Course near Woodland say they can't pay their bills and plan to walk away from the property. The closure would mean homeowners who bought homes with a golf course view may soon be seeing brown instead of lush green fairways.
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With a backyard view of course the D'Amico family is wondering what will happen to there property value. When the development started in 2005, homes were going for $750,000 plus. Now, residents fear Wild Wings will turn into weeds.

From News10:

Brandenburg Development of San Jose is behind in it's property tax payments and water bills and says the golf course loses money every month. "Brandenburg has offered the property to the County for a one-dollar donation," says homeowner Stephanie Young-Birkle.
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But Yolo County is balking so far. The County faces a continuing budget deficit and has been laying off workers.

From the Sacramento Bee:

A financial dispute involving one of Sacramento's signature condo complexes apparently is turning nasty. As we hear it, officials with project investor Resmark Equity Partners LLC of Los Angeles entered the L Street Lofts building early Friday with the intention of changing locks and assuming control. Representatives of developer Sotiris Kolokotronis then arrived at 1818 L St. and tensions escalated, resulting in police being summoned.
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What's behind the financial dispute between Resmark and Kolokotronis? It could be Resmark's concern that fewer than half of the 92 units – priced between $389,000 and $1.2 million – have been sold since L Street Lofts opened last year.

From Hovnanian earnings call via Seeking Alpha:

Ivy Zelman – Zelman & Associates

Ara, you point out some positives that referring to markets, Northern Cal and Augusta and Stockton and other areas where the market’s seen an improvement in existing home sales, you know ironically the increase in existing home sales is coming from foreclosures and dominating markets as much as 50% to as high as 75% of those existing home sale increases, and we know that through title companies and work we’ve done that half of those and maybe even more, many are being purchased by investors.

The good news is that it’s moving inventory. The bad news is that there’s for every house that’s taken off, there’s more in the pipeline to come. The other bad news is it’s taking share from your new home market and your prices, although in many cases you may not be making money now, are likely to go lower because appraisals are coming in lower because the comparables are foreclosures. So I’m really having a hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that you seem to see.

From the Sacramento Bee:

Sacramento-area homebuyers flocked to mortgage offices Monday to lock in some of the year's lowest interest rates following a weekend federal takeover of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. But inside one of the nation's hardest-hit housing markets, which has seen billions of dollars in home equity erased the past two years, it was still tough to gauge the longer impact. The early consensus among local mortgage brokers, home builders and economists was that the government takeover can't hurt and might be good for Sacramento's real estate market. At the very least, some said, it averts the possible disaster of a credit meltdown and means things won't get worse.
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Brian Jacobosky, a Folsom house hunter, said he's pleased to see rates fall after the federal takeover. But he said, "That's not going to change our game plan." His family is browsing for a home after selling a house in Arizona and moving to Sacramento. Jacobosky thinks he'll get more financial mileage from declining sales prices than fluctuating interest rates.