Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

Here are the numbers for last week’s Lake Oroville real estate market. This is the third week in a row that the number of Oroville home sales has been in single digits, and the 7th week out of the past 8 for this. With inventories still low, and a lot of that inventory in disrepair it is becoming more and more difficult to find properties for Oroville area buyers.  All of my team members have pools of buyers that they simply cannot find decent properties to show them.

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We’ve all heard the old saying , “Give them an inch and they will take a mile.” Right?

Well, this has never held more true than it does today in this age of bank owned properties. No, this is not another one of those bank, bashing blog posts that seem to be everywhere these days. Quite frankly it is difficult to tell if the expanding trend of banks REQUIRING  more and more of a potential purchaser before accepting an offer, is the work of the banks or of some of the bank-employed REALTORS® that have hitched their fortunes to their bank-employer.

Let’s take a little walk down memory lane to see what I mean.

Inch #1-In the beginning, banks that owned foreclosed homes simply required that a buyer present a loan prequalification letter with any offer that was made on one of their homes. This seemed fair, as no seller wants to be dealing with a buyer that is not qualified for a loan.

Inch #2- It was then not good enough that the purchase contract stated that the buyer had given a deposit check to their agent. The bank wanted a copy of the check.

Inch #3-Next the major banks required that any prospective buyer be loan prequalified with their bank before they would consider the buyer’s offer. Great way for the bank’s loan officers to try and persuade a buyer to swtich their business to them. Yes, it is happening! Read the rest of this entry »

 Wow, have I been a bad boy. I have neglected my duty to provide the Lake Oroville real estate market with the most up-to-date home sales stats. Not sure why I am behind, but here are the mumbers for the week endig January 4, 2010.

Maybe it was that mini-vacation I took that threw me off!!!

Stat of the week is the continuing decline is the number of Oroville homes currently listed for sale. The number hit a new low for the week. At the current sales pace this equates to approximately 6 month inventory of homes for Lake Oroville. 

Click Here for more historical info

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• Home-selling time sliced by half in 2009  lansner.freedomblogging.com)

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor Arizona trip, will keep me from providing you, my loyal Lake Oroville real estate market readers, with the weekly sales activity number for last week.

You heard right, I am actually taking a few days of southwest r& r. But fear not, I have not forgotten my duty to you.

I hope you all had a great and blessed Christmas day and that you are planning for a safe New Years celebration.

Sales numbers for the week were actually pretty good considering that it was a major holiday week.  I have highlighted what I believe to be the stats of the week. Average sold price has been climbing the past 4 weeks and last week was the highest it has been in the past 10 weeks. The other stat of note is, once again, the number of single family Oroville homes for sale. The is number represents the fewest number of homes on the market since I have been bringing you this particular statistic beginning June 8, 2009.

As a seller, or potential seller, this is THE number to watch going forward. Smaller inventory will eventually translate into higher prices.

Well, that is all for know. I’ve got another “busy” day scheduled tomorrow as I do more trailblazing through the Arizona  desert on my quad runner.

Click here for expanded chart

 Merry Christmas, everyone. We had a very slight sales rebound last week in the Lake Oroville real estate market, but again not much on which to comment. I think the biggest news in the current market environment  is that inventories are continuing to shrink. I have provided a chart at the bottom of this post which graphs the nature of the inventory trends.  Be sure to click on the graph for a larger view of it.  As a buyer you will want these inventories to show increases as this will keep prices more affordable. As a seller you should like the trend that has been developing since June. Shrinking inventories will result in higher prices over time. 

Click here or on chart for larger view

Click here for more stats

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• Supply of homes for sale 4-year low  lansner.freedomblogging.com)
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I’m sure that after 8 months of reading my blog posts you I know that I am pretty much a numbers guys. I don’t take much stock in what I am told about the condition of the real estate market by media types because I know that they provide no perspective on that about which they are reporting. Drama and gloom and doom is good for ratings, so for the most part, that is what we get.

As your self appointed interpreter of real estate news and information for the Lake Oroville real estate market, I find it important to dive into the data provide to you with what I think is really going on in this market. Every once in a while, though, I get hold of a report that does a whole lot better job of explaining the situation than I can. (I know…that is just hard to believe).

The report I am providing a link to today comes from Jim Moll of Wells Fargo Advisors. As a longtime Oroville financial advisor, Jim is gracious enough to send reports to me and other Oroville REALTORS®from time to time to assist us in keeping our clients informed of market conditions. Fortunately for buyers and sellers in the Oroville, Chico and Paradise areas, this is the only real estate site on which you will see reports of this nature.

Either click here to see the report or click on the graphic. And remember, always read or listen to the story behind the headlines.

With all the hoopla surrounding the extension of the first time home buyer tax credit, as well as the expansion of a smaller credit to existing home owners, I think it is time to develop a plan that actually addresses the LONG TERM needs of this market. I am talking about more than just the Lake Oroville real estate market here. We need a national solution.

As you know, I am not a big fan of using taxpayer dollars to pay people to buy homes. These handouts, in my view, are only band aid solutions where a tourniquet may be the better answer.  They do nothing to stabilize the market. In fact the tax credit is just going to delay the inevitable unless something is done soon to spur market demand for housing.

What I would like to do, over the next couple of blog posts, is to get your opinion on a plan that I think will finally put this real estate market back on the tracks, without government money.  And just so you know, it must be a great idea because I thought of it while taking a shower.  (If you have never heard of this theory before it must be because you take baths).

So let’s get started fixing this thing. Read the rest of this entry »

Another tool has just been added to our gigantic online toolbox. In addition to the individual associate blog sites that Realty World provides to each of us, we have just been issued a blog site for our entire office.

This new site, http://www.realtyworldoroville.com/, displays blog posts of all our agents in one convenient web location, while continuing to provide top quality real estate news, information, and property searches.

The addition of this new site provides one more spot where our sellers listings will be seen;  another place where buyers in the Lake Oroville real estate market can shop for their first, or next, home; and provides an opportunity for everyone in between to get to know us better. This is something you will not find on any other real estate website in the greater Oroville area.  By the way if you think you know of one please pass along the domain name to me. I would like to see it for myself.

We understand that almost everyone consults on-line real estate sites before every hiring an agent to work for them. That is why we provide more online services than anyone else.

 As this site is brand new, there will be enhancements added to it as we go so be sure to visit often, and thank you for visiting all of our associate’s blog sites over the past few months.

Bet that got your attention, huh? While, for now this is a simply an attention getting headline, the reality is that there is a chance this could actually happen.

A recent audit of the FHA loan progran recently revealed that the agency has fallen significantly short in the amount of loan reserves that it is required, by law, to have.  These loan reserves are used to pay claims from lenders when an FHA loans are foreclosed upon.

I don’t want to get overly technical about this but the law requires FHA to have an amount equal to 2% of the outstanding loans that they insure in a reserve account to pay for claims. The current reserves that the FHA has on hand is .53% . Barely a quarter of what is required.

With FHA financing being almost the only way to get a home loan these days, pressure has been mounting on the agency’s reserves.

There are a number of scenarios that, if accurate, could bring these reserves back into line. An article in a recent issue of the Washington Post goes into more details on these scenarios.

The potential impact of this on both buyers and sellers in the Lake Oroville real estate market could be dramatic. Among the solutions to the problem would be to raise the premium the FHA charges for mortgage insurance. This would help build the reserves but, at the same time, increase one’s house payment.

Another would be to raise the amount of money required as a down paymentfor the loan.  Currently an FHA loan requires a down payment of 3.5% of the purchase price, increased recently from 3%. On a $200,000 home a buyer of an Oroville home now needs to have a downpayment of $7,000. If the requirement is raised to 5% that same home will require a down payment of $10,000. A  42% increase! 

There is no doubt, should either or both of these scenarios be put in place, that it will slow the sales of homes. The end result should be that buyer’s will have to work and save a little bit more than they are now before buying a home. This, in my view is a good thing.  

The bottom line here is that the FHA is currently the lifeline to this housing market and it is vital that it stay solvent.

I don’t know about you, but I would much rather increase these requirements, even though it may temporarily sqeeze some buyer’s out of the market, than to have the whole prgram collapes under its own weight.

Oroville homes, Paradise homes, Chic properties, Butte County Listing. For sale

5:19pm – Attention buyers and sellers in the Lake Oroville real estate market.

The California Association of REALTORS® (CAR) just announced that the U.S. Senate has passed the unemployment extension bill which also contains an extension and expansion of the homebuyer tax credit. According to CAR the bill now moves to the House of Representatives for their consideration.

As usual, I will update you as more information comes available.

5:35 pm- Here are more specifics on the bill that passed the U.S. Senate earlier today. Click here for report