Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

After two consecutive days of “the sky is falling” reporting about the real estate market, I thought you all might appreciate some time meeting with our resident Lake Oroville Real Estate psychiatrist to help deal with this “tragic” news. 

Free Real Estate Market, meet Dr. I Told You So

Dr. I Told You So: What seems to be the problem today, Free Market

Free Market: I’m  just exhausted, Doc.

I Told You So: Really? Tell me why.

Free Market: Well, every time I try to do my job, something, or someone, interferes with me.

I Told You So: Didn’t we have this conversation about 10 years ago?

Free Market: Yes, when a bunch of meddlers forced me to loan money to people who would never have been approved for a loan, had they let me do my job. 

I Told You So:  So, how has it gone since then?

Free Market: Well, I hit my head real hard when I fell of the cliff. Since then they have been trying to put me on disability, thinking that I am no longer capable of doing my job.

I Told You So: Let me get this right, they attempted to disable you, Free Market.

Free Market: Yes.

I Told You So: Didn’t I tell you that there is no way to disable you? That the only way to stop you is to take you over?

Free Market: Yes, but how come nobody else seems to understand this?

I Told You So: Who is nobody? Read the rest of this entry »

Having spent a part of my working life, in the Lake Oroville real estate market, as a financial consultant with a major Wall Street brokerage company I was always entertained by, not only the jargon of the industry,  but also by some of the odd, or some might say superstitious, ways that pundits use to predict the next direction that the market or the economy might move.

For example, the Super Bowl Indicator theorizes that the year in which a team from the AFC wins the Super Bowl the stock market will fall, but if an NFC team wins the market will rally. Amazingly, this “predictor” has been right 80% of the time over the years. Another of these anecdotal predictors is the Hem Line Effect. This theory says that as hem lines move up so does the market and when hem lines get longer the market drops.

So, what does this have to do with anything related to the real estate market in Lake Oroville, Paradise and Chico, you say?

As to those theories, nothing. But I think we unintentionally swerved into the first real estate industry anecdotal predictor of the real estate market, in our office. I call it the Redenbacher Effect.

I discovered this theory while Steffan, one of the associates in my office was popping his $1.00 bag of popcorn ( that he bought at the Dollar Store, because that is where REALTORS® shop these days) in our microwave oven. You might imagine the quality level of $1.00 popcorn is not quite the same as the good stuff you get at the movies for about $5.00 a bag.  The fact that Steffan eats at least a bag a day of this stuff has leads me to believe that he is quite the popcorn connoisseur.

I will never forget the profoundness of the words that eminated from his lips as the Redenbacher Effect was born:

 ”I sure will be glad when the market gets good again so I can afford to buy something better than this $1.00 popcorn c*@p.”

With the suddenness of a light bulb being switched on to interrupt the darkness of an empty room, it hit me that we may finally have an accurate way to forecast the pending direction of  not only the Lake Oroville real estate market, but the real estate markets of all 4 corners of the world!

The Redenbacher Effect is defined as this: Read the rest of this entry »

Good news for those of you in the Lake Oroville, Chico, and Paradise real estate markets, who have been unable to enjoy the benefits of my AGENTnTOUCH™ app on your Android smartphone.

I have just rolled out the Droid edition of this app and it is now available for download. I have also made some recent changes to the features of the app by adding mapping of area schools, and providing the ability to search for properties directly from my website.

After downloading the app, simply enter my Agent Id on the first page. The Id number is 5303704691.

With coming upgrades and the addition of more features it is my goal to make this the only real estate app you will ever need. Coming next is the Blackberry version of the app. It should be launching sometime within the next month. Of course you will hear it first here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Adobe Flash 10.1 Player to hit Motorola Droid on August 18th? intomobile.com)
• Remotely Control Your Computer with RemoteDroid pocketnow.com)
• Motorola says Droid X getting Android 2.2 Froyo update ‘by early September’  intomobile.com)

One of the biggest dilemmas facing potential sellers, in what is a very difficult market from their perspective, is what to do about making repairs, or performing upgrades to a home before placing it on the market.

Over my nearly 16 years in Oroville real estate market, I have consistently counseled sellers to be very careful about putting money into repairs and upgrades of their homes as it very rarely means that they will see all that money come back to them in the sales price of the home.

A recently released report by Remodeling Magazine provides some valuable data on what your expected return might be on monies used to  upgrade or repair your home. The information I am linking you to is for the Sacramento, California area as this is the closest area to the Lake Oroville area that the magazine rated.

While looking at these numbers keep in mind that this is a survey which only concerns itself with dollars spent vs. dollars recouped. Another major factor you should consider when judging the return on your investment is that, while almost none of the items surveyed paid for themselves, many of these items may actually help your home sell faster, which is of value in itself.  Remember: TIME IS MONEY!

Be sure to click here to see the report in its entirety.

Oroville real estate, oroville homes for sale, Oroville California, chico listings, Oroville listings, paradise listings, Paradise Ca homes for sale, Butte County home for sale, Oroville properties, houses for sale, gridley property

The National Association of REALTORS® yesterday reported, as expected, that home sales in the month of October, on a national basis, were up over 10% versus last month and topped the same month last year by almost 24%.

Conversly, median home prices continue to keep sales of Rolaids at record levels, as they continue to soften, albeit at a slower rate than previous months. 

The California Association or REALTORS®also released their regional monthly statistics, which include stats from the Nother California of which the Lake Oroville real estate market, as well as the Chico homes market and the Paradise property market, is part of.  I have posted those numbers on the side bar of both this site and our new office blog site which you can find by going to www.realtyworldoroville.com

No need to really jump into a big commentary on these numbers this month as we have discussed the reasons and consequences of our current market conditions before. I am, however,  looking for ways to bring this same type of information to you on a much more local scale to provide a clearer picture of our local market.

Here are some other articles that may be of  interest to you.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Home Sales Surge. Time to Party? curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com)
• Home prices may be bottoming out money.cnn.com)
• New US home sales rise 6.2 percent seattletimes.nwsource.com)

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 »

President Obama is expected to sign a congressional resolution that will extend, for another year, the increased conforming loan limits that were put in place in 2008 in an effort to bolster sales of higher priced homes. At the time loans for these homes became very expensive, sometimes carrying interest rates as much as 2-3 percentage points higher than those in the lower price ranges.

The extension would extend through 2010 the current loan limits of $417,000 for most of the U.S. and $729,750 for high-cost areas such as San Francisco and many areas of Southern California.

The conforming loan limit is the maximum mortgage size that Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac can buy or guarantee.

While this affects the Oroville real estate market somewhat less than other markets in the state, it is an important step to take to keep the statewide housing recovery moving forward which will be good news for all sellers and other homeowners in our state, including the higher priced homes in the Chico real estate market, Butte Valley, as well as some homes for sale in the Paradise area.

The one piece of this puzzle that still needs to be found is the piece that increases the number of providers of Private Mortgage Insurance at an affordable price for home buyers. While the extension of these loan limits is a good piece of legislation, Freddie and Fannie are doing very little lending due to an inadequate number of insurance providers that are willing to insure these loans. When the mortgage crisis hit, many of these companies went bankrupt as they paid off on claims made on the insurance they provided for the overwhelming number of defaulted loans. As you might imagine, the remaining companies don’t want to expose themselves to unnecessary risk in this economic environment.

 For California, the extension of these loan limits is more important that the extension of the federal tax credit, and I am glad that the President seems poised to sign it.

My e-mail box and most of the social networking sites I belong to, including Facebook, are all abuzz with real estate agents trying to be the first to report that the first time home buyer tax credit has been extended.

It is great that they want to get news of the extension to the consumer as soon as posssible. The only problem? It hasn’t been extended yet.  What we actually have at this writing is an agreement in principle to extend and enhance the credit. An agreement that has yet to be voted on and an agreement that can possibly be changed before getting to the President’s desk for signature.

I have provided a link to an article published just hours ago by U.S. News and World Report that gives an in depth look at what is being considered and what the status is.

Click Here to See Report 

OROVILLE REAL ESTATE Paradise homes chico homes chico real estate gridley homes homes for sale Butte County Homes

As part of a package of 8 other real estate related bills recently signed into law by California’s Governor, AB 260 provides further protections to those borrowers who are worthy of borrowing money to buy a home, but may be a notch or two below the coveted prime borrower status.

Whether you are a borrower in the Oroville real estate market, or looking at homes for sale in Chico, or have decided that its time to start looking through property listing in Paradise or any other area of Butte County this information is important to know.

The new law places certain limits and prohibitions on what is now being called “higher-priced mortgage loans.”  Directly excerpted from the text of the new law, a higher priced mortgage is defined as:  

(a) Higher-priced mortgage loans —(1) For purposes of this section, a higher-priced mortgage loan is a consumer credit transaction secured by the consumer’s principal dwelling with an annual percentage rate that exceeds the average prime offer rate for a comparable transaction as of the date the interest rate is set by 1.5 or more percentage points for loans secured by a first lien on a dwelling, or by 3.5 or more percentage points for loans secured by a subordinate lien on a dwelling.

(2) “Average prime offer rate” means an annual percentage rate that is derived from average interest rates, points, and other loan pricing terms currently offered to consumers by a representative sample of creditors for mortgage transactions that have low-risk pricing characteristics. The Board publishes average prime offer rates for a broad range of types of transactions in a table updated at least weekly as well as the methodology the Board uses to derive these rates.

To help with the explanation of this I did a little online research and found the published average prime offer rate for 30 year fixed rate mortgage to be 5.06% last week. Based on the newly established definition, a 30 year fixed rate loan on a first mortgage with a rate of 6.56% or more would be considered a higher priced mortgage loan.

If you find yourself in a situation where you only qualify for one of these loans here are the new resrtictions being placed on your lender:  Read the rest of this entry »

On the surface, today’s existings homes sales report looks awesome.  A 9.4% national sales increase over last month, along with a 13% improvement of California homes sales, blew away analysts expectations and were at their highest point in 2 years. By the way, do you think these “analysts” have gone to the same school as weather reporters, they are hardly ever right and they get paid for it.  But I digress.

I did, however,  find one expert that is not surprised by the numbers. Here is a portion of what he said in August: 

“The housing sales numbers will continue their upward trend, and may even accelerate through the end of the year as last minute first time home buyers scramble to close escrow by November 30, 2009.  Should Congress choose not to extend the credit deadline we will probably begin to see a trailing off of  the sales pace toward the middle of spring 2010.”

“Even with an extension of the credit there may still some sales softness, as first time buyers can only drive this market so far. In what we used to call a “normal” market, nearly all purchases of existing homes ended up being actually more than one home purchased, as the buyer was buying a home from a seller who was buying a replacement home for themselves. In today’s market over 1/2 the transactions involve foreclosed homes or short sales where the seller ends up with nothing to buy a replacement home with.”

Click Here to view the rest of the expert’s comments.

Remember that during the “dark days” of the market when it seemed that everyone was saying the collapse of the real estate market was leading us into the next Great Depression? At the same time I was advising you to take the predictions of gloom and doom with a grain of salt and keep your perspective on what was really going on.

I am advising the same thing now. While these are impressive numbers, they are numbers mostly driven by the federal first time home buyers tax credit, the Cash for Clunkers for the housing industry. To provide the perspective on this look what happened after the Cash for Clunkers program ended; auto sales dropped by up to 50% for some auto makers. There is still some heartburn to go through as we climb out of the hole created by the explosion of the bubble. Hopefully, while making the ascent we don’t find ourselves on a slippery slope that is sometimes created by government bailouts.

Paradise homes for sale, chico listings, gridley properties, butte county real estate, Oroville homes