First Magnus shut down yesterday.  The 16th largest US home lender and 2nd largest private lender that provided money to quite a few mortgage brokers shut it’s doors.  This company provides money to some mortgage brokers in Alaska but I’m not sure which ones.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this affects Wasilla Real Estate.

All buyers who have prequalified with anyone but the most solid companies should check to ensure that they will still be funded when their transaction closes.  I’m going to go through all our files today to make sure there are no problems. 

With Countrywide maxing out it’s credit line to stay afloat it makes my wonder if I’ll be making my own mortgage payment to someone else soon.  Apparently Countrywide provides a lot of the backing for Quicken Loans so this will be affecting internet lenders as well.

This isn’t all bad, the solid companies will continue to do business and their businesses will grow.  Many of the most solid companies have good policies in place and are in the business for the long term.

Alice Roe at US Bank, (866–306–8666), confirmed that they are cooking along just as solid as ever.  All their many loan programs are still on line.  Alice has rescued quite a few transactions for me over the years when the buyer thought they had a loan lined up but suddenly found that that their lender couldn’t do the deal. 

Bookmark this article!

I want to thank Kirsten Forbess or Alaska USA Mortgage in Wasilla,(907–352–8306), about this information on Mortgages.  It is a good reminder that most people have mortgages on their homes and that most people are not having any trouble paying their mortgages.

I had heard before that 35% of people owned their homes outright but hadn’t thought much about that.  Those people have a solid position to weather tough financial times.

Some of these facts almost seem to contradict one another.  One fact says that there is not evidence that there is no evidence that hybrid ARMs, (adjustable rage mortgages), are a cause of increased foreclosure rates, while another says that nonprime borrowers have always had a higher foreclosure rate and that they have a higher share of ARMs.

Still, investor analysts are blaming poor performing lending institutions for a slide in world wide stock markets.  We all know that they need to name something and that a higher than normal home foreclosure rate is likely only one cause of the current stock market woes.  That doesn’t mean it won’t affect buyers as they shop for homes. 

Buyers will have fewer choices in loan programs and many will have to put up higher down payments than they would have a year ago.  But people need to live somewhere and I believe that it is generally better to own rather than rent your home.  I will discuss that issue in a future article.

Bookmark this article!

With the vote in Wasilla this week of the Valley Board of Realtors to drop the Valley Multiple Listing Service I made the inevitable switch to Alaska MLS for my data this week. 

The statistics seem to fit previous weeks except for the total inventory.  It appears that some Anchorage licensees have listings in remote areas of the Mat-Su that are not on the Valley MLS.  These will be the statistics that I will use from now on.  I need to figure out a way to do average days on market and average price for the total inventory.

It appears that although the easy loan days are over, people are still buying houses.  We are still receiving offers on houses and even occasionally getting multiple offers.  The buyers need to be a little stronger than they were in previous years because the easy money is gone. 

Several of the offers we received in the past few weeks are cash offers.  Can’t get any stronger than that!

Bookmark this article!

The vote was 81–59 to abolish the Valley Multiple Listing Service at the annual business meeting for the Valley Board of Realtors held at Evangelo’s in Wasilla. This action was taken primarily to save Realtors time and money.

Now there will be only one MLS system on which to advertise Mat-Su Valley listings. That will be the Alaska Multiple Listing Service. This is a broker owned system headquartered in Anchorage. The website is www.alaskarealestate.com .

For a month or so, the valley website will be up and running, but will likely be gone by Oct 1. In a short time www.matsumls.com will also be gone.

R.I.P.

Bookmark this article!

Just a couple years ago I had a loan officer tell me that she almost never had to turn down a prospective home buyer.  There was almost always a way for her to get a loan for a borrower. 

If all else failed, there was always the so called “liar loans”.  These no documentation loans went entirely by the buyer’s credit report and by their statements.  If they needed to have a certain income the lender would ask them if they made that much…wink, wink.  They nodded and were off to the races.

Many loans were given to people with poor credit or with no documentation of income. Now, because these borrowers have not been making payments the lenders are losing big money.  Some of them have already gone “belly up”.  Others are in serious trouble. 

Many lenders have stopped doing anything close to sub prime loans.  If people don’t have decent credit and a down payment, they will have a more difficult time getting a loan. 

Alice Roe of US Bank discussed the situation with me recently.  She said that she feels a negative momentum building.  She feels that funding sources will dry up for many mortgage brokers. 

Some of the larger lenders, like her US Bank, Wells Fargo and others will likely continue to offer a wide variety of programs.  But they will be much more conservative than they have been in the past.

One has to wonder even about Countrywide, one of the biggest national mortgage lenders.  It’s Chief Executive Officer just exercised his options for 92,000 shares and then sold them all for $28+ apiece.  I wonder what he knows…he should know a lot.  Obviously he thinks it’s a good time to sell. 

Other parts of the country are experienced more serious real estate woes than we are seeing in our area.  We still have buyers, we still are selling houses.  In fact, we are about as busy as we can possibly be.  I believe Alaska will continue to have a relatively healthy real estate market as long as we continue to pump oil and the oil prices continue to be high.

The Mat-Su Valley is actually witnessing a boom in retail construction right now.  These stores will bring in a lot of retail jobs which helps our local economy. These people will all need places to live. Whether they live in a rental unit or a house makes very little difference, it still brings more dollars into our local economy.

If the Alaska economy holds together at all, the Matanuska Susitna Borough will continue to grow.

Bookmark this article!

The Wasilla, Palmer and Mat-Su Valley real estate statistics for July 30–Aug 6, 2007.

I expected more closings this past week because of the normal end of the month flurry and while it was almost twice the previous week it wasn’t really great.  It was better than the previous four weeks but the last week of June saw 42 closings.

I expect this market to continue at about this pace until the end of September when we might see a slowdown.  It is possible however that October could be helped by larger Permanent Fund Dividends that help families with down payments on homes. 

So if you are a seller you have really three months before the real estate market begins its normal seasonal hibernation. 

To the right is the same chart I had last week but updated for July’s numbers.  Notice that the inventory bar jumped substantially, that’s because it is only calculated on the past 30 day sales compared to the total inventory…so ignore it. 

The important thing is the blue line compared to the light green line.  The larger the gap between the two, the more of a buyer’s market it is.  A smaller gap indicates a seller’s market. Notice that the gap is almost twice what it was in 2005.   

Also, notice that the blue line remains pretty steady since 2005, although there is a drop last month that could cause concern if it doesn’t step back up in August.

The national real estate market has been in the news this past week, as has the market in the valley.  Most of the news has been focusing on foreclosures.  This situation was caused by some real risky loans taken out by people who barely qualified. 

I remember a loan officer trying to convince me to push a negative amortization loan with a five year balloon.  I asked him to explain it several times in different ways. I just couldn’t believe he expected me to try to talk buyers into a loan that they would have to pay off in five years, and when they did pay it off, they would owe more than when they started.  Those are the types of loans that have todays home owners in trouble. 

I am often asked to predict the Alaska Real Estate Market.  That is almost impossible to do but I will make these few observations.  We are almost completely dependent on oil.  If oil prices crash or the pipeline shuts down…we’re hurting.  But if the oil keeps flowing and prices remain up, we will stay afloat.  There are other sources of income for the state, but they are miniscule compared to oil.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see some market fluctuations.  I believe we are in one now that will continue until next spring or summer, at least.  But I don’t believe we will see a crash like 1985–1989 unless we lose our oil based economy.  If we get a gas pipeline, we will probably see another boom. 

If you need to buy or sell a house now email me by clicking the contact link to the right or call me at 907 232–7900.

Bookmark this article!

 Back in February a guest author wrote Why Scents May Not Make Cents When Selling Your Home.   This point driven home as I was showing houses in Palmer yesterday. 

We pulled up to a nice looking home.  It had good curb appeal and was in an attractive neighborhood.  But when we stepped inside the buyer almost turned around and walked out. 

She said her throat was closing up and she was having trouble breathing.  This house had new paint, a nice backyard and good layout.  It was priced very competitively.  In fact, the listing Realtor had paid for new carpet to be installed to help it sell.  Likely, this was to help eliminate the cigarette odor that permeated the old carpet.  The carpet was beautiful, but the place still stunk. 

The odor was a mixture of stale cigarette smoke and scented candles.  The prospective buyer couldn’t help talking about it the whole time we were in the house and she couldn’t wait to leave.  This house is going to repel most buyers because most buyers don’t smoke.

We looked at four other houses yesterday that didn’t stink.  She liked parts of all four and wants to see a few more before she makes up her mind.  The stinky house was on the bottom of the list…in fact it doesn’t even make the list.

The sad thing is, the smelly house is probably the most attractively priced.  But the price may need to drop even farther to find a buyer. 

All because of the way it smelled. 

Bookmark this article!

The Valley Board of Realtors is about to make a momentous decision on August 11, 2007.  The question will be whether to drop our Valley MLS system and join with Anchorage or not.  It appears that the vote will be to merge the two systems.

Currently almost all real estate companies in the Mat-Su Valley are members of both the Alaska MLS and the Valley MLS.  They input all their listings on both systems.  The Valley MLS system has a public website here… www.matsumls.com . And Alaska MLS also has a public website here…  www.alaskarealestate.com . 

The matsumls.com website will go away but the Alaska MLS website will remain. It already has all the listings for the Kenai Peninsula, so it will be the go-to site for all of South Central Alaska.

The primary reason that the Valley Realtors want to do this is to save time and money.  It takes extra time to input listings into both systems.  It costs money to belong to both systems. 

I’m not sure how this will affect the public.  It may be a good thing because one site will provide complete coverage for the whole area.  

Currently, matsumls.com seems to be a much faster site.  With just a couple clicks you can almost instantaneously find all the residential listings in the Valley.  It takes alaskarealestate.com much longer to find them, and then it is much slower to browse through them, BUT, the site has more detail for each listing.

Stay tuned, I will report on the results after the Valley Board or Realtors Convention on August 11.

Bookmark this article!