SultanOfSwing

Well, of course they are, that's the business they are in ...

We still haven't got our letter from them yet but my wife spoke to someone on the phone who explained everything pretty clearly to her. We got one of the dodgy ones but as we pay electronically, they are unable to hold payments.

My wife works in a bank though, so we have the option of refinancing throught them, which we were thinking about anyway. Having said that, we worked out that with our property taxes going down (by almost a grand a year ) and a few other things, our mortgage payment should drop by about $100.00/month, which is nice.

Giantaxe

The banks hold very few mortgages on their own books. I think the government still ends up (through Fannie Mae, FHA, Freddie Mac...) with about 80% of the mortgages either by holding or insuring them. It used to be different pre-crash, but effectively the government is propping up the mortgage market. I just refinanced and my mortgage has already been sold to Freddie Mac. I still make payments to my bank so I don't care.

As to the housing market, it's been completely insane in San Francisco for the last twelve months. I hope I'm wrong, but it almost feels like there's another bubble in prices developing here.

rpjs

I think the market in our area (Westchester County, NY) is only just beginning to turn around. We got our house for about 15% under asking price. It's a fixer upper (203K renovation mortgages FTW!) and it took ages to close, partly our lender was slow but partly because the seller had to do remedial work before the village would issue a Certificate of Occupancy allowing it to be sold. Watching the MLS sites, it does appear houses are selling here, but they can take a while and aren't going for more than asking price if that.

We just spotted another fixer-upper near us but in a posher sub-division which has an asking price probably half of its last assessed value (we bought ours for about 2/3 of last assessed value). If we had the capital we'd be tempted to enter the flipping game!

Michael

Or Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac securitizes them and sells them through wall street (over 98% of the Mortgage Back Securities issued since the crash). Although Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac can currently get very cheap short term money (up to 5 years in duration but higher profits if shorter) and make a large profit, hopefully they securitize most of the mortgages otherwise they'll have another major problem when interest rates eventually rise and can no longer get cheap short term money.

lansbury

Same over our side of the Willamette. Apparently there is only a 3months supply of houses on the market in the Portland Metro area. In Happy Valley the house builders are snapping up land and getting ready to build again.

Bob

Locally, depends.

Some houses have sold in days while some others have been on the market for months. There's one house up the road that's been on the market most of the year.

Seems to slow down a little in the summer as people move in to the area and rent while there's a lot of rental going, but buy more in winter as it's a challenge to find a place during the winter months.

Michael

In California, January through April are usually the biggest months especially in good school districts since they may have to register their children early in for the following school year to get into the school in the local catchment area.

Bob

Down here, most landlords will have a tenant on a lease till after April, don't tend to find many rentals till June because they can't evict people for non-payment till end of March or April because of the winter.

Getting into the local school is less of a issue down this way. It is for kindergarten though as there aren't many places offering full day and then it's a lottery for AM/PM spots.

cluedweasel

The market here in Bend, Oregon, is very volatile. Prices went through the roof from 2004 to 2007 and then crashed hard in 2008. Ours crashed in value from $480,000 (next door, which is a little smaller sold in the peak for $450,000) down to $150,000. Depending on which real state mouthpiece is on the news on any day, values are projected to rise 20% to 40% this year. Inventory is reportedly down to about 20 days. We're seriously thinking about selling up and getting out this summer.

RICH

I don't know about the housing market, but I know the mortgage market is back in business. Today I processed 135 wires for mortgages. Approx 30 were purchases, 30 refinances and the rest are banks etc re selling the loan to other banks/servicers.

Havnfun

CRAZY is how we describe the market in Orange County. I listed a 1 bedroom, 1 bath condo with a loft for $259,900 within 4 days I had 6 offers and we sold at $295,000.

I have been working with an all cash buyer for a number of months and we have bid on 6 homes all over the asking price and we still don't have a property in escrow

Holliver

The house we just bought was on the market for about a week. We saw it on the first day and put an offer in. There were fifteen other bids on it, no idea why our offer was chosen, but glad it was

We put offers in on four other houses and were outright rejected from them all.

Inventory is very low in the San Diego area and houses are being snapped up. While we were looking I made a list of thirty houses (from Zillow) that we wanted to look at. Our realtor went through the list- every single one of them was already in escrow. Crazy times!

joto

The house we bought had 6 offers on it, all over asking price. Luckily our buyers agent knew the listing agent, and told her about us and that DH was going to the open house, and that we could move quickly. That was the 2nd day it was on the market. The buyers agent advised us to look on Redfin as she said they are more up to date with houses than Zillow or Trulia.

WEBlue

Interesting to me that the east & west coasts seem different (anecdotally here, at least), with the markets still slower in the eastern cities & burbs. I wouldn't have expected that, yet I'm glad of it since we're here on the east coast.

Maybe reflective of the economy coming back to life?

notonuksoil

I think it depends where you are on the east coast. We looked at a house yesterday that was listed on Wednesday. There had been over 40 viewings not including the brokers open house Wednesday morning and they already had 6 offers, we were told if we are interested they expect to make a decision on Tuesday and it WILL be over listing price.