Dawn Tittsworth Buyers York County Realtor

York County Pennsylvania here !

Great artical !

We've been watching a buyer's market for so long, we've almost forgotten how to see the signs of the building of a seller's market. Keep in mind, a seller's market slowly builds (over months) while a buyer's market can hit overnight.

While the National Association of Realtors announced sales of resale homes jumped more than 10 percent nationally in October 2009 over a year earlier - those numbers are not the numbers to watch while you're trying to find the bottom of your local market. Don't make a local decision based on national information.

The resale numbers have been up in markets all across the country for more than a year, we just never heard about it from the evening news, et. al., because your national news venues don't watch local markets. You should.

Most buyers and the media in general look to pricing to dictate that the bottom of the market has been hit. But before making that dictum, a buyer must first define what the bottom really is. Many would say, it's when prices hit the lowest they've been. True. That's part of the signs to watch.

And if price is you're only interest, then go ahead and wait for the bottom in pricing. Keep in mind, however, that everyone else is also looking for that number. When prices start to move up, they are moving up because the demand is starting to outpace supply and higher priced homes are starting to sell again, thus you may have missed the optimal time to purchase a house at a low price with someone else's money to help you with closing costs.

When the prices hit bottom (and the only way you can figure that out is the first month that prices start moving up, you've already missed the bottom), consumers are already starting to beat each other out for a shrinking inventory.

So, here are the indicators to watch to find the bottom:

1. Inventory: Watch for inventory to start dropping. When this happens, you've entered the bottom territory. Buyers start jumping on the bandwagon once there is so much inventory that prices have hit an acceptable low level.

2. Seller Subsidy: When sellers are giving back maximum amounts allowed by loan programs, you've hit the bottom. Some loan programs allow up to 6 percent of the sales price to be given back to the buyer at the settlement table from the seller for closing costs. Imagine, purchasing a house for $300,000 and getting $18,000 back from the seller for the buyer's closing costs - that's a sign of the bottom. (And this is most likely after getting 3 or 4 percent off the sales price - another $9,000 to $12,000).

3. Pricing: Now this is where everyone watches, when in reality it's the sign that the market has been climbing up from the bottom for several months. If you're going to track pricing as a bottom indicator, then start watching it from month to month, instead of year over year. Thus, when prices start moving up, say, from March to April to May to June - THEN you may have hit the bottom on pricing. A market can experience price increases month after month while still showing lower prices than a year before - thus the buyer, while waiting for signs that prices are moving up over last year, may have missed the bottom on pricing. By the time value starts surpassing year over year, the climb up has already begun.

4. Multiple offers: As buyers start competing for the best properties that have hit the lowest price, then you've found another sign of the bottom of the market.

5. Days on market: Once prices have hit bottom and buyers start gobbling up houses and start competing with each other - then you'll see the days on market begin dropping.

For some markets across the country, all of these indicators have already started showing signs of the bottom, such as Florida, Washington DC, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Las Angeles, and other metropolitan areas that were hit heavy by foreclosures.

Watching your local numbers is the only way to determine if you've hit the bottom of the market for your local real estate market.

Congress has acknowledged the unique circumstances affecting members of the military, the foreign service and the intelligence community by making the following exceptions that apply to both the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers and the $6,500 tax credit for repeat home buyers.

Exemption From Tax Credit Recapture Rules

Typically, homes that are sold or that cease to be used as a principal residence within three years of the initial purchase are subject to recapture of the tax credit.

However, qualified service members who sell or move from a tax credit home within three years of the initial purchase due to official extended duty are exempt from the recapture rule.

Extension of Tax Credit Deadlines

The home buyer tax credit is available for qualified purchases with a binding sales contract in place on or before April 30, 2010 and closed by June 30, 2010.

However, for qualified service members who are ordered on a period of official extended duty, these dates are extended for one year. For these home buyers, the tax credit applies to sales with a binding sales contract in place on or before April 30, 2011 and closed by June 30, 2011.

York County Pennsylvania home sales here !

Fannie and Freddie Fail To Meet Low Income Lending Goals

We have heard how evil lenders have been writing loans to families that could not pay it back and causing the housing crisis. But if you look at the facts Fannie and Freddie encouraged this behavior.

By admitting they have failed to hit their quota they are telling us that even they think the mandates that Congress gave them are crazy.

Both companies missed their 2008 goal to set aside 56 percent of their loan purchases and mortgage guarantees for low-and moderate-income borrowers, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart said today at a real estate industry event in Washington. He didn't say what the new target would be.One of the ways Fannie and Freddie made their goals in previous years was to buy those subprime mortgages in private- label securities and that wasn't a safe and sound practice, Lockhart told the Asian Real Estate Association of America and National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

Fannie and Freddie are saying they were buying up subprime loans to hit their quota of low income loans. We all know subprime loans have been a big cause of the foreclosure crisis.

Now we have the look at our national lenders who have to fulfill mandates from the federal government that they can not.

These mandates they are just as dangerous as they were 5 years ago. How can Congress and the Federal Government have not changed the mission of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to work in todays environment?

New Home Sales Down ! First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit Not Helping Much .....

New Home sales dropped in September as buyers decided this may not be the time to purchase a new home. Single family homes sales were down nationwide by 3.6 percent.

What is interesting is that the National Association of Home Builders used the downturn as a call for Washington to increase the $8,000 new home buyers subsidy. Now I understand why, that is $8,000 more per home the government will give the builders towards the price of a home, or if we want to be technical, $8,000 that the home price does not need it to be lowered for the house to be priced right.

The inventory of new homes on the market continued downward for a Twenty Ninth consecutive month, to 251,000 units in September. This is the lowest inventory since November 1982. However, the slower pace of sales kept the months' supply unchanged, at 7.5.

On a regional basis, new-home sales were down 10 percent in the South, which is the nation's largest housing market, and were down 10.6 percent in the West. The sales rate did not change in the Northeast in September, but gained 34 percent in the Midwest due to last-minute deals sparked by the tax credit.

Everyone keeps talking about a bottom forming, but how can that truly be if both interest rates and property values are both being stimulated by tax dollars. A bottom is when the market, not the government, decides it is. If the government does not have the confidence in the market that it has to throw money to keep the market from tanking, we do not have a bottom.

And until we have a true bottom, we are not going to have market that most people will feel comfortable buying into.

Senate leaders have agreed on an extension of the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit along with a new $6,500 tax credit for move-up buyers, but it is unclear when the chamber will vote on the measure. The credit extension would run from Dec. 31, 2009 through April 30, 2010 and give buyers with a binding contract an extra 60 days to close. The tax credit extension raises the income limits to $125,000 for single-filers and $225,000 for joint filers. This applies to first-time and repeat buyers. To qualify for the $6,500 tax credit, repeat buyers must have used a previous home as a principal residence for five of the previous eight years. The Obama administration said it supports an extension of the first-time homebuyer tax credit. "In extending the tax credit, we urge Congress to include strict measures to combat tax fraud and protect responsible homeowners," Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner said. The tax credit extension is expected to be attached to a bill extending unemployment benefits by 20 weeks. Still, it is unclear when the Senate will pass the extension bill (H.R. 3548), despite broad bi-partisan support. The current $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit is set to expire Nov. 30.