People think the government will regulate mortgage rates to keep them low forever.  In reality, inflation will start to catch up with government economic spending.  Once that happens, all of the current rules go out the window and the Frd will have to raise rates.  In our opinion, we have approximately 1 year before the […]

We have had people as us “why are you not with a large national Broker with name brand recognition?”.  The bottom line is this, the large national Brokers (ReMax, Prudential, Century 21, Keller Williams) are struggling.  They are saddled by large overhead with a shrinking number of agents to cover the expense.
However, that does not […]

The real estate home sales for San Diego County are out.  Home sales trended up slightly from Jan to Feb.  Keep in mind they went down sharply in Jan from Dec.  Here are the combined numbers for San Diego county:
Total Sales = Resale SFR + Resale Condo + New Homes (SFR […]

Fannie Mae recently released statistics showing the difficult nature of a Short Sale transaction and how that relates to Foreclosure statistics.
In 2008, Fannie Mae found that for every one short sale that closed, eight homes went into foreclosure.  This speaks to the difficult nature of the Short Sale process and the […]

The Commerce Department released info today that Housing Starts were up 22% in February.  So what does that really mean?

It was the highest % gain in 19 years and the first gain in 8 months (New SFR up 1.1%, 5 units or more up 80%)
The housing starts in January were at an all time low
Housing […]

There are so many people trying to predict the Real Estate market today, that many forget that each market in the US behaves differently and there is a broad diversity in each local market.  San Diego and Vegas are very different in their behavior.
In other words, the newspaper says “real estate prices plunge”.  That is […]

For all first time home buyers, click here for a link where you can get all of your questions answered on the $8,000 home buyers tax credit.
We hope this helps,
Mark and Kari Shea
San Diego Real Estate Experts
Foreclosure, Short Sale & Investment Specialists,
Development Opportunities & Traditional Real Estate

The homes stats are out for January 2009 for San Diego County, below is a snapshot:

SALES
January ‘09 
December ‘08
Change 12/08 - 1/09
January ‘08
Change 1/08 - 1/09

Resale houses
1,567
2,033
-22.92%
995
89.30%

Resale condos
773
971
-20.39%
443
74.50%

New homes/condos* 
119
321
-62.93%
388
-69.30%

All combined 
2,495
3,325
-35.41%
1,826
34.70%

Analysis:
1. Foreclosures make up 40% of the market.

 From 08 to 09, foreclosure sales are up.
From Dec to Jan, foreclosure sales are […]

The stats from Q4 2008 are in from the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the news is record setting.  In Q4 of 2008:

7.88 percent of all mortgages on one to four unit residential properties were at least one payment late
3.3 percent of all loans were in foreclosure
That’s a record setting 11.18 percent combined rate

If you look […]

One thing is for certain, it is getting more difficult for buyers to obtain a home loan to purchase real estate.  What are the key ingredients in being able to close a home loan today:

 Good to excellent credit scores - that means 625 plus with BK or other issues
Cash for down payment - FHA Loan […]