It’s now official – Bush signed the Housing bill that was passed by the Senate on Saturday. It has numerous items in it, but the most important ones for buyers and sellers are in our previous posts. We’ll have more detail on the bill in the days ahead…

The House of Representatives this week passed a landmark, 700+ page bill. It’s not law yet, but gets passed on to the Senate. The two houses of Congress will reconcile differences (maybe this weekend), and submit the final bill to the White House. For a long time, Pres. Bush said he’d veto the bill, but yesterday he said he’d sign the bill into law.

There are multiple parts to the bill. Here’s the link for an index of the bill. (Note: that link takes you to The Library of Congress Thomas search page. Type in HR 3221.EAH2 in the Search field. Put a space between R and 3, but no other spaces. Click on the link for Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by House). We’re not going to delve into the big macro items (shoring up Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc), but focus on what elements of the housing bill look like for different constituencies. Following this post are 3 separate posts the bill addresses:

• For homeowners that may be facing foreclosure.
• For first time home buyers.
• For buyers

Remember – these aren’t law yet. But it would appear it’s getting much closer.

The section of the housing bill designed to help troubled homeowners is “Title IV – Hope for Homeowners”. We’ve cut and pasted key highlights from the House’s version of the bill, and added some notes and comments. Read the rest of this article »

The main part of this proposed bill affecting first time home buyers is a $7,500 tax credit, but it’s not a grant or a gift. Ultimately, it gets paid back over a 15 year term. The bill defines a first time home buyer as someone who hasn’t owned a home in the previous 3 years.

To see the actual language, at the index to the bill (see main post above), scroll way down to Title I, Housing Tax Incentives, then down to Subtitle B, Single Family Housing.

Several things help and hinder buyers in the proposed housing bill the House passed:

• The limit for conforming loans will be raised to $625,000 (right now it’s at $729k and change). These are loans that can be purchased by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and re-sold to investors.
• For FHA loans, the minimum down payment goes up to 3.5%
• Prohibition against seller funded down payment assistance. This would appear to eliminate programs like Nehemiah.

There was a fast-paced home buyer workshop on Thursday evening, July 17th held in our office. Don and Leslie talked about the crazy stuff going on in our economy but pointed out 2 articles from the front pages of the Ventura County Star (Sunday) and the Wall Street Journal (Thursday) about the sudden surge of first time home buyers and investors in the real estate market. We showed print outs from our Blog of the stats of homes in escrow indicating the price of homes is starting upward and the number of homes going into escrow is skyrocketing in certain areas. We also covered the meat and potatoes of the loan and the purchase offer.

On Saturday, about 6 cars caravaned to 9 different bank owned, foreclosure homes in Ventura in 90 minutes. We went inside condos and single family homes ranging from the low 200s to low 400s. One person said, “At first it was really fast, but I like it”! Stay tuned to our next home buyer workshop and REO caravan!

Here is our July newsletter. See our great pictures of our trip to San Francisco for the 4th of July to celebrate with our 2 children. There were fireworks, a cruise on San Francisco Bay and…fog!!!

See also the picture from our REO caravan on bank foreclosed homes in the St. John’s area.

Next week, we’re hosting a home buyer workshop on the 17th (Thursday) followed by our 2nd speed dating caravan on the 19th for Ventura. Tell your friends who are looking to buy and also investors!

Here are the sold statistics for the month of June. This shows the asking price, sold price, and days on the market for the cities of Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo. In comparing the three cities and the price/square foot, Camarillo remains relatively unchanged from May while Oxnard and Ventura prices are still on a slight downward trend. Do not read too much into this snap shot of the real estate market, because often times the data sampling isn’t large enough to be thoroughly accurate. A more accurate indication is to study the trends from January this year and you can do so by clicking on the category to the right “Homes Sold-Statistics”.

The stats are in for June pending sales and the number of homes in escrow in Oxnard is still red hot!! Compare the 2nd quarter of 198 homes for 2007 compared to 547 homes in 2008! Ventura has picked up the pace while Camarillo remains similar to 2007.

A 2 hour, fast-paced, informative and fun workshop covering stuff you wanted to know and were afraid to ask! Call Leslie at 659-2000 for more details!