OK – Congress didn’t pass the bailout bill and the market tanked 777 points. Now what? Listening to all the talking heads on Bloomberg and MSNBC this morning before the market opened, it seemed to be all about who was to blame for the failure. But then, when the market opened, it jumped over 200 points! As I write this at 9 a.m., it’s up 298 points. Read the rest of this article »

Politicians have been posturing that the bailout should help “Main Street” vice “Wall Street” and should help “homeowners” – whatever that means.  The governor of New York, David Paterson, wrote an op/ed piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal with that headline. Read the rest of this article »

Section 109 – Foreclosure Mitigation Efforts – states in part (a) that “the Secretary (Paulson) shall implement a plan that seeks to maximize assistance for homeowners…to minimize foreclosures.” Read the rest of this article »

Section 110 – Assistance to Homeowners encourages homeowners to take advantage of the Hope Alliance’s “Hope Now” program. It would appear that great political pressure will be brought to bear on those lenders to now modify the terms of mortgages “underwater” or in serious trouble. Read the rest of this article »

Section 124 – Hope for Homeowners Amendments appears to be administrative cleaning up of existing law in the National Housing Act.

If you’re a buyer today, your Realtor is faced with those 3 types of listings. Which listings should she show you? Here’s a look at the pitfalls of each. Read the rest of this article »

Driving around town today, I was listening on XM radio to the live House hearing on the proposed $700 billion bailout bill before Congress. Panel members were given 5 minutes to quiz either Treasury Secretary Paulson or Fed Chairman Bernanke. But each panel member used the bulk of the time to express their opinions, and when they finally got around to asking Paulson or Bernanke a question, there was no time left to answer the question! Read the rest of this article »

To understand the truly complex and impossible unwinding of the “toxic” mortgage pools Washington and Wall Street are trying to accomplish, let’s look at one REO we’ve been following for months and will be coming on the market soon. It’s a beautiful, 3,000 square foot, dockside home in the 2 year old Seabridge development by D.R. Horton in Oxnard (off Wooley and Victoria). These homes originally sold for well north of a million bucks. This home had a mortgage of $1,000,000 with Countrywide. Read the rest of this article »

Foreclosures (filing of a Notice of Default) in Ventura County have been running about 30 – 40 per day, but all of a sudden it dropped to just a handful a day. What’s happened? Read the rest of this article »

The $700 billion bailout – what are the ramifications for:

• A potential home buyer or investor – either waiting for the market “bottom”, or simply wanting to buy a home.
• A homeowner who’s “underwater” and struggling to make the mortgage payments.
• A homeowner who’s stopped making payments and is on the cusp of going into foreclosure.
• A homeowner already in foreclosure.

Leslie and I have been talking all weekend, trying to anticipate what might happen in each of these scenarios, and to see if Congress, Wall Street and the Administration might create unintended consequences. Read the rest of this article »