ray mathoda

I recently met with a real estate professional called Robert Malakouti. Mr. Malakouti is a short sale expert who told me he has completed 2500 short sale transactions since 1991. This is a massive number of short sale transactions…given most people had never heard the words ’short sale’ until about 2 years ago when the housing crisis forced many to consider home exit options outside foreclosure. I was keen to meet a practitioner with this much experience in a relatively new and innovative segment of the real estate market - short sales.

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I just saw this link to some fascinating December real estate sales data for Sacramento County on an excellent housing industry blog www.calculatedrisk.com.

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Proactive government and bank efforts to help distressed borrowers have largely, if not exclusively, been focused on ‘home retention’ programs in 2009. On the one hand this focus makes sense: the first question that should be asked and answered when a family stops making their mortgage payment due to financial hardship is whether an change to the loan terms would make the home affordable for the same borrower (thereby avoiding all the negative effects of a pre or post foreclosure home sale) while being acceptable to the investor.

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If there was ever an example of what it means to “swim upstream in a river” in life or in business…the below article describes it in detail. Despite what is possibly history’s most ambitious and concerted recent effort to protect and expand affordable housing in NYC (led by Mayor Bloomberg)….the City’s total stock of such housing declined over the past 7 years.

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If you’re wondering what’s going on with the housing market and whether a permanent home price stabilization trend is underway, you should read this article….which is one of the best ones I’ve seen recently on the topic of the US housing market and likely future trends. At HausAngeles we are seeing clear signs of what we would describe as a “mini buying frenzy” at the low (below 400K or so) and medium (below 750K or so) ends of the real estate market in Los Angeles County. Most properly priced homes listed to be sold are seeing multiple offers, with many offers and sales occurring above the property listing price.

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One of the first things AV and I did when we decided to launch our own entrepreneurial venture, HausAngeles, was ‘integrate’ our professional and community activities and goals into our business model (and therefore, day to day activities). This included a commitment to re-invest 10 to 20 percent of all real estate transaction revenues - i.e. revenues from our core business - back into our Community. Please find below the text from a HausAngeles news release describing how we are working to make our commitment real. ray

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I derive my livelihood from the real estate market, and a significant portion of our business is driven by real estate transactions…i.e., people selling or buying homes. While a pessimistic view of future home prices is not exactly a great thing for our business, we have been telling our clients to expect further home price declines near term (i.e., in the next year or two)…and a likely slow recovery in the real estate market over the coming 3-5 years (consistent with recovery trends in previous housing downturns).

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I applaud the recent announcement by Secretaries Geithner and Donovan expanding the government’s ‘Making Homes Affordable’ Initiative to include the ‘Foreclosure Alternatives’ Program…which was in my mind the #1 missing piece in the Administration’s policies to date…and should vastly increase the ability of Americans in trouble to avoid foreclosure and get back on their feet faster…even they cannot afford to continue to own their home.

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There are a lot of people who have gotten “unlucky” recently, in one way or another, and are finding themselves unable to make payments on their debt because their income and expense equation is no longer what it used to be (i.e., their income is down, or their expenses are up). Of the millions of homeowners currently not making their full monthly mortgage payments, it’s hard to tell which ones were unlucky, who got defrauded or lied to, and who just plain made a stupid (intentional or unintentional) mistake and bought something they couldn’t really afford.

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I had the privilege of participating on an exciting panel on the future of short sales at the REOMAC semi-annual conference in Palm Springs this week. REOMAC is the non-profit trade organization for REO industry participants – realtors, servicers, lenders, asset managers and other service providers –who focus on the (tough) job of helping Banks manage and sell properties they have acquired through the foreclosure process.

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