Remodeled home, 1 block east Beverly Glen, 1 block north Olympic. Granite kitchen with 6 burner viking stove, spacious master suite, opening out to backyard through french doors. Master bath with huge shower, mosaic tile and frosted glass. Junior suite with 3/4 bath has own deck. Formal living room with fireplace. Open formal dining/family room. Wood floors, Extra Storage, flagstone patio, new backyard landscaping.
CUSTOM CALIFORNIA SPANISH ON A LARGER CORNER LOT W/4BD + DETACHED OFC/MAID’S/GUEST RM, 5.5BA. BOASTS EXQUISITE FINISHES INCLUDING CUSTOM HAND WROUGHT IRON, HAND DISTRESSED WALNUT HARDWOOD AND FRENCH LIMESTONE FLOORS. GOURMET COOK’S KITCHEN W/SUB-ZERO, VIKING RANGE, 2 BOSCH DISHWASHERS AND 3 FARMHOUSE SINKS. GRAND LIBRARY W/BAR.
Bruce Stuart, Realtor. (310) 403-7439, (888) 777-7WEB, blindo@blindo.org
Built in 1992. 3600 sq feet on a 7500 sp foot lot. 6 bedroom and 4 baths. Contact Bruce Stuart, Realtor at (310) 470-9358, (888) 777-7WEB or blindo@blindo.org.
Mortgage rates around the country fell this week, with rates on 30-year mortgages sinking to their lowest level in 10 months.
Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Wednesday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.18 percent for the week ending Nov. 22. That’s down from 6.24 percent last week and was the lowest rate since the week ending Jan. 26, when 30-year mortgage rates averaged 6.12 percent.
It marked the second week in a row that mortgage rates dropped, a development that economists attributed to easing inflation pressures. Inflation is calming down amid stabilizing energy prices, slower overall economic activity and the housing slump.
“Slower growth usually means less inflation and less inflation means lower interest rates. Hence, the drop in mortgage rates this week,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s chief economist.
After five years of booming activity, the housing market has lost its sizzle this year. Sales have fallen, home builders have cut back on construction and home prices have lost considerable altitude, falling in some markets or rising more slowly in others.
The housing slump was the major culprit behind the slower economic growth rate that was logged in the late summer.
All categories of mortgage rates surveyed by Freddie Mac showed declines this week — offering some welcome news to those wanting to buy a home.
Rates on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, a popular choice for refinancing, averaged 5.91 percent. That’s lower than last week’s rate of 5.94 percent.
For one-year adjustable rate mortgages, rates fell to 5.49 percent, compared with 5.53 percent last week.
Five-year adjustable rate mortgages dropped to 5.99 percent this week, from 6.04 percent last week.
The mortgage rates do not include add-on fees known as points. Thirty-year and 15-year mortgages each carried a nationwide average fee of 0.5 point. One-year and five-year ARMs each carried a fee of 0.6 point.
A year ago, 30-year mortgages averaged 6.28 percent. Fifteen-year mortgages stood at 5.81 percent, one-year ARMs were at 5.14 percent and five-year ARMs averaged 5.75 percent.
Debbie Sforza sold a Palm City lakefront home in only two months.The 2,200-square-foot structure with three bedrooms, two baths and two-car garage showed well and, at $475,000, was priced right, said Sforza, a broker’s associate at Realty Executives in Palm City.
Still other South Florida homes are sitting on the market anywhere from six months to a year.”If it’s overpriced, it’s going to be on the market for a long time,” she said.
“For Sale” signs sit on front yards everywhere but aren’t as effective as professionals who can offer aggressive pricing information to get buyers in the door, said Will Rosselle, a broker at Rosselle Real Estate Group in Port St. Lucie.
The number of homes for sale has tripled, even quadrupled, since last year, according to Rosselle, who is primarily seeing buyers from more pricey points south.
The 2004 and 2005 hurricanes, along with rising property taxes and insurance, also have been causing South Floridians to move to areas such as the Carolinas, according to area Realtors.
But the supply vs. demand situation is part of a nationwide cycle that will change, they say.
Glenn Sudnick attributes the current bent on the supply side, in part, to a lack of “flippers,” or investors who purchase properties to profit on them in a short amount of time.
The current real estate market is “normal — one where people are purchasing homes because they want to live in them,” said Sudnick, the broker and owner of Palm Beach Florida Properties and chief administrator of the Palm Beach School of Real Estate, both in Juno Beach.
John Reichard, owner and president of Southwind Construction and Homes in West Palm Beach, builds new homes from Boynton Beach to Port St. Lucie, where he has a model along Southwest Mercedes Avenue selling for between $285,000 and $325,0000.
To move the properties, he has increased broker commissions and tried making upgrades such as granite countertops and paver driveways standard. Still, he said, he’s seeing home prices in general fall somewhere between 12 percent and 18 percent.
California is home to nine of the 10 least affordable U.S. metro areas in the third quarter, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index released this week.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, Calif., metro area ranked as the least affordable, according to the index, with 1.8 percent of homes in the area affordable for median-income households.
Bay City, Mich., ranked as the most affordable U.S. metro area in the third quarter, with 90 percent of homes affordable for median-income households, and Indianapolis, Ind., ranked as the most affordable large metro area, with 85.9 percent of homes affordable to median-income households.
In Indianapolis, the median household income was $65,100 in the third quarter, and the median sales price of all homes sold in the metro area during that time was $122,000 — up from $120,000 in the second quarter.
Among the top 30 least affordable metro-area markets in the third quarter, 25 are in California.
Ranked behind Los Angeles for least affordability is Salinas, Calif., followed by Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine; Modesto; Merced; Stockton; Madera; San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos; and Napa metro areas. The New York-White Plains-Wayne metro area in New York and New Jersey ranks 10th for least affordability.
Indianapolis has been ranked as the most affordable large metro area for five consecutive quarters, according to a National Association of Home Builders announcement about the index.
The index is a measure of the percentage of homes sold in a given area that are affordable to families earning that area’s median income during a specific quarter. Prices of new and existing homes sold are collected from court records by First American Real Estate Solutions, a marketing company. Mortgage financing conditions incorporate interest rates on fixed- and adjustable-rate loans reported by the Federal Housing Finance Board, the home builders association reported.
The index indicates that 40.4 percent of all new and existing homes that were sold during the third quarter were affordable to families earning the median U.S. income of $59,600. That compares with 43.2 percent of homes that were affordable to median-income families in third-quarter 2005 – the index was 50.4 percent in third-quarter 2004 and 61.5 percent in third-quarter 2001.
David Pressley, president for the home builders’ group, said in a statement that the index was roughly level with the second-quarter index, “in part because higher mortgage rates in the period were offset by somewhat lower home prices in many markets.”
According to the report, the national weighted interest rate on fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages – a key component in calculating the index – was 6.77 percent in the third quarter, which is 12 basis points higher than it was for the previous quarter.
Also near the top of the list for affordable major metros in the third quarter were Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pa.; followed by Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich.; Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Mich.
Seven smaller metro markets outranked all others in terms of housing affordability during the third quarter, including Bay City, Mich.; Springfield, Ohio; Mansfield, Ohio; Lansing-East Lansing, Mich.; Lima, Ohio; Battle Creek, Mich.; and Canton-Massillon, Ohio.
In the Los Angeles metro area, the area’s median family income was $56,200 and the median sales price of all homes sold in the area during the period was $523,000.
U.S. mortgage applications fell for the first time in three weeks despite a dip in mortgage rates to their lowest level since January, an industry trade group said Wednesday.The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and purchasing loans, for the week ended Nov. 17 decreased 3.7 percent to 623.6 from the previous week’s 647.5.
Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.13 percent, down 0.02 percentage point from the previous week and well below a four-year high of 6.86 percent touched in June.
Interest rates were also below year-ago levels of 6.26 percent.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was at its lowest level since the week ended Jan. 20 when it reached 6.04 percent.
The MBA’s seasonally adjusted purchase index, widely considered a timely gauge of U.S. home sales, fell 2.8 percent to 401.4. The index was substantially below its year-ago level of 472.3.
The group’s seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications decreased 4.3 percent to 1,935.3. A year earlier, the index stood at 1,584.1.
The refinance share of applications increased to 48.6 from 48 percent the previous week, remaining at its highest level since February 2005, the MBA said.
Fixed 15-year mortgage rates averaged 5.88 percent, up from 5.85. Rates on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) increased to 5.88 from 5.87 percent.
The ARM share of activity was unchanged at 25.5 percent of total applications.
The MBA’s survey covers about 50 percent of all U.S. retail residential loans. Respondents include mortgage banks, commercial banks and thrifts.
Housing construction plunged in October, as builders slashed activity to the lowest level in more than six years.
Further declines were expected as the five-year housing boom turns into what is being described as a “housing recession.”
Construction of new single-family homes and apartments dropped 14.6 percent to an annual rate of 1.486 million units, the slowest pace since July 2000.
The news was even more stark for building permits, which fell for a record ninth consecutive month, dropping 6.3 percent to an annual rate of 1.535 million units, the slowest pace in nine years.
“A tornado hit the housing sector in October,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, a private forecasting firm. “Builders have seen the light from the housing market meltdown and are now moving as rapidly as possible to reduce supply.”
Housing, which had been one of the economy’s standout performers during a five-year boom, shaved about a percentage point off growth in the July-September quarter. That pushed overall economic activity as measured by the gross domestic product down to an anemic rate of just 1.6 percent, the slowest growth in more than three years.
Many economists predicted that GDP growth would be trimmed by a similar amount in the current quarter as housing continues to act as a drag, through lower sales and reduced building activity. Construction in October stood 27.4 percent below the level of activity a year ago, the biggest year-over-year decline in more than 15 years.
Applications for U.S. home mortgages rose last week to their highest level since January as falling interest rates encouraged more loan refinancings, data from an industry group showed Wednesday.
The seasonally-adjusted index of total mortgage applications increased 4.3 percent in the week ended Nov. 10 to 647.5, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The four-week moving average for the applications index hit 606.8, up 2.6 percent on the week.
Residential mortgage refinancing surged to its fastest rate since October 2005, the MBA said. Refinancing accounted for 48 percent of all applications, the most since February 2005.
Single-family existing home sales on the Treasure Coast continued to mirror the national trend of higher inventory and slumping sales during the third quarter, a report from the Florida Association of Realtors said Monday.Buyers in the Fort Pierce-Port St. Lucie-Stuart metropolitan statistical area, which includes Martin County, snapped up 1,123 existing homes during the third quarter of this year. That’s 44 percent less than the 2,016 purchased during the same period last year.
Locally, the median price for an existing home was $252,000, down 6 percent from $267,500 in the same period of 2005. The association does not track statistics in Indian River County.”The market isn’t going to improve anytime soon, especially on the Treasure Coast and most especially in Port St. Lucie,” said Jack McCabe, CEO of McCabe Research and Consulting, a real estate consulting firm in Deerfield Beach. “It’s going to be 2008 before we see any meaningful change because the vast majority of people on the Treasure Coast still can’t afford the homes there.”
As for existing condominiums, the association said regional sales decreased 35 percent in September while prices reached $213,800, up 10 percent from the $194,400 in the third quarter of 2005.
Brad Hunter, director of Metrostudy’s South Florida division, which follows housing trends on the Treasure Coast and in South Florida, said older homes are not selling because new home builders are offering such lucrative incentives on new product.
