perfomance by price range

Flathead Weekly Update: August 28, 2010

   Observation: Early a.m. traffic is back to normal with schools starting up. I participate in a small group workout at 7a.m. in Kalispell. The traffic was much increased with the beginning of most Kalispell schools in the last week. An early morning chill confirms that fall is on the way. I find fall invigorating and energizing. Sad to see summer waning, but love the change as well.

    Mission Mountain Wood Band is doing a concert tonight a the Flathead County Fairgrounds to benefit North Valley School of Music. Should be amazing!

    City of Whitefish has turned down the option to extend retail south of town along Hwy 93. So, shoppers will continue to travel to Kalispell, especially the Hutton Ranch area where Costco, Lowes, Super WalMart, Target, etc. are located.

Here is a photo taken of the moon rising one night this week as seen from my house.

August Newsletter

recovery timing and problems

All the issues communicated below will be solved by one of two methods #1 our country starts to produce jobs  or  #2 the number of properties foreclosed on finally goes thru the  13.4 million properties mentioned with negative or near negative equity  or to turn the looking glass around, take the homes already foreclosed on yet not yet sold add them to the mix and you come up with a total distressed property total of over 15 million homes  when you realize that number then you clearly see the solution needs #1 instead of #2 and even at that with a 4 million sales rate you are talking another 3.5 to 6 years of down real estate market  Thoughts to ponder

The MBA reports that 14.42 percent of mortgage loans were either one payment delinquent or in the foreclosure process in Q2 2010 (seasonally adjusted). This is down slightly from the record 14.69 percent in Q1 2010.

Delinquency problem is widespread with 36 states and D.C. all having total delinquency rates above 10%.

When asked if he expected the slight improvements to continue, Brinkmann said "Improvements are more of a hope". He said the problem is jobs, and he is revising down his economic forecasts. He also the improvement in the 90+ day bucket might be because of modifications - and that might not continue.

CoreLogic reports that 11 million, or 23 percent, of all residential properties with mortgages were in negative equity at the end of the second quarter of 2010, down from 11.2 million and 24 percent from the first quarter of 2010. Foreclosures, rather than meaningful price appreciation, were the primary driver in the change in negative equity. An additional 2.4 million borrowers had less than five percent equity. Together, negative equity and near negative equity mortgages accounted for nearly 28 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide.
...
"Negative equity continues to both drive foreclosures and impede the housing market recovery. With nearly 5 million borrowers currently in severe negative equity, defaults will remain at a high level for an extended period of time," said Mark Fleming, chief economist with CoreLogic.

Howard Sumner

are we headed in the same direction

Below is a graph of the relationship of new home sales to existing sales as you can generally a pretty close relationship. A fairly large gap has developed during this period of economic upheaval. Hopefully existing sales do not fall to what would be the "normal" relationship with new home sales. Yet with the unemployment levels where they are and the direction of both existing sales and new home construction sales both headed in the same direction it does not paint a pretty picture. I would think in terms of new home construction the fall is logically over since at this rate we are way below the removal of housing units from existing stock. The primary questions now becomes how long do they stay at these levels. My belief is you can not see any  significant gain in new home sales until the employment picture becomes a positive instead of negative with close to 15 million people unemployed and 7.7 million less people working than at peak employment, anemic growth will not spur a recovery in the near term.

new home sales

new home sales hit another record low. it makes me belive that the powers that be do not undertsand what drives housing ad that driver is jobs. with anualized rate of 276,000 homes sales that is an 80.2% from the peak and a 59.47% drop from 47 year average.

seriously deliquent loans

here is a sampling from the federal reserve of different counties around the state and around the united sates

Mortgage delinquency rates 90 days or more

Nationally 5.7%

Cascade 1.8%

Lewis and Clark 2.0%

Silver bow 2.0%

Yellowstone county 2.2%

Gallatin 3.3%

Missoula 3.3%

Ravalli 3.9%

Lake 4.3%

Flathead 5.1%

Las Vegas 16.1%

Miami 23.2%

Phoenix 11.1%

Los Angeles 10%

Denver 5.2%

Boise 5.1%

Spokane 2.9%

Are You Looking Forward or Backwards, Depends On Whether Your A Buyer Or A Seller

national sales for july

Bozeman Foreclosures - Montana Foreclosures, Real Estate

inventory continues to climb

below is a chart showing the inventory trend. although inventory tend climb through about this time of year, yjis is not the trend we would pefer to see. inventory is now 25% higher than a year ago at this time