Smart Real Estate News & Commentary by Chris McLaughlin March 16, 2012
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Whistleblower wins $18 million
Attorney Lynn Szymoniak had spent a career investigating insurance fraud when a bank moved to foreclose on her Florida home in 2008. Almost four years later, the fraud she said she uncovered by combing through mortgage documents earned her $18 million. Szymoniak, 63, is among six whistle-blowers who will pocket $46.5 million as part of a $25 billion national foreclosure settlement that state and federal officials reached in February with five banks, including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), according to the US Justice Department. Szymoniak’s examination, in which she relied on her experience as an insurance-fraud investigator, led to her claims against banks for submitting fraudulent documents to the federal government asserting that they owned loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, she said. The national foreclosure settlement with the five banks, which resolves claims of abusive foreclosure practices, provides mortgage relief to borrowers, pays $1.5 billion to those who lost their homes to foreclosure, and sets standards for how the banks service mortgage loans.
As part of the agreement, whistle-blower claims are being settled for about $228 million, according to court papers filed in federal court in Washington. A group of six whistle-blowers will receive $46.5 million out of that amount, said Alisa Finelli, a Justice Department spokeswoman. Szymoniak’s foreclosure case began in July 2008 when Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), as trustee for a mortgage securitization trust, sued to seize her Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, home, which was once worth $1.3 million. The bank couldn’t prove it owned her loan and claimed it had lost the mortgage note, she said. Szymoniak said she was first alerted to problems in the paperwork on her foreclosure when Deutsche Bank said it acquired her mortgage note in October 2008, three months after the bank sued her over the loan. “So I began doing what I’ve done for years — go out and investigate,” she said. “It was pretty obvious to me that the paperwork was fraudulent.” Her work quickly uncovered widespread document fraud in the mortgage industry, she said, and eventually led to the filing of her whistle-blower cases in 2010. The whistle-blower claims resolved in the national settlement include a case filed in Atlanta in 2006 in which banks are accused of defrauding military veterans and the US government. The banks violated rules under a Department of Veterans Affairs program for refinancing mortgage loans by charging improper fees to veterans, according to the complaint. The banks hid those fees and obtained government guarantees on the loans, according to the complaint.
Inflation leaps, gas leads
The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index increased 0.4% after advancing 0.2% in January. That was in line with economists’ expectations. Gasoline accounted for more than 80% of the rise in consumer prices last month, the department said. Outside the volatile food and energy category, inflation pressures were generally contained. Core CPI edged up 0.1% after gaining 0.2% in January. The February increase was below economists’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 0.2% rise. The Federal Reserve said on Tuesday that the recent spike in energy costs would likely push up inflation temporarily. Over the long-term, inflation was likely to run at or below the its 2% target, it said.
While the US central bank reiterated its expectation that overnight interest rates would remain near zero until at least through late 2014, it offered no clues on whether it would launch a third round of bond buying or quantitative easing, to keep borrowing costs low to stimulate the recovery. Last month, overall inflation was pushed up by gasoline prices, which soared 6%, the largest increase since December 2010, after rising 0.9% in January. Although surging gasoline prices are a strain on consumers, they have so far not caused a sharp pull back in spending, thanks to a strengthening jobs market. Food prices were flat last month after rising 0.2% in January. Food prices were the weakest since July 2010. Overall consumer prices rose 2.9% year-on-year after increasing by the same margin in January. Core consumer prices were last month restrained by apparel prices, which fell 0.9% — the most since July 2006 — after rising 0.9% in January. There were also declines in the prices of tobacco, airline tickets and used cars and trucks. But new motor vehicle prices rose 0.6% after being flat in January. While housing costs held up, owners’ equivalent rent rose only 0.1% last month after increasing 0.2% the prior month. In the 12 months to February, core CPI increased 2.2% after rising 2.3% in January. This measure has rebounded from a record low of 0.6% in October and the Fed would like to see that closer to 2%.
Olick – Miami condos – bust or boom?
“South Florida real estate developer Martin Margulies has been sitting on prime ocean-front property for five years, waiting for the condo market to rise from the grave. When the market here crashed in 2007, amid overzealous speculators and an abundance of cheap and easy credit, condo construction ground to a halt. The joke had been that the unofficial bird of Miami was the crane, but that bird flew the coop. Apparently it is now swooping back in. ‘This is the moment because we’re going to be delivering this property next year, and so by that time there will be good demand, there is good demand now,’ says Margulies, who began construction on a brand new high-end condo tower in December. And he is right. Foreign buyers, largely from South America, but also from Europe, Russia and China, are flooding into the Miami area, and that has developers rushing to keep up with demand. ‘The music started again in South Florida,’ says Peter Zalewski of CondoVultures, a Florida real estate data and investment firm. ‘We have an arms race of developers moving into the marketplace trying to put up condos or planned condos in anticipation of a recovery in the next two years or so.’
And they are doing it fast. Twenty five new towers with 5200 units are proposed while there are still 4200 unsold units left from the crash. Sounds crazy, but the foreign demand developers and real estate agents are seeing now is just that hot. ‘The foreign buyer is coming in looking for wealth preservation or taking advantage of the weak US dollar, or coming in because of problems back home, whether it’s Venezuela or Mexico with the drug war,’ says Zalewski, who has been watching and working this market for the past decade. Foreign buyers are investing as well as foreign developers, like the Melo group, a family business from Argentina. They began construction last August on the first new tower in Miami in at least four years. A lot of people thought they were crazy, but now the tide has decidedly turned. The Melo’s say they have pre-sold the entire building, and they required buyers to put 50% down. Most of their buyers, again, are foreigners with cash.
This new condo boom, while reminiscent of the recent one, is not built on easy credit. In fact, credit is still very tight here, especially for developers. Martin Margulies tried to get a construction loan for his Hollywood project, the Bellini, but could only get 50% financing along with putting up collateral. He called that ‘onerous,’ and instead took out a personal loan, using his massive art collection as collateral. He says he’s not concerned, as his buyers will be putting down 30% on one to four million dollar units. ‘The kind of buyers we get they don’t need financing, they’re all cash buyers,’ says Margulies. ‘It’s a lifestyle they have, so they’re not reliant on a bank to give the money.’ Most of the foreign buyers in Miami are renting the properties to locals who have either lost their homes to foreclosure or whose credit is not good enough to get a home loan in today’s tough US mortgage market. The question now is, what happens to all these renters when Florida’s single family housing market recovers and credit opens up again?
Will all these foreign investors want to unload their units at the same time? ‘You wonder if we’re not kicking the can, where we dealt with the problem at hand by dumping it off to foreign buyers, and now as the domestic buyer starts to move back into the marketplace, is that domestic buyer going to pay the same price that the foreign buyer is willing to pay or take the same chances that the foreign buyer is willing to pay?’ asks Zalewski. It all sounds frighteningly familiar.”
Industrial output down
The Federal Reserve said Friday that the output of the nation’s factories rose 0.3% last month. That followed even stronger increases in January and December, which combined for the best two month stretch since 1998. Overall industrial production, which includes output by mines and utilities, was unchanged. Mining activity declined sharply and utilities were flat. Factory output has risen 17.4% since the depths of the recession in June 2009. It remains 6.7% below its pre-recession peak, reached in December 2007. Growth at US factories was a little slower in February because auto production edged lower after big gains in December and January. Manufacturers made more electronics, energy products and electrical equipment. Still, manufacturing has strengthened substantially since last summer, when it faltered because of global supply disruptions caused by the Japan earthquake and tsunami. Factories are benefiting from strong auto sales and growing business investment in machinery and other equipment.
Sales up 14% in San Francisco
San Francisco Bay Area home sales grew 14.2% from last year in February with the region recording 5,702 sales, up from 4,991 a year ago, DataQuick said. The San Diego-based real estate research firm said sales are up over year-prior levels for the eighth straight month, suggesting a tepid recovery could be under way. New and existing home prices continue drag, with the February median of $325,500 down 0.3% from $326,000 in January and 3.6% from $337,250 a year ago. Prices in San Francisco hit their peak of $665,000 in June 2007 before plummeting to $290,000 in March 2009 after the nation fell into a prolonged recession. Much like the Southern California market, distressed home sales accounted for half of the Bay Area’s resale market in February. Foreclosure sales alone made up 27.4% of all resales in the market, while short sales represented 23.1%. The average monthly mortgage payment in the Bay Area hit $1,225 in February, down from $1,233 in January and $1,440 a year earlier.
Obama to release emergency oil in front of election?
Britain is poised to cooperate with the United States on a release of strategic oil stocks that is expected within months, two British sources said, in a bid to prevent fuel prices choking economic growth in a US election year. A formal request from the United States to the UK to join forces in a release of oil from government-controlled reserves is expected “shortly” following a meeting on Wednesday in Washington between President Barack Obama and Prime MinisterDavid Cameron, who discussed the issue, one source said. Britain would respond positively, the two sources said, and Cameron said a release was worth considering. “We didn’t make any decision, this has to be discussed broadly. We’ve got to look at this issue carefully, it’s something worth looking at. Short-term should we look at reserves? Yes, we should,” Cameron said during a meeting with students in New York. “We’d both like to see global oil prices at a lower level than they are.” Details of the timing, volume and duration of a new emergency drawdown have yet to be settled but a detailed agreement is expected by the summer, one of the sources said. Other countries may also be approached by Washington to contribute, a further source said, Japan among them. Rising world oil prices have pushed the cost of gasoline in the US up sharply, threatening to stall economic recovery ahead of Obama’s bid for re-election in November.
Renting jeopardizing affordable housing
More Americans are renting houses instead of buying them, a trend that could disrupt price affordability, analysts say. With more homeowners unable to secure mortgages and uncertain about future finances, renting is the only sure-fire way to live in a single-family property, according to Capital Economics. But as more Americans turn to home renting, the influx of demand is set to squeeze the nation’s rental supply, pushing monthly rents even higher. Paul Dales, senior economist with Capital Economics said that rental vacancy rates will fall again in the future, pushing prices up. The median rent is already up to $712 per month—well above the average monthly mortgage cost of $647, Dales reported. He estimates vacancies in the home-rental market will push average rental rates up as much as 5% by early 2013, compared to 2.4% in January. “We expect the annual rate at which rents are rising will rise to 3% this year and remain at that level in 2013,” Dales said. “Assuming that the economic recovery gains firmer footing, in future years there is scope for rents to rise by around 4% a year.”
And as single-family renters head into the market, the supply of rentals is unlikely to meet new demand. This reality is playing itself out in Denver, where the vacancy rate for home rentals fell from 3.4% in the third quarter to 2.1% in the fourth quarter. At the same time, the vacancy rate edged up slightly from the 2% level reported in the fourth quarter of 2010. “The vacancy rate went up slightly year-over-year,” said Ryan McMaken, a spokesman for the Colorado Division of Housing. “That doesn’t mean much, though, because when you’re looking at vacancy rates below 3%, the bottom line is that the market is tight. For many people, it’s not easy to buy a house right now, so they’re renting.”
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Chris McLaughlin
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About the author:
Chris McLaughlin is widely known as America’s top
Real Estate Attorney and Investment Consultant.
* As the top Florida foreclosure and pre-
foreclosure expert, he oversees more than
100 short sale & REO closings each month
* Long-time authority on real estate investing
and rapid reselling of distressed homes. Owns
portfolio of nearly 150 high-value, high-profit
properties
* Owner of one of Florida’s largest Real Estate firms,
running 4 different offices, supporting over
420 agents, uniquely positioning him to help
thousands of investors make money in the
biggest market opportunity ever!
* In 2011, Chris’ 4 Central Florida real estate offices
closed 3,336 sides for a closed sales volume of
$430,902,643!
* Highly sought-after speaker, consultant, and
seminar leader for current trends and hot topics
in Real Estate Investing, Entrepreneurship, and
Wealth Building
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