Posts tagged as:

Housing Market

WSJ – government will stay in the housing market for a long time

by admin on June 21, 2011

Smart Real Estate News & Commentary by Chris McLaughlin June 21, 2011

Forward this e-mail to your friends!
Then they can subscribe directly at the following link:

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com/

*** Join Chris’ Facebook Fan Page–>

http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

*** Follow Chris on Twitter–>

http://www.twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

************************************************************

WSJ – government will stay in the housing market for a long time

A weak start to the spring housing season, which could be underscored later this week by reports on sales of new and previously owned homes, is raising the prospect that the U.S. government will dominate the mortgage market for a long time.  The fragile housing market is complicating Washington’s stated goal of dialing back its support after it has reduced stakes in the financial-services and auto industries. The slide in home prices in turn is weighing on the economic recovery, and it threatens to hamper a bipartisan push to unwind the emergency support policymakers enacted three years ago.  Falling prices are eroding consumer confidence and hindering job mobility by leaving millions of borrowers trapped in homes worth less than what they owe. A glut of bank-owned foreclosures has slowed residential construction, damping a major source of job growth. In some markets, the share of buyers paying in cash for homes has hit its highest levels in years, a red flag that prices could fall below “fair value” due to a lack of credit.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored entities intended to foster mortgage lending, face a hard balancing act. They are trying to restore sound lending standards without choking off access to mortgages.

Together with the Federal Housing Administration and federal agencies, Fannie and Freddie are behind nine in 10 new mortgages. The firms don’t make loans; instead, they buy them from lenders, repackage them for sale to investors as securities, and offer guarantees to make investors whole if borrowers default.  Congress has boosted the size of loans that the firms can buy, making it easier for borrowers in more expensive coastal housing markets to qualify for loans. But those steps have crowded out the private sector, leaving investors with fewer loans to buy and either hold or pool into securities that don’t have government guarantees.  The Obama administration and Republican lawmakers have embraced efforts to encourage private investors into the mortgage market by curbing the government’s role. Officials want to increase the fees that Fannie and Freddie charge lenders and reduce the maximum loan sizes eligible for government backing. The limits are set to decline modestly at the end of September to roughly $625,500 from the current $729,750 maximum in high-cost areas such as New York and Los Angeles.

But market advantages for government entities are only part of the problem. Stable housing prices, more than anything else, would make it easier for private lending to return.  Moreover, the economics of securitization don’t work right now. Interest rates are low and investors are demanding high returns, which mean that mortgage-bond deals have made little if any profit for the firms that arrange them. Tight underwriting standards for “jumbo” mortgages—ones too large for government backing—have prompted banks to keep those relatively safe and profitable loans on their books.  “There’s a misunderstanding in the market, an irrational belief that says private capital will emerge” if government-supported mortgage lending looks too expensive, says David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association who headed the FHA for two years until March.  Trying to “crowd-in” private money could be dicey if there aren’t broader structural changes to rebuild confidence, so investors don’t have to price in a hefty “uncertainty premium.”  To be sure, some academics say Fannie and Freddie should more aggressively reduce their role in supporting housing markets and test whether private investors will pick up the slack without substantially shocking housing markets.  Historically, most mortgages that weren’t held on bank balance sheets were issued as securities and backed by Fannie, Freddie, or the FHA. During the past decade, investment and mortgage banks jumped in and began issuing their own mortgage-backed securities. These private-label bonds, issued by the likes of Bear Stearns and Countrywide Financial, comprised riskier loans.

Because the banking sector isn’t large enough to hold more mortgages without expanding its deposit base, securitization markets are an integral part of any lending expansion. The private-label market seized up four years ago as investors faced big losses on investments that turned out to be far riskier than advertised. Just two new privately issued mortgage-bond deals have come to market since, one in April 2010 and another in February, and both consisted of mortgages to extremely qualified borrowers.  Investors are looking for standardized contracts that govern private-label deals, better loan disclosures and easily enforceable provisions to kick back loans that don’t meet agreed upon standards. They also want to eliminate conflicts of interest in the collection of loan payments, known as mortgage servicing.  Lawsuits between bond insurers, investors and issuers over the soundness of the underlying mortgages, and disputes over whether ownership of mortgages was properly assigned, further underscore the market breakdown. “There’s pretty much nobody that’s not being sued,” said Ryan Stark, a director at Deutsche Bank Securities, at an industry seminar last month.Regulators have addressed some of those problems with a flurry of rules, but some of them could also complicate a revival.

Policymakers are right to worry over indefinite government stewardship of the mortgage market, which makes laying the foundation for a functioning market all the more pressing. If it’s lacking, housing won’t exit a destructive cycle: one where prices fall because credit isn’t flowing, and where credit doesn’t flow because housing is weak.

Gasoline down, but not going much lower

Gasoline prices have dropped to $3.64 a gallon nationally from a peak of $3.98 in mid-May, according to AAA. Diesel prices at the pump have fallen more slowly but are beginning to catch up and are now averaging $3.97 a gallon.  “We may get down to that $3 to $3.25 neighborhood for some states that have lower taxes and cheaper supply,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at OPIS. But the coasts, specifically the Northeast, will not see as much relief because of its dependence on higher grade imported oil. The loss of Libya’s light sweet crude output continues to crimp those supplies.  “The price of the sweetest, lightest, least troublesome crude is to a great extent determining the price of gasoline on the coast. I do think you’re going to see prices drop more in the nation’s interiors. Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Ohio. They saw some of the most spectacular increases. They’re going to drop more. For the coasts, and the country as a whole, we’re not really going to drop that much unless we see Brent prices come off,” Kloza said.

Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, said gasoline could fall as much as another $0.10 a gallon nationally by July 4, but after that, the situation is uncertain. “We could see further declines, but I think that’s heavily dependent on how the situation in Greece pans out and affects the value of the euro to the dollar,” he said.  He and Kloza said if Greece were to default, Brent would immediately drop because of the potential ripples across Europe’s economy. “If you’re hoping for $2.50 to $2.75 gas prices, you probably don’t realize it, but you’re hoping for a recession,” said Kloza.  An improving economy could also keep prices high. Kloza said his concern is that oil and gasoline could be pricier next winter and spring, if the global economy improves and supplies tighten.

Olick – investors using cash, credit shrinking

“Nothing like getting to work on a Monday morning and finding no fewer than four dismal reports on the housing market in my ‘Inbox.’  It’s not like anyone thought housing recovered over the weekend (that was pretty clear from the precious few ‘Open House’ signs in my neighborhood at least), but the outlook is deteriorating, and we’re just a day away from getting what is expected to be a weak report on existing home sales for May.  Let’s start with home prices from Fannie Mae’s Economics and Mortgage market Analysis Group, which predicts additional home price declines through the third quarter before flattening out at the end of 2011. ‘Ultimately, the labor market holds the key to a housing recovery, but job growth is needed in order to activate housing demand,’ said Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan. ‘Hiring delays will continue to push out timing for the housing rebound.’  Okay, not exactly a shock, but never a good thing to hear analysts say, ‘growth is stalling.’

Now to a new point about investors, from the May Housing Market report from Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance, which tracks several indices:  ‘The closely-watched survey’s traffic index for first-time homebuyers fell from 51.7 in April to 45.3 in May, while the traffic index for current homeowners fell from 56.1 to 44.8. Meanwhile, the traffic index for investors fell from 55.3 to 54.6. Any index value less than 50 indicates a decrease in traffic from the previous month.  The HousingPulse Survey’s Distressed Property Index, a key measure of the health of the U.S. housing market, fell slightly to 46.7% in April, although sales of distressed properties continued to account for nearly half of the market.  The monthly HousingPulse Survey also showed the proportion of first-time homebuyers in the housing market rose to 37.3% in May, from 35.7% in April. First-time homebuyers have difficulty getting mortgage financing and current homeowners are often locked into properties with negative home equity. That leaves investors to take up the slack,’ says research director for Campbell, Thomas Popik.

The trouble is that investors can’t get financing easily and are largely forced to use cash. In fact 74% bought with cash in May. The survey found a drop in investor activity in May from 23% to just over 21% of purchases. Most investors are using personal funds, like retirement funds, home equity lines of credit and savings accounts, which in itself is concerning; hedge funds and other larger investors make up a much smaller share of buyers, mainly in coastal regions.  All this weakness in housing continues to push more potential buyers to rent.  ‘As we have previously predicted, the U.S. apartment market has been recovering at an astounding pace,’ said Dr. Peter Muoio, senior principal of Maximus Advisors. ‘The sector will continue to benefit from the growing preference for renting over homeownership as well as rapid growth of the young adult population. We predict that vacancies will continue to decline while effective rents grow robustly during the next two years due to limited development of new multifamily properties during the recession.’

And there’s your bright side, if you happen to be an investor in the multi-family sector. I do think that the rental phenomenon will be temporary, but by temporary I mean a decade, not a year. Housing affordability is already enticing enough to bring the buyers back. We are still waiting for the mortgage market to sort itself out.”

Debt situation is like the sub-prime crisis

Monetary policy has been “the great enabler” that central banks used to keep interest rates at “absurdly low levels for years now” and this has encouraged politicians to believe that sovereign debt is “a lot cheaper than it really is,” says David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget.  “Politicians have not been willing to take the tough steps to impose the pain, the austerity and the tough trade offs that are required to control this,” Stockman said.  But things are changing as the Chinese aren’t buying as much sovereign debt because they have to take care of “their own inflation spiral,” and the Federal Reserve will have to end its second round of money printing soon, he added.  “The current situation is like the sub-prime mortgages crisis of a few years ago,” Stockman said.

Monetary stimulus, or quantitative easing, is officially due to end at the end of the month and talk of more stimulus has been rife, though to date Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman has kept silent on the issue, despite the debt ceiling deadline of August 2 nearing for Congress to agree on raising it further.

“The day of reckoning is rolling in, it may not be today or this week or this month but we’re very much towards the end of what can be sustained,” Stockman warned.  “In other words the balance sheets of the big countries have been used up. We’ve used ours, we don’t have any balance sheet room left. The ability of the central banks to monetize this debt which they have is coming to an end,” he added.

Prices up and down in midsize markets

Mid-sized cities, much like their larger counterparts, are experiencing a similar phenomenon where home prices are constantly fluctuating up and down.  It’s called a catfish recovery, Altos Research said yesterday. And in a catfish recovery, home prices bob up and down, making it hard to predict when a real recovery or downturn will officially take hold.  In Altos’ 20-city composite report on mid-sized cities, the research agency found home prices increased in 19 of 21 mid-cities surveyed last month. The mid-cities median price rose 1.11% in May, hitting $254,046, compared to $251,247 in April.  The mid-sized cities experiencing the largest increases were Orlando, Fla., Boise, Idaho, and Boulder, Colo., all of which saw price gains above 5.5%.  Altos concluded in its latest report that “headlines are still talking about a double-dip in housing and the mid-cities numbers provide further evidence of strength in prices across the board. The S&P/Case-Shiller numbers will report the same price strength in the late summer and early fall.”  The only mid-sized markets to report declines in the past three months were Honolulu, with price declines in the 2.64% range; Reno, Nev., which experienced a 0.33% decline; and Charleston, S.C. with a 0.24% drop.

See you at the top!
Chris McLaughlin

**************

Copyright Loss Mitigation Institute LLC 2010.
All Rights Reserved.

http://www.shortsalesriches.com

http://www.shortsalescoach.com

http://www.sixfigurebpo.com

http://www.reomillionaireclub.com

http://www.youtube.com/shortsalesriches

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com

(subscribe to this newsletter)

*************************************************

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 2010, Chris’ 4 Central Florida real estate offices
closed 2,786 sides for a closed sales volume of
$392,912,927!

* Highly sought-after speaker, consultant, and
seminar leader for current trends and hot topics
in Real Estate Investing, Entrepreneurship, and

Wealth Building

* Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

* Join my Facebook Fan Page: http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

{ 0 comments }

DSNews.com – Short Sales Up

by admin on June 13, 2011

Smart Real Estate News & Commentary by Chris McLaughlin June 9, 2011

Forward this e-mail to your friends!

Then they can subscribe directly at the following link:

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com/

*** Join Chris’ Facebook Fan Page–>

http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

*** Follow Chris on Twitter–>

http://www.twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

************************************************************

DSNews.com – short sales up

Servicers completed 1,666 short sales and deeds-in-lieu (DIL) of foreclosure under the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program in April. That’s up 73.7% from the 959 HAFA transactions completed the month before.  HAFA has been in place since April of 2010. According to Treasury’s latest report, which covers program activity through April of this year, a total of 7,113 short sales and DILs have concluded through HAFA.  Treasury says another 7,780 HAFA transactions have been started, meaning an agreement has been put in place between the servicer and the homeowner for terms of a potential short sale of DIL.  Treasury notes that a short sale typically takes 120 days to complete under the program. The number breakdown in the report doesn’t specify how many of the HAFA“starts” are still in process or may have been withdrawn. Any short sale also requires the cooperation of a third-party purchaser, junior lien holders, and mortgage insurers to complete the transaction.

The latest data show that the 10 largest servicers participating in the federal government’s foreclosure prevention programs have completed a short sale or DIL for 82,995 borrowers who did not qualify for a Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) trial and 31,048 borrowers whose trial plans were canceled, indicating that servicers are employing their own short sale programs to avert foreclosure for borrowers that don’t fit the mod equation.  Critics of HAFA have urged Treasury to raise the monetary incentive for servicers, investors, and subordinate lien holders, citing low payouts as a common reason HAFA short sales are rejected.

WSJ – mortgage rates hit new 2011 low

Home mortgage rates fell again to a fresh 2011 low as a week of downbeat jobs data fueled concerns over a possible economic slowdown this year, according to the latest survey from Freddie Mac.  The decline in fixed rates represented the eighth-straight weekly fall and comes after the Bureau of Labor Statistics this week said employers added far fewer private-sector jobs than expected.  The housing market continues to be fragile across the nation as well,” Freddie chief economist Frank Nothaft said, with Federal Reserve data released Wednesday showing weak sales and prices in most districts.  The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.49% in the week ended Thursday, down from 4.55% the prior week and last year’s 4.72% average. Rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 3.68% from 3.74% the previous week and 4.17% a year earlier.  Five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages fell to 3.28%, from 3.41% last week and 3.91% a year earlier. One-year Treasury-indexed ARM rates decreased to 2.95%, from 3.13% the prior week and 3.91% a year earlier.  To obtain the rates, fixed-rate borrowers required an average payment of 0.7 point, while the adjustable-rate mortgages required a 0.5 point payment. A point is 1% of the mortgage amount, charged as prepaid interest.

Banks fight back

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act was passed by Congress last year and comes into force in 2013. Last week, senior bank executives implored Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, to modify the law, according to people familiar with the meetings.  Banks say they are already racking up significant costs. Eventually, they say, the task of scouring records for US citizens and then reporting them could run into billions of dollars and conflict with domestic privacy laws. Disclosure records show groups including Switzerland’s Credit Suisse, Barclays of the UK and TD Bank of Canada have together spent millions of dollars lobbying on the issue.  Terry Campbell, Canadian Bankers Association head, said the act was “conscripting financial institutions around the world to be arms of US tax authorities”. Algirdas Semeta, the European tax commissioner, told the Financial Times that he shared the concerns of the financial sector and expected more meetings with US counterparts. “We can find alternatives that would ensure all necessary information on their taxpayers without imposing additional burdens on financial institutions in the EU,” he said.  People involved in meetings on the subject say the Obama administration has indicated it will look to reduce the burden on banks, which have to identify US citizens with accounts of more than $50,000.

Olick – predicting home prices is impossible

“When Robert Shiller, co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices , speaks, he tends to make headlines, and yesterday was no different.  Claiming that he wasn’t making any predictions, he predicted that home prices could fall another 25%.  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me at all,’ he hedged. And there was the headline, tragic as it is.  I happened to be at the conference yesterday where he said that. In fact, I was a speaker/panelist at the Standard and Poor’s ‘Housing Summit 2011: Boom, Bust and Beyond.’ And, no offense, but that wasn’t the headline. What really struck me was what he said right before that.  ‘Statisticians deal with things that repeat themselves. This housing boom and bust is so historic and unprecedented, you can’t forecast the future because you have no comparison.’  That was not only the headline, but the theme of the conference, as I sat on a panel with economists from S&P, Experian and Columbia Business School. Chip Case was there as well, disagreeing with Shiller on several points.

Audience members, largely from the finance industry, kept asking the same question in different ways, ‘When is this all going to get better??’  One by one, we panelists opined on headwinds and tailwinds, but never really answered. This is something of a shift from just the past few months, when the economists who cover housing seemed to be suddenly more bullish.  But now we have a new dip in home prices, which is putting more borrowers in a negative equity position. There is more concern of more borrowers hitting that ‘stress threshold,’ as one panelist put it, where they just quit paying on their loans.  We already have millions of borrowers who are not current on their mortgages. They haven’t hit the foreclosure pipe yet, but many will, and the panelists seemed most concerned about this huge glut of properties that will not just hit, but continue to plague the market for years to come.

This as the Treasury released a lackluster report on its own mortgage modification program and then punished several big banks for poor performance by cutting off the program’s financial incentives.  By far the biggest concern among questioners and panelists alike was lack of buyer demand. The demand that should be there is pressured by fear, tight credit and under-employment.  ‘Even with recent job growth, we still have 7 million fewer people employed today than at the peak in 2008, and the unemployment rate remains high at 9.1% officially, but a whopping total of 15.9% are underemployed or have given up their search,’ notes housing analyst John Burns.  This ‘wage-less recovery,’ he argues is largely behind the lack of buyer demand, despite much-improved affordability. 

But all real estate is local, right? And all these national numbers that folks like me spew don’t have any footing in local reality, right? Yes, that may be true when it comes to the numbers. All real estate is local, but consumer confidence is national, and that trumps the local numbers.  I have to say, leaving yesterday’s conference, I felt a strange unease, not because we talked about the same barriers to recovery that I talk about every day of the week, but because all these experts who are supposed to tell us when it’s all going to be alright…don’t have a clue.”

Oil prices fall on productivity boost

Oil prices fell to near $98 a barrel today, extending a big loss from Friday after a report said Saudi Arabia plans to boost its crude production.  Saudi newspaper al-Hayat reported Friday that the country will increase production by 13%, or about 1.14 million barrels per day, to boost global supplies and help lower prices. Earlier last week, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to reach consensus to raise output and left the cartel’s production quotas unchanged.  Fighting in Libya since February has shrunk global crude output by shutting down the OPEC nation’s 1.6 million barrels a day of production. Political violence and upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa this year has probably added about $15 to the price of oil, said Paul Sheard, global chief economist at Nomura.  Analysts are concerned an escalation of violence and instability in the Middle East would send oil prices higher and undermine global economic growth.  In other Nymex trading in July contracts, heating oil rose moved up 0.01 cent to $3.1061 a gallon while gasoline added 0.14 cent to $3.0191 a gallon. Natural gas futures gained 5 cents to $4.807 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Fitch downgrades 9 mortgage servicers

Fitch Ratings downgraded ratings on nine mortgage servicers because of tougher regulations and the lack of urgency these companies displayed in response to the foreclosure crisis.  The credit rating agency took action on two Bank of America servicing divisions of, two Wells Fargo servicing divisions, JPMorgan Chase , Citigroup , MetLife Bank , PNC Bank and SunTrust Mortgage .  In late 2010, procedural defects surfaced across the servicing industry. Servicers halted the foreclosure process to fix affidavits required in judicial states. Federal regulators followed with investigations and consent orders, requiring new standards for servicing loans. Negotiations between the 50 state attorneys general remain ongoing.

“The full extent of the concerns resulting from this and other related functions within servicer operations is far from resolved. Fitch expects that the additional scrutiny from a wide range of interested parties, as well as the potential new regulation and heightened risk from litigation, will result in continued reluctance to proceed with foreclosure,” Fitch said.  In November, Fitch placed these ratings on watch and complete a full review of the rated sevicers later in 2011.  Fitch already incorporated the heightened resolution times and loss severities into its analysis of outstanding residential mortgage-backed securities bonds. Therefore, it does not expect to change outstanding RMBS bond ratings.

See you at the top!

Chris McLaughlin

**************

Copyright Loss Mitigation Institute LLC 2010.

All Rights Reserved.

http://www.shortsalesriches.com

http://www.shortsalescoach.com

http://www.sixfigurebpo.com

http://www.reomillionaireclub.com

http://www.youtube.com/shortsalesriches 

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com

(subscribe to this newsletter)

*************************************************

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.  Own 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 2010, Chris’ 4 Central Florida real estate offices  closed 2,786 sides for a closed sales volume of $392,912,927!

    * Highly sought-after speaker, consultant, and   seminar leader for current trends and hot topics in Real Estate Investing, Entrepreneurship,

and Wealth Building.

    * Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

    * Join my Facebook Fan Page: http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

{ 0 comments }

Shiller Sees Another Drop in Prices

by admin on June 10, 2011

Smart Real Estate News & Commentary by Chris McLaughlin June 9, 2011

Forward this e-mail to your friends!

Then they can subscribe directly at the following link:

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com/

*** Join Chris’ Facebook Fan Page–>

http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

*** Follow Chris on Twitter–>

http://www.twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

************************************************************

Shiller sees another drop in prices

At an S&P Housing Summit in New York yesterday, Robert Shiller reiterated his fears of falling home prices. It’s not a forecast, he said, just a comment on his understanding of housing market trends.  In an off-hand remark before cameras and microphones, economist and housing market guru Robert Shiller opined earlier this year that he would not be shocked if there was another 10% to 25% in the nation’s home price plunge.  He explained that speculative markets, like stocks or commodities, act like random walks. They go up and down all the time. Housing market direction tends to be more consistent.  “I worry that this is a real and continuing downturn, like in Japan,” Shiller said. “It had a boom in the 1980s that peaked in 1991. Prices declined in the major cities for 15 straight years after that.”  The U.S. housing market is hard to predict because the boom and bust it went through was unique. Shiller has studied historical price data back to the 1890s and found nothing like it.  “This is the biggest housing boom and bust in U.S. history,” he said. “The bubble was unique. “That makes it impossible for statisticians to forecast because they deal with things that repeat themselves. You see a pattern and expect it to repeat.”  It’s even different from the Great Depression, when the home price plunge was at about the same rate. The big difference, however, was that prices of nearly everything else cratered in the 1930s as well — which has not been true during the housing bust.

Import prices higher

The Labor Department said import prices climbed 0.2% last month, confounding forecasts for a 0.7% decline and following April’s revised 2.1% jump. In the year to May, import prices surged 12.5%, the largest gain since September 2008.  Petroleum import prices fell 0.4%, the first decline since September 2010.  Exports prices rose 0.2% after a downwardly revised 0.9% gain. Analysts had been looking for a 0.3% gain.

Banks penalized

The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that it will withhold incentive payments to Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo until they substantially improve their performance in the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, known as HAMP.  Ocwen Loan Servicing was also cited but will continue receiving payments. Its results were affected because it started servicing a large pool of mortgages while under review.

The banks needed to boost their performance in several areas, including correctly evaluating whether a homeowner meets the HAMP income requirements.  Though the administration has talked tough in the past, this is the first time it is wielding the most powerful weapon in its HAMP arsenal — the withholding of payments. Servicers are eligible for up to $4,500 over three years if they put borrowers into sustainable modified mortgages.

The cited banks had varying responses to the Treasury’s action, with Wells Fargo saying it would formally dispute the findings.  The San Francisco-based bank said Treasury is using data from last year and that it has cut its error rate to 4.5%, down from the 27% cited in the report.  Chase said it “respectfully disagrees” with the assessment, while Ocwen said it was surprised that it was dinged for problems with the modifications made by servicers whose portfolios it took over.  Bank of America said it acknowledges it must make improvements, particularly in areas affecting homeowners.

New rules for the USD

According to David Bloom, the global head of foreign exchange strategy at HSBC, the foreign exchange market has turned upside down and the dollar no longer has an anchor as investors grapple with the implications of quantitative easing, discussions to raise the debt ceiling and the recent slowdown in US growth.  “The framework to think about the dollar and its link to fundamentals has undoubtedly changed. It used to be that the dollar had primacy, but now the dollar behaves like a residual currency,” said Bloom in a research note.  The difficulty for the US economy is that the recent slowdown comes at a time when a second round of quantitative easing or QE2 is coming to an end and the debt ceiling has been reached, according to Bloom who believes the end of the Federal Reserve’s unconventional policy is positive for the dollar.  “The idea was that if QE2 helped fuel dollar weakness and the push into higher yielding currencies, then the end of QE2 could lead to a reversal of this process” said Bloom.  Before the crisis the dollar would trade on fundamentals like interest rate differentials, but the crisis changed that in Bloom’s opinion.  “Now, however, because major central banks have had to adopt QE or other unconventional measures, it has become harder to decipher what the impact on exchange rates should be,” said Bloom.

Luxury housing leading the recovery

The housing market is showing “signs of improvement” with help from luxury home sales, Toll Brothers Chief Executive Douglas Yearley said yesterday.  “There are some signs luxury is leading us out of this a little bit,” he said. “We’re clearly off the bottom.”  But while Toll is a builder of those luxury homes, the CEO expects sales the rest of the year to be relatively flat. That’s despite 60% of Toll sales coming from the northeast corridor of Boston to Washington, D.C., which was not hit with the same housing problems as Las Vegas and Florida, among others.  “I think in pockets we’ll see some success,” Yearley said. “The good news is pricing has definitely stabilized. We’re not seeing price reductions. In some isolated cases, we have some pricing power, we’re able to raise prices.”  He added that after five or six years of waiting, buyers want “to move on with their lives and I think they’re done trying to time the perfect point to get in the market. They’re taking advantage of great interest rates. Affordability’s at an all-time high…It’s helping us but we have a long ways to go.”

See you at the top!

Chris McLaughlin

**************

Copyright Loss Mitigation Institute LLC 2010.

All Rights Reserved.

http://www.shortsalesriches.com

http://www.shortsalescoach.com

http://www.sixfigurebpo.com

http://www.reomillionaireclub.com

http://www.youtube.com/shortsalesriches 

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com

(subscribe to this newsletter)

*************************************************

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 2010, Chris’ 4 Central Florida real estate offices

      closed 2,786 sides for a closed sales volume of

      $392,912,927!  

    * Highly sought-after speaker, consultant, and

      seminar leader for current trends and hot topics

      in Real Estate Investing, Entrepreneurship, and

      Wealth Building

    * Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

    * Join my Facebook Fan Page: http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

{ 0 comments }

Financial Times – Return of Housing Optimism

by admin on June 9, 2011

Smart Real Estate News & Commentary by Chris McLaughlin June 9, 2011

Forward this e-mail to your friends!

Then they can subscribe directly at the following link:  http://www.smartrealestatenews.com/

*** Join Chris’ Facebook Fan Page–>

http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

*** Follow Chris on Twitter–>

http://www.twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

************************************************************

Financial Times – return of housing optimism

As the housing market started to weaken earlier this year, analysts feared that the seasonal bump would not materialize at all – a sure sign of deepening problems that could tip the economy back into recession.  From January through to March, home prices fell so far that they are now back to levels not seen since the middle of 2002, according to the widely watched S&P/Case-Shiller Index.  Slowing job growth and declining consumer confidence added to the perception that the market was worsening.

And yet interviews with realtors in half a dozen cities around the country paint a different picture. They say that the volume of sales and prices started to strengthen in April and have continued to gain momentum through the first weeks of June.  The housing market in many US cities is performing better than recently released national data would suggest.  List prices rose in 24 of 26 cities tracked by Altos Research in May, with San Francisco, Washington and San Jose, California, showing the biggest gains.  New York and Las Vegas were the only two cities in the index where prices declined.  A separate index compiled by CoreLogic that tracks prices in 6,507 postal codes rose slightly in April compared with March – the first such increase since a homebuyer tax credit that helped prop up the market expired in April 2010.  It may well be the beginning of a reversal,” said Mark Flemming, CoreLogic’s chief economist.

No one is suggesting there is a boom under way, only that the market may not be as bad as some recent analysis has suggested.  Most predictions call for at least a 5% price decline this year and no bottom until 2012. Despite the hand-wringing, there are encouraging signs.  California, hard hit by the housing crisis, has seen a notable pick-up. “People are still unsure, because there are a lot of mixed signals,” said Jim Hamilton, the former head of the California Realtors Association. “But, overall, more buyers are coming into the market.”

Unemployment above 400,000, again

There were 427,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended June 4, the Labor Department said today. That was up 1,000 from the week before, and slightly worse than the 423,000 claims economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected.  Continuing claims — which include people filing for the second week of benefits or more — edged lower to 3,676,000 in the week ended May 28, a decline of 71,000 from the week before.  The stubbornly high jobless claims data follows a recent string of other disappointing reports on the labor market. The government’s most closely-watched jobs report, released last Friday, showed that the economy gained only 54,000 jobs in May, down from 232,000 in April.  While a level below 400,000 is typically associated with payroll growth, claims have now topped this mark for the last nine weeks.

MBA – commercial/multifamily delinquency rate mixed

Delinquency rates among different commercial/multifamily mortgage investor groups were mixed in the first quarter of 2011, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Commercial/Multifamily Delinquency Report.  The delinquency rate for loans held in commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) reached the highest level since the series began in 1997, but the climb was slower than in recent quarters. Delinquency rates for other groups remain below levels seen in the last major real estate downturn during the early 1990s — some by large margins.  Between the fourth quarter of 2010 and first quarter of 2011, the 90+ day delinquency rate on loans held by FDIC-insured banks and thrifts remained the same at 4.18%. The 30+ day delinquency rate on loans held in CMBS increased 0.23 percentage points to 9.18%. The 60+ day delinquency rate on loans held in life company portfolios decreased 0.05 percentage points to 0.14%. The 60+ day delinquency rate on multifamily loans held or insured by Fannie Mae decreased 0.07 percentage points to 0.64%. The 60+ day delinquency rate on multifamily loans held or insured by Freddie Mac increased 0.10 percentage points to 0.36%. 

The first quarter 2011 delinquency rate for commercial and multifamily mortgages held by banks and thrifts was 2.40 percentage points lower than the series high (6.58%, reached in the second quarter of 1991). The rate for loans held in CMBS was a record high for the series. The delinquency rate for commercial and multifamily mortgages held in life insurance company portfolios was 7.23 percentage points lower than the series high (7.37%, reached during the fourth quarter of 1993);  the rate for multifamily loans held by Fannie Mae was 2.98 percentage points lower than the series high (3.62%, reached during the fourth quarter of 1991); and the rate for multifamily loans held by Freddie Mac was 6.45 percentage points lower than the series high (6.81%, reached in 1992).

Trade gap narrows

The U.S. still imports far more than it exports, but the gap between the two narrowed slightly in April, according to government data released today.  The difference between the nation’s imports and exports narrowed to a $43.7 billion deficit in April from a revised $46.8 billion in March, the Commerce Department said.  Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were expecting the deficit to grow by $48.7 billion.  Exports totaled $175.6 billion in April, a 1.3% rise from the month before.  Meanwhile, the nation imported $219.2 billion in goods and services from other countries, a 0.5% decline from imports in March.

Olick – REIT winner is storage

“Hundreds of investors in real estate investment trusts are hunkered down at the Waldorf Astoria, touting tremendous returns and talking tactics for the next great play. It’s ‘REIT Week,’ in New York, or for those of you less excited about it, it’s the annual conference of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT).  REITs overall are on a tear, with the FTSE NAREIT All Equity REITs Index up 14.13% on a total return basis in the first five months of the year.  But when I read down the fact sheet to the winners and losers, imagine my surprise to see the least sexy of the bunch at the top of the list: Self storage.  Forget the run on multi-family in the new rental age, forget the trophy office properties in the big metro markets, it’s those giant, brightly colored, enormous metal container communities just out beyond the mall that are reaping REITs rewards.  It’s simple, and it’s about housing. As fewer people choose to buy, and more people lose their homes, that’s where all their stuff goes. It’s also a product of overall downsizing. I realize that’s not a very highbrow explanation, but it just so happens to be the case, and it’s behind an 18.4% sector gain in the first five months of the year. In the last 12 months, self storage REITs returned 29%.”

See you at the top!

Chris McLaughlin
**************

Copyright Loss Mitigation Institute LLC 2010.

All Rights Reserved.

http://www.shortsalesriches.com
http://www.shortsalescoach.com
http://www.sixfigurebpo.com
http://www.reomillionaireclub.com
http://www.youtube.com/shortsalesriches 

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com

(subscribe to this newsletter)

*************************************************
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 2010, Chris’ 4 Central Florida real estate offices

      closed 2,786 sides for a closed sales volume of

      $392,912,927!  

    * Highly sought-after speaker, consultant, and
      seminar leader for current trends and hot topics
      in Real Estate Investing, Entrepreneurship, and
      Wealth Building

    * Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

    * Join my Facebook Fan Page:

{ 0 comments }

WSJ – Why It’s Time to Buy

by admin on June 6, 2011

Smart Real Estate News & Commentary by Chris McLaughlin June 6, 2011

Forward this e-mail to your friends!

Then they can subscribe directly at the following link:  http://www.smartrealestatenews.com/

*** Join Chris’ Facebook Fan Page–>

http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

*** Follow Chris on Twitter–>

http://www.twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

************************************************************

WSJ – why it’s time to buy

Back in June 2006, when the housing market peaked, the prospect of a five-year national housing bust seemed unimaginable to most people. And yet here we are, with the latest Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index showing that prices hit new bear-market lows, falling back to 2002 levels nationally and to 1990s levels in some battered regions.  Despite all the gloom, however, there are growing indications that it is a good time to buy. Mortgage rates, which fell to 4.55% for the week ending June 2, according to Freddie Mac, are near 50-year lows. Homes have become more affordable than they have been in years: According to Moody’s Analytics, the ratio of home prices to income is now 20.9% lower than the 15-year average through 2010, and 12.5% lower than the 1989-2004 average. A historic glut of homes, meanwhile, has created a buyer’s market: There were about 15 million vacant homes in the U.S. last year, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting, Inc.—some 3.1 million more than normal.

Such conditions might not last long. Moody’s Analytics predicts that the number of distressed sales will begin to fall in 2013, and that prices will begin to edge upward then. Home building is at a virtual standstill, so the supply overhang isn’t likely to get much worse. Meanwhile, demographic indicators such as “household formation”—the number of new households each year—are on the rise, and promise to take a bite out of the glut in coming years.  The upshot: “While we might not see rapid growth in the next couple of years, there are a tremendous number of positive signs that could lead to a rebound,” says Anthony Sanders, a real-estate finance professor at George Mason University.  The short-term outlook isn’t encouraging. Job growth remains weak, foreclosure sales are making up more of the market, and economists are predicting that home prices will fall more in the coming months.  But the long-term benefits of homeownership remain very much intact. For now, at least, you can deduct the mortgage interest on your taxes—a big perk for people in higher tax brackets. You get to paint your walls any color you wish, without having to clear it with a landlord. And assuming you can buy a home for about the same price as you can rent one, buying will give you the ability one day to live rent-free. Come retirement time, a paid-off mortgage means your monthly expenses are significantly reduced, and you have a chunk of equity to play with.

So what might the next five years look like? Once the foreclosure mess begins to clear up, say housing economists, the traditional drivers of the housing market—demographics, affordability, loan availability, employment and psychology—should take over.  Here is a glimmer of what the future may hold: While overall home prices fell by 7.5% in April over the same period a year earlier, according to CoreLogic, a Santa Ana, Calif., provider of real-estate data and analytics, if you exclude distressed sales, prices were off just 0.5%. So if you are in a market that isn’t battered by foreclosures, you may be close to a bottom already. 

State and local layoffs hit record levels

According to IHS Global Insight, state and local governments are forecast to shed up to 110,000 jobs in the third quarter, the first time public sector layoffs have risen into the triple digits.  State and local government employment has been a drag on the economy all year, averaging a loss of 23,000 jobs a month over the past three months. Meanwhile, the private sector has created an average of 180,000 a month during the same period.  In May, public employment shrunk by 29,000 jobs, mostly at the state and local level, while businesses created 83,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. All told, the sector has lost 510,000 positions since its peak in August 2008.  Though tax revenue is starting to rise, states are still wrestling with multi-billion-dollar budget gaps. Federal stimulus funds helped minimize job cuts until now, but that money essentially runs out on June 30.  So states are planning to slash funds for education, social services and local governments, as well as downsize their payrolls even more, in the coming fiscal year.

Local governments are in even worse shape. Not only are they losing state aid, but they are finally feeling the fallout from the mortgage meltdown. Property tax assessments, a major funding source for municipalities, have only started to drop.  Teachers and school staff will bear the brunt of the layoffs this summer, as hundreds of thousands will likely be laid off around the nation. The national job numbers should reflect the hit in July and September.  It’s not uncommon for state and local governments to take longer to emerge from a recession. But usually by then, businesses have ramped up their hiring. This time around, private sector hiring has remained soft, making government cutbacks that much more painful.  And it will likely take at least a year before the state and local government job market revives, economists say. Until then, they are waiting to see the extent of the downsizing.  “The only question is ‘how much worse?,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Olick – corporate housing

Earlier this week I did a piece on television about how many job seekers are frozen in place because they can’t sell their homes to relocate for a new job.  More than a quarter of U.S. borrowers owe more on their mortgages than their homes are currently worth. We call that in a “negative equity position” or “underwater.”  “I had an example last week of someone who was on the East Coast and there was an opportunity on the West Coast. Great paying job, and the family just could not afford to take a $250,000 loss on their house. That employee, prospective employee, had to forgo that opportunity,” recalled Gary Burnison, CEO of Korn Ferry International, an executive recruiting firm. 

I decided to dig a little deeper into this phenomenon and found another fascinating story: Temporary corporate housing is seeing a boom, and it’s not just in big rental apartment buildings. Job seekers are actually renting out their own homes as corporate housing, so they can take a job somewhere else and not have to sell at a loss.  “I probably get a call on an hourly basis with people who have a new job, have new job opportunities, know that there are job opportunities in another area, but have this home, which is a burden around their neck that they don’t know what to do with,” said Kimberly Smith, president of the Corporate Housing Providers Association (CHPA). Smith is also the founder of Corporatehousingbyowner.com, a site that helps homeowners find corporate renters. “If you find that right person at the right time, the ability to rent your home fully furnished is a huge emerging real estate trend that is hot.”  Sixty percent of the properties listed on Smith’s site were rented as a result of the owner’s relocation needs. And demand is booming, especially as corporate apartment rents climb due to strong demand.  “Just this morning, I got a call from an individual in a random town in Minnesota. They had listed their property for rent two days ago, and now have their property rented for six months,” said Smith, but she added there is something else far more troubling pushing the corporate rental demand:

“I was having lunch with an executive head hunter the other day, and they were stating that corporations are picking their second or third choice for job applicants because they don’t want to be stuck with someone who might be underwater with their home. Corporations can discriminate against you based on your financial status, and being in a home that’s underwater is a perfectly good reason for an employer not to hire you.”

Corporate renting is one alternative.  It may seem strange, swapping your house for someone else who has been dislocated from their home, but these are strange times.  The upside is that instead of moving your family into some sterile corporate apartment box, you can move them into a real home that might remind them of better times.

Consumer confidence down

The Consumer Confidence Index — a report compiled by the Conference Board — fell to its lowest level since October, showing consumers are more apprehensive about the job market, their income and inflation.  “Right now, we’re in a tough patch for the consumer,” Bostjancic said. “We’re not yet near a double dip, but we’re in a frustratingly slow recovery.”  Perhaps it’s not that surprising then that May’s job growth was weak, adding 54,000 jobs — a measly number when you compare it to job gains that averaged above 200,000 in the prior three months.  When consumers aren’t feeling confident about the economy, they’re likely to reduce spending. Businesses begin to anticipate lower demand for their products, and become reluctant to hire — or worse — cut jobs.  In May this appeared to be true with a variety of consumer industries. Retail, for example, cut 8,500 jobs after adding a whopping 64,000 in April.

The leisure and hospitality industry — which depends almost entirely on discretionary consumer spending — cut 6,000 jobs, after averaging gains of 44,000 each of the prior three months.  Even the subcategory of food service — which was expected to benefit from a recent McDonalds’ hiring spree – showed significantly slower job growth.  The economy added 13,600 food service jobs in May, after averaging growth of nearly 32,000 each of the prior three months.  “After two years of an economic recovery, businesses are starting to figure out, there’s very little room for top-line revenue,” said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo.  “Consumer spending has been subpar this economic recovery,” he added.

WSJ – five factors governing housing markets

1  Demographics

Household formation fell during the economic downturn as a weak economy led some people to stay in school, double up with roommates or move in with family members. According to Moody’s Analytics, the number of new households renting or owning a home dropped to 578,000 in 2008 from nearly 2 million in 2005, just before the peak of the housing boom.  But household formation increased to nearly 950,000 last year, says Moody’s, and should average 1.2 million over the next decade.  That, combined with increased obsolescence and higher demand for second homes, should begin sopping up excess inventory in much of the country over the next two years, Moody’s says.

2  Affordability

Rising home prices made renting cheaper than buying in many parts of the country. But that dynamic has begun to change: Housing affordability, as measured by the ratio of median home prices to median household incomes, has fallen below pre-housing bubble levels in just over two-thirds of the country, according to an analysis of more than 380 metro areas by Moody’s Analytics.  Renting is still cheaper than buying in most markets, but rising rents and falling house prices mean that, in some areas, this won’t be the case for long. Buying a home is already cheaper than renting in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Orlando, Fla., according to Moody’s Analytics. In other markets, including Dallas, Las Vegas and Sacramento, Cailf., the equation is likely to soon turn in favor of homeownership if current trends persist, the firm says.  In Ann Arbor, Mich., where home prices fell 11.2% between 2007 and 2010, according to Fiserv Case-Shiller, housing affordability has risen well above historical levels, according to Moody’s Analytics.

3  Employment

The strength of the housing market depends largely on the economy. Rising incomes and increased employment tend to give more would-be buyers confidence and buying power. For now, job growth remains sluggish: On Friday the Labor Department reported that just 54,000 jobs were created in May, far below expectations.  But signs of how a stronger job market could fuel housing demand are evident in the Dallas metro area, which added 83,100 new jobs in the 12 months ending in April—the largest gain in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dallas never had a big housing boom or bust and has benefited from trade with Mexico, a strong telecommunications sector and a central location.

4  Credit

Mortgage financing remains plentiful for borrowers with good credit scores and solid employment histories. But for borrowers who don’t fit traditional lending standards, getting a loan can still be nearly impossible. In the first quarter, about 10% of banks tightened standards for nontraditional loans, according to the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, higher down-payment standards are locking some would-be buyers out of the market. Just 35% of renters have the minimum 3.5% down payment needed for an FHA loan on the median-priced home in their market, according to a recent survey by Zelman Associates.  Credit is likely to remain tight for at least the next six months, says Clifford Rossi, a former Citigroup Inc. consumer-lending executive who teaches at the University of Maryland.  But conditions should improve over time, he says: “There’s no question that it will gradually get easier.”

5  Psychology

The long-term case for buying over renting remains in force. Yet nowadays, “People are simply scared,” says Aaron Galvin, chief executive of Luxury Living Chicago, which finds rental apartments for wealthy clients.  Mr. Galvin says he has seen a 30% increase in business in the last year, driven by would-be home buyers who can afford to purchase a property but are choosing not to do so.  The portion of Americans who believe homeownership is a safe investment dropped to 66% in the first quarter from 83% in 2006, according to Fannie Mae, the government-controlled mortgage company.  But it isn’t clear whether the fear will result in a prolonged change in attitudes, as during the Great Depression, or have little long-term impact, as was the case for the housing bust that shook California and the Northeast in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Eighty-seven percent of people surveyed by Fannie Mae said they preferred owning to renting, though access to schools, control over one’s environment and other quality-of-life issues now are seen as the key benefits of homeownership, with building wealth and other financial factors viewed as less important. In addition, 67% of renters surveyed by Zelman Associates said they planned to buy a home in the next five years.

See you at the top!

Chris McLaughlin
**************

Copyright Loss Mitigation Institute LLC 2010.

All Rights Reserved.

http://www.shortsalesriches.com
http://www.shortsalescoach.com
http://www.sixfigurebpo.com
http://www.reomillionaireclub.com
http://www.youtube.com/shortsalesriches 

http://www.smartrealestatenews.com

(subscribe to this newsletter)

*************************************************
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 2010, Chris’ 4 Central Florida real estate offices

      closed 2,786 sides for a closed sales volume of

      $392,912,927!  

    * Highly sought-after speaker, consultant, and
      seminar leader for current trends and hot topics
      in Real Estate Investing, Entrepreneurship, and
      Wealth Building

    * Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mclaughlinchris

    * Join my Facebook Fan Page: http://www.mclaughlinchris.com

{ 0 comments }

← Older Entries