By the looks of the graph below monthly Notices of Default may be stabilizing around the mid-700s per month. How long can this level be sustained? Well, according to today’s front page article in the RGJ 48.5 percent of Reno area homeowners are under water; placing Reno-Sparks 4th in nation for negative equity. So, I suppose we’ve a ways to go.
The other chart below shows April re-fis taking a sharp drop from March’s re-fis; however April recorded resales continue to climb; posting a 14% increase over March’s number of sales, and a 27% increase in Y-o-Y resales.
click on the charts to enlarge
Worried Guy
Wow so much for things improving like I hear on the Media spinning it everyday…The fact remains that REO-Short Sales are swarming onto the market and that drives the prices lower. Not a whole heck of lot can be done to stop that process of from completing itself now. Andrew Mellon & Jackson knew how deceptive banking frauds perpetrated by a Central Bank should be dealt with…Liquidate, Liquidate, Liquidate….
Wake-up
I just read there were 41,000+ NOD’S in Nevada the first quarter of 2009, What gets me is why are people even considering buying a home right now? If there are 700+ nod’s a month in reno {which I think those numbers are way low} and in a good month reno’s moving 150-200 units, We are going to have years of inventory to burn threw. And this doesn’t include the coming wave of option ARM defaults. The real crime here is until the ghost inventory is used up…New speculative home starts are dead in the water, No way they can compete with $50-70 sq-ft.and falling…Its To-bad the media keeps selling the good times scenario fishing out the last of the suckers…Thanks to the moratoriums and the typical spring hype…Will be lucky if prices end up at the 1960 range!…my thoughts
smarten
The pendulum swings, and oftentimes OVER swings in the opposite direction. That’s what I think we’re seeing.
Things may not be getting appreciably better for some time to come, but they may not be getting much worse either although as BB likes to point out [rightfully so I might add], one month’s figures does not make a market.
I can’t tell you about Reno/Sparks like I can about Incline Village but although there may be years of inventory out there to burn through, what’s there is either by and large crap; or, delusionally priced. Now that’s not to say that in the months ahead some nice stuff may surface that is reasonably priced. But it may not.
So as we evaluate these numbers, I would caution against painting too broad a brush.
SkrapGuy
That figure of almost half of all mortgage holders in Washoe County being underwater is sobering. The implications of that are somewhat mindboggling for the future of the local economy in general and the local housing market in particular. The only thing more sobering is to contemplate that the figure is almost 60% in LV. Washoe County has the fourth worst market in the country by this measure. LV has the worst. No city in Florida is this bad. It just shows the enormity of the bubble that we had here in Reno. Everybody thinks it only happened in LV. Obvioulsy it didn’t, although LV is shaping up as perhaps the worst market in the nation.
Whenever the economy finally does turn around nationally, Nevada is going to be lagging substantially behind.
inclinejj
Y’all need to seriously read all 3 Peter Lynch’s books..It is mostly about the stock market but his famous line is..”The biggest fools in every market are the ones chasing the top and bottoms”
The market will continue to go down, then it will level off for awhile. Then when more capital comes in and starts to be put out there, more people can buy and the market can start to come back..
All this bad debt has to work the way thru the market..
You have to remember 2/3rds of all loan programs are gone..Stated income loans are gone..Subprime gone, Alt-a loans gone..
The only players in town are FHA and Freddie & Fannie..
Jumbo Financing is out there but you have to be 100% of a borrower to get it..
Skrap I still hear people in the advanced stage of terminal denial saying the house they own hasn’t gone down..One guy bought for 800k, granted he has an awesome Ocean view..The foreclosures and the comps in the area show about $599k-$650k..The comps are the comps are the comps..
EdBear
I’m starting to think again about those condos in Sommerset. Does anyone here have an opinion regarding them. It looks like some of them have pending sales and at $110 per sf, or so, can they go much lower?
Thanks
daily
Anyone thinking about buying in the “NW foothills” aka Somersett, aka Bodie, needs to think long and hard as to why would you want to do it??
The place is the antithesis of a smart buy at present, even at Filene’s basement prices, whoops! Filene’s is in BK too.
SmartMoney
If you look at the history of bubbles, at the end of the bubble, time and time again, prices will fall to levels well below fair value. That’s where we are headed.
Grand Wazoo
Big banner on the side of the Riverwalk condo downtown that the developer is auctioning off the last 16 unsold units, 5 units to go with no minimum bid.
I never liked the Riverwalk project but this auction well certainly establish a new bottom for downtown condo pricing.
SkrapGuy
It’s only a matter of time before a similar banner is up on the Montage. So far the Montage has sold about 7% of the units. Only a Fool would buy there at this point.
SkrapGuy
EdBear, not sure exactly what condos at Somersett you are talking about, but if it’s the Village, one of the 2200 sq.ft. models sold at auction for about $168K a while back I believe. That represented about a 65% reduction from original pricing. I see no reason to think that pricing will not become the norm. It may take a while longer yet, however. Denial runs deep among Somersett sellers. Very deep.How many of the owners of those places are among the 50% who are underwater in Reno? Maybe about 95% of them?
EdBear
Scrap, yes, that’s what I was looking at. At that price per sf, can they drop lower. Might be a good retreat from the bay area and low maintenance too.
SkrapGuy
Ed, the auction went for about $77 a sq. ft. more or less. I doubt they will go much below that. It’s just my humble opinion, but I do believe that they will drop from current pendings of around $110 sq. ft. I see these places surely under $100 sq. ft. Eventually either a bank REO or a truly motivated seller will break the dam and go under $100 sq. ft. Then so will another. And another. But like I said, it’s a slow trip. It isn’t going to happen by the 4th of July. The 4th of July 2010, maybe. There is significant price pressure yet to come when only about 50% of mortgage holders are above water.
smarten
Also, I’d be skeptical of the RGJ’s [and zillow’s] 48% number. Although I don’t trust the source [the Reno-Sparks Association of Realtors], I agree that “without doing a house-by-house sample and putting a huge effort in pouring over the records, it’s just hard to pinpoint what the real numbers are whether they’re 48 percent or 18 percent for that matter.” We shouldn’t be jumping to all sorts of conclusions as we might if the 48% were verifiably and factually correct.
Raymond
Smarten is correct. We don’t know with precision what percentage of mortgage holders are underwater. It could be even higher than 48%. And for mortgages taken out from 2004 on, it no doubt is higher.
geopower
Good point Raymond. Does someone with more expertise know how to figure out what % of homes in Reno have sold since 2004?
Waldo
“And for mortgages taken out from 2004 on, it no doubt is higher.”
Just ask Diane Cohn.
And for those with a mortgage taken out before 2004, who may still be right right side up, they have a hell of a lot less equity than they used to.
Just ask the car dealers now that HELOC river has run dry.
EdBear
We come up with a car for HAN every year, so we might take a look. Maybe I can work a trade for the car?
Thanks for your opinions,
Ed
EdBear
Oh yeah, one other thing. My wife loved the floor plans in that Ryder development below Arrowcreek. Has any of that been priced more realistically? Last year, Ryder seemed to be trying to hold the line. We also really liked Firenze, the Ryder development in Sparks.
Thanks again
daily
EdBear-
Agree with you on the nice floor plans at Ryder’s Dev. below Arrowcreek (Mountain Gate). We walked through the models about 3 months ago, a lot of ongoing reductions, IMO.