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Single level ground unit with a attached garage, Backyard. Need some tlc. For AVAILABILITY & DETAILED LENDER INFO GO TO Agents website ABOVE WWW.HelloDreamHome.com Click on 'REALTOR', click on 'CALIFORNIA PROPERTY INFO' E-MAIL QUESTIONS & OFFERS to FaxResponder@gmail.com Offers will be acknowledged received 1st BUSINESS day after submitted. Gross Commission are subject to lender approval the split will be 50/50. Pre/Cross Approved IMortgage with Cory Depass at 949-705-0550.Please submit all offers and questions to faxresponder@gmail.com. Thanks All calls on weekend will be returned Monday unless urgent.

A year and a half after launching the program, "Treasury is still fighting to get its foreclosure programs off the ground," Elizabeth Warren, who heads the independent panel set up by Congress, told reporters Tuesday.

"Re-default signals the single worst form of failure" by the Treasury Department, said Warren, who is a professor at Harvard Law School. "Billions of taxpayer dollars will be spent and families will nonetheless lose their homes."

"We strongly agree with the (panel's) assessment that foreclosures are at an unacceptable high rate, which is why this program has been designed to prevent avoidable foreclosures," Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in a statement. She said the program was not designed to prevent every foreclosure, and "we cannot help those who simply bought a home they could not afford."

The executives told lawmakers on Tuesday they are reducing the amount that troubled borrowers owe on their home loans only in limited cases. That's because consumers who are paying their mortgages on time are likely to see such reductions as unfair, they said.

Such programs "could raise issues of fairness," said Sanjiv Das, Citigroup's top mortgage executive, who appeared in front of the House Financial Services committee with top executives from Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase.

David Lowman, chief executive of Chase's mortgage business, told lawmakers that large-scale mortgage principal reduction "could be harmful to consumers, investors and future mortgage market conditions."

Republicans, however, say the Obama administration should abandon the effort and focus on creating jobs.
 
"The market needs to find its own footing free of government intervention and manipulation so we can revive our economy and get on with a full housing market recovery," said Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the committee's senior Republican

The Home Affordable Modification Program, Treasury's TARP-funded mortgage modification program, was originally intended to keep 3 million to 4 million homeowners in their homes by modifying mortgages to sustainable levels, Barofsky noted. "But it appears that it may never come close to meeting that goal," he said. There have been fewer than 230,000 permanent modifications more than a year into the program.

Failings of the program include problems with transparency, Treasury's execution of the program and problems with the program's design, Barofsky said. In many cases, borrowers who receive modifications are still unable or unwilling to continue to make payments because they're too high or their homes are "hopelessly under water," meaning the properties are worth far less than what is owed, he told the committee.

 
Office vacancy rates are now at their highest level in 16 years, according to a report published Monday, as elevated unemployment levels across the country continue to temper the demand for space.

 1. This is the REAL barometer of the future in Real Estate!

2. Employees fill the vacant offices= JOBS

3. You have to have a job to buy a home!

4. Any hype of a bottom in the Real Estate market is just that.

5. How can we have a decent housing market without jobs?

6. When office space shows some improvement in vacancy rate we will then begin to see the bottom in housing

7. Don’t get caught in the hype!

Roughly 700 million square feet, or 17.2%, of the more than 4 billion of available office space nationwide was unoccupied as of the end of March, according to the real estate research firm Reis. The last time office vacancies were this high was in 1994.

The number of empty offices has been on the rise since the start of 2008, as soaring unemployment and a wave of business failures have crushed commercial real estate.

The trend however, has not just been isolated to those parts of the country that have been particularly hard hit by the recession.

In fact, nearly three-quarters of the country's major metropolitan areas experienced an increase in office vacancies in the first quarter of 2010.

foreclosures, short sales.

The measure, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would waive state

taxes on mortgage debt that has been forgiven in a foreclosure or short sale.

April 9, 2010 By Patrick McGreevy

Thousands of Californians whose homes were foreclosed on or sold at a loss would get tax relief under a

measure approved Thursday by the state Legislature.

The bill would waive state taxes on mortgage debt that has been forgiven in a foreclosure or short sale. It is expected to affect about 34,000 taxpayers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would sign the measure, which would also provide about $60 million in tax credits to green-energy companies, when it reached his desk. Californians can already claim the tax breaks on federal returns. Lawmakers passed the measure in time for people to take advantage of it by the April 15 deadline for filing tax returns.

"The mortgage-debt tax relief provision in this bill will provide financial shelter for tens of thousands of Californians who have lost their hopes and dreams in the housing market crash, and it's about time we gave these folks a helping hand," said state Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello).

The short-sale provision would mean about $34 million less in tax revenue for the state over three years, according to the Franchise Tax Board. The "green" credits are a response to the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provides grants to firms for power plants that produce renewable energy. The federal government does not tax the grant money. Under the bill approved Thursday, California would provide similar relief. Other parts of the measure, SB 401 by Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis), were called tax increases by Republicans. Even though they supported the tax-relief element, several GOP members of the Senate and Assembly voted against the bill, which was opposed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. The Republicans objected to a provision that would reduce deductions for charitable gifts, and to changes that would allow the state to tax more income earned by minor dependents. The changes would also make it harder to qualify a home as a principal residence for purposes of escaping capital gains taxes when the property is sold, and some penalties and interest charges to corporations would be increased, according to Therese M. Twomey, a principal consultant for the Senate Republican Policy Office. These changes would bring in more than $10 million in new revenue over five years, Twomey said. "It's an issue of fairness," said Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster). "You are giving money to one group of people and taking it away from another group of people." With the plunge in the real estate market, many Californians have found themselves owing much more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Some have been foreclosed upon or asked their lender to approve a short sale, in which a home is sold for less than the debt, some of which is waived.

The amount waived has been considered taxable income under California law. The measure passed Thursday would eliminate that tax when a bank agrees to accept less than what is owed on a home.

The governor vetoed a similar bill last month because it included a provision, since removed, that would have increased penalties against businesses and wealthy individuals who abuse tax credits.

Business groups including the California Chamber of Commerce and Western States Petroleum Assn. complained that the provision would have made businesses reluctant to claim the tax breaks for fear of making a costly error. The businesses also said California's tax penalties were already tougher than those in other states.

Wolk said the penalties would not have applied to honest mistakes. The new measure would lift a great burden from the shoulders of Valarie Wood and her husband, who were facing a $10,000 state tax bill on debt that was forgiven in a short sale of their property in Ventura.

The 10-acre property, which included an avocado grove, had plummeted in value far below what they owed. Health problems and a "mortgage gone awry" forced the couple to renegotiate their loan with their bank, which agreed to waive about $300,000 of debt on the house and property, Wood said.

"We've lost our dream home. We are in our 60s, and it was going to be our retirement," she said, her voice choking with emotion. "This bill is crucial for people like us. We are extremely relieved."

Schwarzenegger said during a news conference Thursday that he wants to give homeowners and businesses "the relief they need." "We want to be helpful in every way we can, so we will sign it," he said.

By Charles Feldman Mar 22nd 2010 @ 1:45PM

Hold on to your Zoloft, yet another wave of bad real estate news is about to wash our already underwater housing market. This time, it's Option Adjustable-Rate Mortgage loans -- or Option ARMs, for short.

What the heck are Option ARMs, you say? Simply put, they are mortgage loans that give homeowners the option to make minimum payments that are so small, they don't even cover the interest, never mind that the principal. The teeny payments eventually reset, but at a much later date.

Option ARMs have been around since the 1980s, but really came into their own in that two year period between 2005 and 2007, when they were peddled by the likes of Countrywide Financial and Washington Mutual to hard-up homebuyers, and some well-to-do ones, too. Who could resist buying a big home for pocket change every month, even knowing that the monthly payments would someday increase? Of course, by that time, the balance would have ballooned as well.

Well, the time of reckoning has come.

The initial period of low rates, called the optional minimum-payment period, typically lasts five or ten years. Now, and is starting to expire -- on an estimated 900,000 home loans, says the Los Angeles Times. That translates into roughly $300 billion of real estate loans.

The director of the Center for Responsible Lending in California (funny, I didn't know there was any "responsible lending" in California!), Paul Leonard, tells the paper, " Unless option ARMs are restructured proactively, large proportions of them could end up in foreclosure, leading to a potential double dip in housing prices in many California markets."

I keep talking about California because, although Option ARMs were marketed from sea to subprime sea, about 44 percent of all Option ARMs 9representing 55 percent of the dollar value) happen to be here in California -- of course! When you add Florida, Arizona and Nevada to the mix, that represents roughly 75 percent of Option ARMs written nationwide.

Now, you want to hear something truly amazing? Well, listen to this:

"The Option Adjustable Rate Mortgage might be the riskiest and most complicated home loan product ever created.. the less a borrower chooses to pay now, the more is tacked onto the balance."

That from a BusinessWeek cover story----in 2006! And, still, suckers (OK, poor suckers, but suckers nonetheless) were sold these bills of good (evil?) as a way to finance their individual American dream. So much for that.

More recently, Time magazine noted that, according to Standard & Poor's, 37.5 percent of option ARMs written in 2007 at the height of the bubble will eventually go bad. Time (always quick to recognize impending doom) asked in its headline: "Is the Option Adjustable-Rate Mortgage the next subprime disaster?"

And, what do you think the magazine's answer to that question is? Well, they'd hardly do a story on it if they thought the answer was no, now would they?


Charles Feldman is a journalist, media consultant and co-author of the book, "No Time To Think-The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle." He has written about real estate related issues for several years

Home prices are one factor in determining your cost of ownership, but so are interest rates and financing availability. Even though interest rates have gone up in the last six months, they are still near historic lows. Since your monthly mortgage payment is a combination of paying down your principal and paying the interest owed, if home prices come down a little further but interest rates go up, it could cost you even more to service a mortgage on an identical home!

While a home is a major investment, it is also the center of your personal life. It's important to live in a home that reflects your taste and values, yet is within your financial "comfort zone." To that end, it may be more important to lock in today's relatively low interest rates and low home prices, rather than to hope for a further break in prices in the future.

Please give me a call if I can be of any assistance in determining how much home you can afford in today's market.