Micro-Market Snapshot: In Lancaster-Palmdale, "Panic Selling" Makes This A "Great Time to Buy"

Cruise around Lancaster and Palmdale with Realtor Donna Oehler, and you'll see a troubling combination: new houses still going up, new houses just hitting the market, and "for sale" signs blooming like wildflowers on the lawns of older homes. Forclosures are mounting, inventory is bloated and sales have slowed dramatically: in the boom, as many as 150 houses would sell in a single day in the Lancaster-Palmdale area; on a recent day, only 30 homes were sold.

Average listing prices range from the low $300,000s in East Palmdale to the low $500,000s in West Palmdale -- click here for a Trulia.com "heatmap" showing listing prices.

As is any Realtor, Oehler is an optimist: "I honestly think this is a great time to buy -- as long as you're not looking to own for just a year," she says. "You've got motivated sellers, and a lot of homes to choose from."

She wishes unmotivated sellers would take their listings off the market. "We've got a lot of people who are scared and they are panic selling. They don't need to sell."

Then there is her niche: the most motivated sellers -- homeowners in pre-forclosure. She calls up Realty Trac numbers on her computer: 1,127 pre-foreclosures in the area, 188 going to foreclosure auction, and 587 foreclosed and owned by banks. "A lot of what I see is 100% financing and they're defaulting in the first 18 months. To be honest, most of these people shouldn'g have been in these houses in the first place."

Read on for more, including: Donna's Short Sales Pricing Strategy and Evidence of Cash-Back-at-Closing Mortgage Fraud Schemes.

Oehler specializes in a difficult niche market: short sales, which take place when a homeowner in danger of foreclosure sells a property -- with bank permission -- for less than the outstanding amount on his mortgage, and walks away without paying the difference. Most realtors avoid short sales -- commissions tend to be lower, starting at 5%, and banks often reject them after weeks of wrangling and paperwork.

"But I like this niche -- I like working with investors (the potential buyers) because they're not emotionally involved." But it is hard to attract buyer interest in older homes that haven't been renovated when builders are offering up to $30,000 in free upgrades in brand new houses. "I'm listing my short sales at 10% below market value just to get people to take a look at them."

And despite the inventory glut, the big builders are still building. "They've slowed down, but they are still building. I haven't heard of anybody who has stopped building."

There is a seamy side to real estate in the Antelope Valley. Donna, who tends to represent sellers of existing homes, cites one risk of buying in new developments in a rapidly growing region: you don't know what kind of neighbors you will have; She says a single investor bought 14 homes in one development and rented them all to low-income tenants who qualified for government-subsidized Section 8 housing -- not necessarily the neighborhood a new home buyer would expect.

Even seamier: outright mortgage fraud. In one scheme, the buyer, posing as an investor who hopes to remodel a house, borrows more than the purchase price to get cash back at closing, but never remodels, never moves into the house, never makes a mortgage payment, and let's the house go into foreclosure. "I know off the top of my head three properties that are loan frauds," she says.

Comments

[albert]

To pay 300k to 500k to live in that melting hot dump , you have to be crazy in the first place.
Pardon me for a rough words but it should be a lot cheaper to live in the scorching desert.

[duelster]

would you like to pay $750,000 for a 400 sq ft home in santa monica?

[avenue s mortgage document auditing, inc.]

Subversion of Rural Innocence
Since 8/2006 we have been tirelessly EXPOSING mortgage fraud in the Antelope valley. I had to make a whole site just for this. For public awareness and safety please visit our site:
https://www.avenue-s.org
specific pages that show speculative flipping of homes costing more than those in the San Fernando Valley or Burbank- In Littlerock, Ca. 93543
https://www.avenue-s.org/flashfraudalert.html
In congress website:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/userletter/?letter_id=1187290061

Key in search: avenue-s.org in google or yahoo.

[nls73m]

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[Karina]

We apologized if the only comment that anyone can bring back on how to improve on building a website and questioning the certificates issues then the site was not your concern. It is overwhelming to comprehend with too much informations to just make into one page of TRUTH.People had been blinded by the power of $$$$ not knowing the effects that presently lead to a dissapated loses our nation's economy and values.
Thank you and for anyone to visit the site just keep in mind ,developing and creating a site that might be some flaws considering we had to learn by ourselves with no support or guidance then continues hacks we just continued to enhance with knowledge to find answers to keep our site visible which answers to why we had to secure our website. Our statement main objective is "To empower one's mind with truth and with care."

[robert tapia]

certainly not as confusing as how a collusion of 80% of the lending industry has caused our Economy Billions in losses. go figure.

[Robert Tapia]

We have an emergency situation. Our valley is now plagued with the "JUMBO" loan disease. 47% of the families are living below poverty. Even at conforming amounts, $417,000 at 7% APR fully amortized for 360 months- an impossibility for the misguided majority. Our local officials shamelessly turn a blind eye causing Households: Up To Their Eyebrows in Debt, Down Top Their Ankles in Liquidity

[robert tapia]

this is my response to the one comment upstairs re:wayyyyy to confusing to navigate! clean it up a bit and myabe someone will take you seriously. Why do you need an ssl certificate anyways?! cmon now... slow site, confusing to navigate and tooooo much un-needed info.

if you start looking past the tip of your nose then maybe you can see where you are going. be careful not to trip.

[franklin bubba]

Save your home through a forensic mortgage loan audit. Loans originated with fraud and predatory lending should never be "modified or refinanced".

They should be repudiated.

Greed and power created toxic securities fed to the global economy.