Freddie Mac: 30-year mortgage rate ties record low

The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped again this week to 3.94%, tying a record low set in October, according to housing finance giant Freddie Mac.

Freddie Mac's weekly survey pegged the rate for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage at a record low of 3.21%. Loans fixed for five years before becoming adjustable also set a new record, with an average start rate of 2.86%

The survey, released each Thursday, asks lenders to report rates they are offering to well-qualified borrowers who pay about 0.75 of a percentage point in upfront lender fees and discount points. The rates are for loans of up to $417,000.

Freddie has conducted the survey of 30-year loans since 1971, 15-year loans since 1991, and five-year adjustable hybrids since 2005.

The record lows have touched off the latest surge in home refinancing. But while sales of homes increased slightly in California last month, scheduled foreclosure sales have risen sharply and the environment for housing remains rough overall, as Freddie Mac's chief economist, Frank Nothaft, pointed out in announcing the latest survey results.

"In its Dec. 13 monetary policy announcement, the Federal Reserve reiterated the housing market remains depressed," Nothaft wrote. "Over the first nine months of 2012, households lost almost $400 billion in property values, which contributed to a $1.4 trillion reduction in overall net worth.

"In addition, serious delinquency rates (90 or more days delinquent plus foreclosures) on mortgages increased slightly between June 30 and Sept. 30 of the year, breaking a six-quarter consecutive decline, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.”

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-- E. Scott Reckard

 Photo: Freddie Mac's headquarters in Virginia. Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press

California's home sales up 4% in November

California's housing market showed some signs of luster in November with sales picking up over the same month last year, but prices declined and foreclosures remained prevalent.

Sales fell 4.2% from October, although they commonly decline from October to November, and compared with November 2010, they were up 4%, according to real estate research firm DataQuick. A total of 32,669 homes sold last month, which is about 18% below the average for November since 1988, when DataQuick's statistics begin.

The state's median home price was $244,000, up 1.7% from October and down 4.3% from November 2010.

“These days, buyers and sellers have to contend with two sets of problems, which sometimes play into each other and sometimes conflict with each other," DataQuick President John Walsh said in a statement. "The first is the lousy economy and the opportunities it presents, for better or worse. The second is the dysfunctional mortgage-finance system. Interest rates may be at record lows, but the types of mortgages that are available have been drastically reduced and qualifying is a true grind.”

The state's median price, which is the point at which half the homes in the state sold for more and half for less, has declined year-over-year for 14 consecutive months. The most recent low in the median was hit in April 2009, at the height of the financial crisis. After that, the housing market began showing some signs of strength as a tax credit mostly aimed at first-time buyers helped fuel a buying spree. The market has been weak ever since that credit expired in April 2010.

Foreclosures are a big part of that weakness, as those homes and other so-called distressed properties tend to sell at a discount. Of the previously owned homes that sold last month, about 1 in 3 were foreclosures and about 1 in 5 were short sales, in which the home is sold for less than the outstanding debt on the property.

In Southern California, sales rose 0.3% from October and 4.2% from November 2010 with 16,884 homes bought across the six-county region. The median home price for the region was $275,000 in November, up 1.9% from October but down 4.2% from November 2010.

The Bay Area's housing market picked up a bit of steam last month. A total of 6,317 homes sold in the nine-county region, down 2.0% from October and up 3.4% from November 2010. The Bay Area's median home price was $363,500, up 3.9% from October and down 4.3% from November 2010.

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Photo: For-sale signs in Palo Alto. Credit: Paul Sakuma / Associated Press

Southern California home sales increase in November with low prices

Low prices for starter homes spurred some bargain hunting among home shoppers in Southern California last month, sending sales up slightly over last year. But higher-priced neighborhoods did not fare as well.

Overall, November sales were up 0.3% from October and 4.3% from November 2010 with 16,884 homes bought across the region, according to real estate research firm DataQuick of San Diego. Sales of newly built homes continued to suffer, declining 15.2% from the same period a year earlier, falling to the lowest level on record for a November.

The median home price for the region was $275,000 in November, up 1.9% from October but down 4.2% from November. The median is the price at which half the homes sold for more and half for less. It is heavily influenced by changes in the type of homes selling.

Short sales and foreclosures accounted for 51.3% of the market last month, DataQuick said.

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Photo: A sign showing a property for sale. Credit: Images_of_Money via Flickr 

With mortgages at 4%, demand for home-purchase loans rises

With 30-year mortgage rates still averaging a rock-bottom 4%, applications to purchase homes rose after Thanksgiving to the highest level in four months.

Freddie Mac's weekly report on home lender offerings, released Thursday, showed the typical rate for a 30-year loan at 3.99%, the sixth straight week at or slightly below 4%.  Last year at this time, the 30-year fixed loan averaged 4.61%.

Fifteen-year fixed-rate home loans, a popular option for people refinancing homes, averaged 3.27%, down from last week's 3.3%. A year ago, the 15-year loan averaged 3.96%, Freddie Mac said.

The big government-backed mortgage buyer asks lenders what rates they are offering to borrowers with good credit and 20% down payments or 20% equity if they are refinancing. The rates are for loans of up to $417,500 with the borrowers paying about 0.75% of the loan amount in lender fees and points.

The typical mortgage rate for larger "jumbo" loans was running about a third of a percentage point higher, according to another report this week, this one from the Mortgage Bankers Assn. Jumbo loans are priced higher because lenders can't sell them to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the other big government-sponsored mortgage buyer. 

Offering a bit of hope for housing at a time when foreclosures are drawing angry protests and government investigations, the mortgage bankers said applications for loans to buy houses reached the highest level since early August.

Refinances still made up about three-quarters of all applications for home loans, however.

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Photo: Occupy LA protests a foreclosure auction in Norwalk. Credit: Genaro Molina /Los Angeles Times

Mosaic Apartments to open in L.A.'s Pico Union district

Mosaic Apartments, a $21-million affordable housing project in the historic Pico Union area of Los Angeles, is set to open Thursday.

The 56-unit complex west of Staples Center near the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Union Avenue was developed by Amcal Multihousing Inc. of Agoura Hills to house low- to moderate-income renters.

The rapidly changing neighborhood is experiencing new interest from developers due to substantial commercial and residential growth in the adjacent South Park district and attractions such as L.A. Live, said Percival Vaz, chief executive of Amcal.

The design of Mosaic’s two three-story buildings is intended to complement the neighborhood’s historic housing created in the late 19th century and early 20th century — Craftsman, Queen Anne and American Foursquare homes — said architect Wade Killefer of Killefer Flammang Architects.

The project is divided by a long linear court. There are three smaller courtyards, one including playground equipment for youngsters who live at the development. Each building has a community room.

There is underground parking and ground-floor spaces for stores along Pico Boulevard.

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Photo: Mosaic Apartments.  Credit: Killefer Flammang Architects

 

California, Nevada team up to investigate foreclosure fraud

California and Nevada, two states at the heart of the nation’s housing crisis, will join forces to investigate allegations of foreclosure fraud and other types of mortgage improprieties.

The agreement to share resources and work jointly is the latest sign that the nation’s state attorneys general want to be out front in cracking down on bank practices the housing crisis — from the selling of mortgage-backed securities to the handling of foreclosures.

At a joint news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris and Nevada Atty Gen. Catherine Cortez Masto said their offices would share litigation strategies and evidence would link their offices' civil and criminal teams.

The announcement comes less than a week after Massachusetts said it was suing the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers over alleged foreclosure illegalities. The move marked the first such litigation to be filed by a state.

Harris' office has opened a number of its own probes of the mortgage business. Investigators have subpoenaed information from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into lending and foreclosure practices in the state, The Times has previously reported. Her office also is investigating Bank of America and its mortgage arm Countrywide Financial, along with Citibank, seeking information on their sale of mortgaged-backed securities in California.

The new alliance between Harris and Masto comes as banks are working to strike a deal with a coalition of attorneys general who are working to seek relief for consumers allegedly wronged by faulty mortgage servicing and foreclosure practices.

Harris formally withdrew from those talks earlier this year. Masto has said Nevada officials would evaluate any proposal the talks might produce but would also push ahead with their own work. New York, Delaware, Kentucky and Minnesota also have signaled they are unhappy with the direction of the talks with the banks. All of those states have expressed concern that the banks could be let off too easily.

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Photo: California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris. Credit: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times

Freddie Mac: Mortgage rates stuck in low at 4%

The mortgage engine seems stuck in low.

For five straight weeks, Freddie Mac's survey of the rates offered by home lenders has averaged at or below 4% for 30-year loans.

The most recent Freddie survey came out Thursday at an even 4% -- a level that would have seemed hallucinatory not so long ago, before the Federal Reserve pulled out the interest-rate stops to support to the economy.

The 15-year fixed loan, at an average of 3.3%, also remains in record low territory, and Freddie Mac said the start rates on adjustable mortgages have dipped to all-time lows.

Something else also appears to be lower, though, despite the record rates: desire for new home loans.

A Mortgage Bankers Assn. count of applications showed an 11.7% decrease last week even after adjusting for seasonal factors such as the Thanksgiving holiday. The previous MBA weekly survey had also shown a decline as the latest wave of refinancings begins to subside.

A Fed report this week on regional economic conditions described residential real estate markets as generally sluggish. But the report also said the economy expanded at a moderate pace in 11 of the Fed's 12 Districts -- a fact that provided encouragement to Freddie Mac economist Frank Nothaft.

"The extraordinarily low mortgage rates of the past month may provide a needed spur to housing activity," Nothaft said, hopefully, in the latest Freddie Mac release.

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Occupy movement's next stop? Foreclosed homes.

-- E. Scott Reckard

File photo: The troubled mortgage business concerns Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Credit: Reuters / Jason Reed

Occupy movement's next stop? Foreclosed homes.

 

After being evicted from parks and public spaces, the Occupy movement is set to move into foreclosed homes.

Organizers said Tuesday that they plan to help families across America fight foreclosure and eviction next week by "occupying" those properties. Some of the families will be moving back into their vacant properties, while others will resist eviction, said Peter Kuhns, an organizer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which is organizing some of the actions in Southern California.

“The original intent of Occupy Wall Street was to protest the excess of the big banks and Wall Street banks, so it seems like a pretty natural step for people to protest foreclosed properties,” Kuhns said. “Foreclosures are one of the biggest aspects of the economic crisis created by Wall Street bankers.”

Protesters also plan to disrupt foreclosure auctions across the country, where troubled homes are sold to investors and other cash buyers or repossessed by lenders. A website for the actions has been created, detailing in videos the histories of some homeowners facing foreclosure.

More than 30 foreclosed properties will be declared as "occupied" Tuesday, Kuhns said.

At least two of the homes will be in Southern California -- one in Los Angeles County and another in the Inland Empire, Kuhns said.

This is not the first incident of homeowners resisting foreclosure led by the group. Rose Gudiel, a homeowner in La Puente, refused to leave her property in September despite an eviction order, insisting she qualified for a loan modification. She ultimately won that modification.

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Photo: Rose Gudiel, who purchased a home in 2005 in La Puente, fought eviction with family members. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

Notary in Las Vegas foreclosure fraud case found dead

A notary who was set to be sentenced for her part in a massive foreclosure fraud investigation was found dead in her Las Vegas home Monday.

Tracy Lawrence, 43, had pleaded guilty to one count of notarizing the signature of an individual not in her presence, a misdemeanor with a potential prison sentence of up to one year, as well as a fine of up to $2,000.

Lawrence had pleaded guilty to participating in an alleged scheme being investigated by the Nevada attorney general’s office in which tens of thousands of fraudulent documents were filed between 2005 and 2008 with the Clark County Recorder's Office. Two Orange County residents have been indicted in that investigation, accused of directing the operation.

Lawrence was scheduled to appear before a judge at 8:30 a.m. Monday. When she did not appear, investigators with the attorney general's office visited her home and found her dead, said Jennifer Lopez, a spokeswoman with the office of Nevada Atty. Gen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

Officer Jacinto Rivera, a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesman, said that Lawrence's death was not being investigated as a homicide.

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Photo: A bank-owned home for sale in Las Vegas. Credit: Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images

 

One in five American homes 'underwater'

More than one in five American home mortgages are underwater.

An estimated 10.7-million households, or 22.1% of all homes with mortgages, had more debt on the properties than they were worth in the third quarter, according to Santa Ana research firm CoreLogic. This is a slight decline from the 10.9 million properties that were underwater in the second quarter.

"Although slightly down, negative equity remains very high and renders many borrowers vulnerable when negative economic shocks occur, such as job loss or illness,” CoreLogic chief economist Mark Fleming said in a statement. “The nearly $700-billion mortgage debt overhang has touched many corners of the market, and this overhang is holding back the recovery of the housing market and broader economy."

Nevada had the highest negative-equity percentage with 58% of mortgaged homes underwater, followed by Arizona, 47%; Florida, 44%; Michigan, 35% and Georgia, 30%. This was the first quarter that Georgia made the top five, ousting from the group California, which had been among the top spots since the firm began tracking the data in 2009.

In the Los Angeles Metro area, 353,427 homes, or 23% of all mortgaged properties, were in negative equity at the end of the third quarter, a decline from 356,677. Negative equity can decline when foreclosures increase as the repossession process extinguishes underwater loans.

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Photo: A bank-owned home for sale in Las Vegas. Credit: Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Image 

 

Home price index: Nation, California see slip in September

Home prices in the nation's largest cities fell from August to September, according to a closely watched index, renewing a decline in values with the end of the busy spring and summer months.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of 20 American cities, a key measure that is closely watched by economists, fell 0.6% from August to September and 3.6% from September 2010.

"Any chance for a sustained recovery will probably need a stronger economy," David Blitzer, chairman of the S&P index committee, said in a release announcing the new data Tuesday.

All of the California cities in the index posted declines from the prior month. Los Angeles and San Diego were down 0.8% and San Francisco fell 1.5%. A drop in sales and weakening in values is common from August to September, as many families tend to close their purchases and complete their moves before the start of the school year.

Home prices in the California cities are comparatively healthy despite the state's high unemployment rate, because the markets tracked by the index are close to key job centers such as Hollywood and Silicon Valley and are also near the ocean -- where overbuilding was relatively constrained. The index does not track prices in California's Central Valley or the Inland Empire, where housing is still weak.

The Case-Shiller index also includes adjusted data, but the experts who publish these numbers have cautioned that the large number of foreclosures on the market have distorted the statistics. The adjusted data showed the 20-city index fell the same amount from August to September.

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Photo: A sign showing a property for sale. Credit: Images_of_Money via Flickr