March 2009 - Posts

Window of Opportunity - time to buy?
20 March 09 02:49 PM | Elena & Kirill Gorbounov(a) | 0 Comments   
If a window of opportunity appears one should take advantage of it. One should jump, run, seize it! Don't miss it. Of course, one needs to soberly realize the opportunity for what it is and what it presents. I am not talking about rushing into a wrong direction, breaking legs, and hurting oneself ... but instead realizing that currently the FED rate is ZERO and furthermore the Government is buying securities and therefore artificially lowered/depressed the rates further down. Therefore, waiting longer and longer might prove to be a costly mistake after which you will kick yourself for years to come in the future. Read More...
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Home For Sale by owner - Save money
12 March 09 11:52 PM | Elena & Kirill Gorbounov(a) | 5 Comments   
Throw caution to the wayside - go it alone! You are smart enough and you know it all ... you saw what your friend down the street sold his/her house for last year and you need all the money you can get! Simply place an add in the Post or on Craigslist and the buyer will be there! You know you can get the highest price, market the property, schedule and show, screen the offers, and do all the legal paperwork. According to NAR's 2006 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers: 1) "40% of FSBO's sold the home to someone they knew prior to the transaction". 2) "Homes sold with the help of a real estate professional in 2006 sold on average for 32 percent more than FSBO sales. The median FSBO selling price in 2006 was $187,200, compared with $247,000 for agent-assisted transactions." There must be a hidden secret as to why the vast majority of all Real Estate is sold by Real Estate Agents - they must be bringing value! PS Buyer has to consider many items to proceed with a FSBO without the assistance of a REALTOR ... inspections, paperwork, title transfer (clowds), fees, etc. Read More...
FCPS school boundary changes
09 March 09 02:38 PM | Elena & Kirill Gorbounov(a) | 59 Comments   
Annandale HS is overcrowded, and the boundaries might be redrawn by sending students Falls Church High School and at Lake Braddock Secondary School. Additionally Poe Middle School is also experiencing overcrowding with students maybe going to Glasgow and Lake Braddock. The changes will made at the beginning of the 2010 or 2011 school year. Specifics - click here. Maps and Particulars - click here. Read More...
UVA Study Sheds Light on Foreclosures - Important to READ!
05 March 09 08:15 PM | Elena & Kirill Gorbounov(a) | 0 Comments   
Here is a press release from a recent UVA study! Please read it! Spoiler: 87 percent of the national declines have been in Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California!!! ————– February 25, 2009 — National housing price declines and foreclosures have not been as severe as some analyses have indicated, and they are not as important as financial manipulations in bringing on the global recession, according to a new analysis of foreclosures in 50 states, 35 metropolitan areas and 236 counties by University of Virginia professor William Lucy and graduate student Jeff Herlitz. Their analysis shows that most foreclosures have been concentrated in California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and a modest number of metropolitan counties in other states. In fact, they claim that “66 percent of potential housing value losses in 2008 and subsequent years may be in California, with another 21 percent in Florida, Nevada and Arizona, for a total of 87 percent of national declines.” “California had only 10 percent of the nation’s housing units, but it had 34 percent of foreclosures in 2008,” Lucy and Herlitz reported. California was vulnerable to foreclosures because the median value of owner-occupied housing in 2007 was 8.3 times the median family income, while the 2007 national average was only 3.2 times higher than median family income (and in 2000, it was lower still at 2.4). Another vulnerability to foreclosures was seen in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, where more than 20 percent of mortgage-holders in each county were paying at least 50 percent of their income in housing-related costs. “But even in California, enormous variations existed among jurisdictions, such as in the San Francisco area, where Solano County had 3.69 percent of housing units in foreclosure in November 2008, while only 0.24 percent of housing units were in foreclosure in the City of San Francisco — a 15 to 1 difference,” according to Lucy and Herlitz. Across the country, the run-up in housing prices from 2000 to the national peak in 2006 has contributed to a 10-months’ supply of houses for sale, nearly six months more than the norm from 1998 through 2005, they concluded. But most of the excess supply is either foreclosed properties for sale in declining areas — which constituted 45 percent of total sales in some months of 2008 — or “opportunity” sale offerings by owners seeking to take profits on the price escalation of previous years, which often happens when the price of existing homes rise appreciably. Only a small portion of the excess supply is from current construction of new houses, they said. Potential losses in housing values from 2008 foreclosures in all 50 states — if values decline to 2000 levels — were less than one-third of the $350 billion provided to banks and insurance companies to cope with losses in mortgage-backed securities, Lucy and Herlitz estimated. “Damage to the balance sheets of large banks and AIG occurred not mainly from losses on foreclosed residential mortgages, but because of borrowing short-range to buy long-range derivatives and from selling credit default swaps insuring derivatives backed by mortgage payments,” Lucy and Herlitz said. “These financial manipulations had high-speed forward gears, but when the housing bubble burst, the banks and AIG discovered they had neglected to create a reverse gear with which they could separate foreclosed properties from some forms of mortgage-backed securities.” Although there are pockets of substantial declines, claims that overall housing values have tanked nationwide are exaggerated, they said. “In the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, for example, prices have barely changed in the District of Columbia, Alexandria and Arlington County, and parts of Fairfax County in Virginia. The largest price declines (more than 30 percent in 2008) have been in Prince William County, Va., but even there, the range of price declines in its six zip codes ranged from 49 percent to only 6 percent.” The number of foreclosures usually were lower in central cities than in some suburban counties, probably due to less demand in those suburbs, according to Lucy and Herlitz. Part of this loss of demand can be accounted for by shifts in the age distribution in the population. The population segment from age 30 to 44, when the biggest increase in home ownership occurs, has been declining in recent years. Those are prime child-rearing years for families, so demand for houses with four or more bedrooms has declined and led to an excess of large houses in some counties. The Obama administration’s proposed foreclosure prevention program sets a target of households spending between 31 percent and 38 percent of their income on housing-related expenses. The program will try to prevent foreclosures in residences where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have purchased the mortgages by permitting downward adjustments to mortgage rates, to where the value of mortgages is not more than 105 percent of the houses’ value, they said. “This policy will help homeowners where price declines have been modest, as they have been in most states, most metropolitan areas and most counties,” Lucy and Herlitz said. This study includes foreclosure, house value and income data for 2007 or 2008 for 50 states, the 35 largest metropolitan areas and 236 counties in the 35 metropolitan areas. Lucy is Lawrence Lewis Jr. Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning in U.Va.’s School of Architecture. Herlitz is a graduate student in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning. For information, contact William Lucy at 434-295-4453 or whl@virginia.edu. Read More...
DC Metropolitan - One of the Best Markets! (according to Forbes magazine)
04 March 09 12:09 PM | Elena & Kirill Gorbounov(a) | 0 Comments   
10 Best New York City Washington, DC Charlotte, N.C. Portland, Ore San Diego Denver Boston Dallas Los Angeles Seattle According to: Forbes: Matt Woolsey (02/24/2005) via NAR: Read More...
What should you do if you can't pay your your mortgage?
03 March 09 12:03 PM | Elena & Kirill Gorbounov(a) | 0 Comments   
One of the biggest errors homeowners make when experiencing financial difficulties is not speaking to their lender! More than half of the people who lose their home through foreclosure never spoke to their lenders - who never realized that the customer was in trouble. You know that the lender will lose money if you foreclose. The note holder is interested in you staying in the home and making your payments - so call them and talk about options! Some of those options might be refinancing, a different repayment plan, or postponement of payments for a short time. Read More...
Foreclosure - Guess what got lost in the loan pool? by GRETCHEN MORGENSON
02 March 09 11:56 AM | Elena & Kirill Gorbounov(a) | 0 Comments   
March 1, 2009 Fair Game Guess What Got Lost in the Loan Pool? By GRETCHEN MORGENSON WE are all learning, to our deep distress, how the perpetual pursuit of profits drove so many of the bad decisions that financial institutions made during the mortgage Read More...

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