According to this report . . . YES.

That will be great news.

I am however reminded of Mr. Reality.   Standing right there, outside my office here in Perrysburg.

And that was Mr. Reality slapping me and my clients in the face with . . . reality.

For I am getting ready to close a short sale here in Perrysburg next week.

A FIVE YEAR short sale.

Five years on the market, in default, rented, managed, negotiated, appraised, inspected – then repeat over and over again.

And I am not complaining.

I am happy to be able to close it.   It is very satisfying.  The clients are thrilled.   The customers are thrilled.   The neighbors will be thrilled.   The banks involved are acting in their own best interest.

But . . . I feel the sting of reality.

Banks are not going to make short sales easy.

Or fast.

Or painless.

If they do the whole mortgage market will implode.

Short sales are an excellent idea.   When the house is no longer needed or wanted by the owner a short sale helps the neighbors.   It stabilizes the subdivision.   It’s a great idea and it works.

But please, don’t believe that it’s going to be fast.   Don’t be a Real Estate Pollyanna.

And the language is simple and plain:

“Mortgage Fraud is investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is punishable by up to 30  years in federal prison or $1,000,000 fine, or both.  It is illegal for a person to make any false statement regarding income, assets, debt, or matters of identification, or to willfully overvalue any land or property, in a loan and credit application for the purpose of influencing in any way the action of a financial institution.”

But the use of the FBI logo – that’s new!

But unlike the FBI warning that auto-plays before every DVD you own . . . . this one has teeth.  And real meaning.  Because the real price of mortgage fraud is HUGE in Ohio.

If you read the form – and believe me, most people read NONE of what they sign at typical real estate closings . . . . there are 3 choices to make.  Simple choices.  Choices you could make and not even think about . . . . but think about these.

Because someday someone will lose a house, lose a job, and or lose their freedom over what box they blithely or fraudulently checked off right here!

“The borrower must then select the occupancy for the specific property that is being financed:

• Primary Residence – Occupied by Borrower(s) within sixty (60) days of closing as stated in the Security Instrument I/we excuted.
• Second Home – To be occupied by the Borrower(s) as a second home (vacation, etc) while maintaining principal residence elsewhere.
• Investment Property – Not occupied by Borrower.   Purchased as an investment to be held or rented.”

Sounds innocent.   I am sure than an innocent mistake here will be forgiven . . . right?

No.

Right after this you see this language:

“I/we acknowledge it is illegal for a person(s) to make a false statement regarding occupancy of property being financed in a loan and credit application and that we are subject to prosecution under Section 1001, 1010 and 1014 under Title 18 of the United States Code”

Opportunity:  Federally insured mortgage.

Opportunity:  Federally regulated PMI coverage.

Opportunity: Federally funded/provided/controlled REO property.

Risk: Fines and Jail.

Your intent, memory, confusion, etc. will not matter.   Making a single false statement will matter.

Apply the “sunlight” standard to this and all other real estate matters.  Do it in the bright light of day – out in the sunshine.  Don’t shade the truth.  Don’t guess.  Don’t think about being clever.

If you are living in the house . . . you are an owner who is an occupant.

If you are “living in the house” and you keep another address you are not.

Lying on loan applications and HUD-1′s and occupancy certifications has always been both wrong illegal.

It’s now going to involve the FBI.

I wrote an offer or two this week.  On Perrysburg properties.  Being sought after by investors.

It’s common.

And it’s getting to be more common.

Think about where you can invest your money:

1. Stocks.   Maybe smart.  Maybe painful.  Check out the history of FSLR, my favorite stock, and hold on.

2. Bonds.  The returns are not much though.  In fact, this week, large investors were willing to PAY money to invest in German government securities.  Imagine that strategy taken out enough years  – you will have NO money with a long enough investment.

3. Cash.

4. Gold.

5. Other investments.

6. Real estate.

I had to list a house in Toledo today – $12,000 or so.  My firm last sold it for $70,000.   Now there are some terrible facts and realities associated with such a market crash.

Ignore all of them.

Instead imagine you bought the house for $12,000.

What could you do with it?  What kind of rental income could you get? What is the upside?  What tools and skills would you need to make it into a great rental property?

Again – people are seeking out real property in this collapsed, depressed market.  To invest in.

Inventory is down by over 20%

Interest rates are at all time lows.

Rents are up and rising.

And multiple offers are hitting on good houses.

And I think fortunes may be made right now . . . in Perrysburg rental property.

The “strategic default”.

The “jingle mail”.

You can look up the term on line.

But it happens when your personal life and your financial life have collided with your real estate life and the value of your real estate is smaller than the amount owed the bank.

The process is painful.  Traumatic. And fraught with risk.

Earlier today I went to a house, which shall remain hidden from identity for now (see description above . . . ), which was very nice.

Whose professional, educated owner had walked away from.

Gone.

Vanished.

Spurned our offer of “cash for keys”.

Turned off the water and the gas and the power – and vanished in the night.

Some thoughts:

1. Talk to your lawyer before you do this.  Seriously.  Just get a lawyer and get their opinion on what to do next.

2. Get help from ANYONE.  Family.  Friends. Charity.  Even the Federal Government has lots of programs.  And as worthless as HAMP or HEH! or HUH!? have been in the past 2 years – at least they often slow down the foreclosure train a little bit and give you time to recover.

3. Do not stop paying your food/gas/electricity/heat in order to make one more interest payment to the bank.  Sit down and think about what you have to have to live and survive.  Get some counsel.  Get some special help – but don’t lose everything in order to save an upside down, underwater house.

4. Get another legal opinion – lawyers are just like every other profession.  There are good ones, bad ones, and ones that do not know what they are talking about.   Get 2 opinions when you need brain surgery.  And 2 legal opinions when you are thinking about walking away.

5. At least call the broker/agent who was trying to talk to you.   This vanished owner lost $3000 simply by not calling me.  I bet he might have needed that money . . .

6. Put your families finances first – see #3 above.  I cannot stress this enough!

Many homeowners are being forced into this hard, cold calculus.  Banks might want to consider some very aggressive modifications to principal and not just kick the can down the road.   When upscale neighborhoods in Wood County are being hit and ravaged by strategic defaulters – it’s time to change the game plan.

But I was thinking about what was hard to do in Perrysburg real estate in 2011.  

So, I will try to “put lipstick on a pig” and share my problems with you in a positive and affirming manner!  

1. Getting or giving an accurate “quick sale value” was very hard to do in 2011.  In Perrysburg.  In Toledo.  The market was shifting and that made the guessing game of providing quick sale numbers very hard (you don’t want to know and you don’t ever want to need a “quick sale valuation” for your house!)

2. Real estate team management was hard.  My team?  Shifted.  One long time assistant retired.  One decided to, rather sensibly, take care of newborn twin boys!  And one just vanished!  New hires and new licensed team additions have made my team larger than ever.

3. Seeing people you sold a house to . . . . lose it to the bank.  Very, very hard.

4. Watch mold grow in great houses – very hard.  Sometimes the rules and regulations conspire to make a house sit in the shadow inventory of foreclosure-land.  And then bad things can happen.  It’s a dirty rotten shame.

5. Managing growth and the new market.   My team and I have never, ever sold more homes for more money.  And I have added several new lead systems.  Which has added a couple of thousand leads to manage.  Very hard.  

6. Telling buyer clients to be careful.  Just because rates are very, very low does not mean that you should spend all your income on that special house.  Not many people like to hear “no”.

7. Manage real estate deals.  Very, very hard.   Every part of every deal has changed in the past 4 years.  Financial rules.  Appraisal rules.  Valuation rules.  Stress levels are high.  Equity is low.  Jobs are under pressure if you are being transferred in or out.  When I have a “happy” closing – with neither the seller or the buyer under duress or stress or distress?  That’s actually notable today.

8. Telling the truth to sellers about the current and accurate value of their home.  Well . . . not hard.  But sometimes painful.  Or distressing.  But it has to be done.

9. Keeping up with the literature.   Never, ever been harder.  I maintain a few “professional designations” for my real estate career.  It’s a little inside industry inside real estate sales and management.  I have the ABR degree.  The CRP degree.  The CRS. The CDPE designation.  About 8 or 10 of them.  And they all take up biannual or triennial accreditation.  Plus my Ohio real estate broker’s license continuing education.  Plus the various real estate and sales and marketing books I love to read.  Too much in 2011.  For the first time ever I have not yet bought or even perused my favorite authors newest book – Seth Godin’s “We Are All Weird”

10. The iPad.  Love it.  Use it every day for real estate and reading (I did get tired of my dear wife hinting at me to “put that iPad down” . . . so I very cleverly bought her one!).  But it’s been a struggle to get forms and contract on it to work right.  Maybe my software engineer son can “make an app” for that in 2012.

I say “yes”.

I told a couple of my friends/acquaintances who were/are 0n Perrysburg City Council a couple of years ago to be ready.  READY FOR THIS:

To plan now on having less tax revenue on hand.

The Cleveland branch of the Federal Reserve Bank has an opinion: it’s here.

I have made many crazy real estate predictions:

A. Houses are going to get smaller.

B. Brokerages are going to radically change.

C. Agents are going to go mobile and untethered.

D. The internet is going to rule real estate advertising.

E. Shag carpeting is coming back in style.

Most of them have come true!  Well, except for the carpeting one.

But the prediction on municipal revenue is very difficult to accept.  What if the Lucas County lost 25% or 35% of it’s tax base?

What if Wood County lost 20%?  What will happen to city services and infrastructure and jobs and pensions if 50% of our tax base melts away (travel to Detroit or Flint for a view of the future . . .)

Think I am being alarmist?  Read what they are saying in Rhode Island.

Hard choices result.  Put them off . . . . and your entire city can be destroyed (see Detroit, above, which is heading for total financial meltdown with state control of it’s entire budget).

If you add in the effects of the decline in valuation and the imputed number of properties NOT paying any property tax at all in Lucas County . . . it’s a huge problem.

Tax increases are not going to work – no one will vote for them to pass and if you target businesses instead of people, they and their jobs/employees will simply decamp for Tennessee or Indiana (or Mexic0 or China).

In Wood County the property tax provides about 20% of the county’s income/revenue.   And the 2009 tax valuations are fractionally lower than the 2005 total valuation.  2005 was the last of the “boom years”.   I think that the county numbers are going to adjust down – by 20%.    The residential component is 70% of the total – so even record setting farmland prices won’t help when valuations are “normalized to the market”.

From the City of Perrysburg’s point of view it’s not that bad – real estate taxes make up about 10% of the city’s revenue.   So it’s not catastrophic.   The hit comes when the county/state feels the pain and starts squeezing the municipalities.

It’s started – and it’s going to get worse.

Disclaimer:  no snarky comments or inferences in this post should be construed as anything but an endorsement for my Dentist – Dr. Christopher Clark.  I like him.  He is incredibly talented.  He knows the ins/outs and tools/tactics to do any dental procedure with elan and skill and care.

But . . . sometimes selling a house in Perrysburg today IS like going to your dentist and getting root canal.  Which I just did with Dr. Clark.

It takes time.

It takes multiple appointments.

It takes effort.

It takes reasonable skill and training.

The dentist has to have the right tools and facilities.

The dentist has to have the right support staff.

You want your dentist to be . . . actually working full time in and on dentistry.  

All of these things are similar in my pursuit of helping clients sell their real estate and my dentists skill and care at removing dental problems.

(But . . . I sadly note . . . that I cannot give you laughing gas or an anesthetic shot to make your pain fade for a couple of hours).

As with the average root canal . . . in selling a home today there is perhaps going to be some pain involved.

Some emotional conflict.

Some stress and or trepidation.

But . . . if it has to be done and needs to be done and the situation and circumstances tell you to get it done . . .  what else can you do?

You get it done.

I have seen lots of multiple offers in Perrysburg.

I have seen a seeming “shortage” of good listings priced to market.

But is that good news?  Or is that bad news?

It really depends on where you are sitting and whose side you are on.

A buyer/future homeowner?  That’s often bad news.

A seller/homeowner?  That’s maybe good news.

Now – more GN/BN.

The Case-Shiller numbers just went UP for the first time in a long time – as far as Detroit matched pair real estate numbers go.  And I really do believe that Detroit is now the perfect analog for Toledo real estate numbers and velocity of sales.

So . . . . that’s good news, right? Yes.   I think so.

What’s the bad news?

Mortgage defaults – i.e. future foreclosures – are going up for the first time in 2 years.

It came from a blurb on housingwire.com:

“The national delinquency rate for borrowers who are 60 days or more past due on their mortgages rose for the first time in two years during the recent third quarter, TransUnion said Tuesday.

The delinquency rate for seriously past due loans edged up to 5.88% in 3Q, TransUnion reported.”

Which tracks what I am seeing – lot’s more foreclosures in Perrysburg and Maumee.  

That is the bad news.

The casino is hiring . . .

The sun is shining nice and warm in October . . .

And my team and I are selling lots of property . . .

So what do the numbers say?

Fewer Perrysburg houses on the market.

More houses in Perrysburg pending sale.

More houses in Perrysburg closed.

And fewer houses in Perrysburg failing to sell.

What’s not to like about these numbers as seen on this chart?  (you can click on it for a full size view . . . )

A recovery?  I think not.   Not until more and better things happen on the employment front.   We are seeing natural market forces balancing out a bloated inventory.   I am seeing cash investors moving in to buy good deals (I personally wrote 4 cash offers today, and negotiated a cash offer on a Perrysburg listing . . .).   I am seeing sellers who can’t afford to sell call the bank, or lease the house out and move to Florida or S. Carolina anyway.

No.   Not a recovery.   But something better than what we had last third quarter in 2010.

Practice.

Preparation.

Organization.

Research.

All equal to success in lots of endeavors.   Like in baseball.   And in real estate.

Do it . . . and your ducks are in a row.

Fail?  You will whiff.  You will miss.  You will not win.

If you strike out in baseball . . . you get another at bat . . . usually.

In real estate?  You may lose the home you HAD to have.  The “perfect house”.

And, not surprisingly, real estate agent batting averages, proficiency, and skill set strength might seem to matter.

Especially in light of the new NAR report on recent sales.

If you peel away the data . . . you will find that the percentage of pending sales that blew up – busted out – failed to close . . . has DOUBLED.

That’s a HUGE increase.

I believe there are a couple of reasons:

1. More and more appraisal problems with pending sales.

2. More REO transactions which are very hard to get closed.

3. More part time / old timey real estate agents who don’t sell anymore and don’t swim in these treacherous waters anymore.

4. Short sales – the modern bane of buyers, sellers, and agents.

Add them all up . . . . and it’s a miracle MORE deals than the 18% reported are not blowing up!

(by the way – it was 9% of all pending deals blowing up just a year ago . . . )

What to do?

Get accurate market data.

Thinking about buying a short sale?  Open your eyes, get the facts, and get some help.

Only hire an experienced, competent, skilled agent.