How To Renegotiate Your Lease

Variable costs like payroll, office supplies and advertising usually draw first blood in a recession. But some ostensibly fixed burdens are ripe for whittling, too, if you know how to negotiate. A big one: leased real estate.

In this market, even agreements inked for the next five or 10 years are open for negotiation. Indeed, landlords have all but come to expect the conversation.

"With the kinds of hits that most businesses have taken in sales, they can't afford to pay out at the occupancy rates they have been," says Ivan Friedman, chief executive of RCS Real Estate Advisors in Manhattan.

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Home Prices Down -- For Now

Despite of the government effort to improve the housing market, the prices keep to be in a free fall. According Forbes article house prices in January are 18% lower than December last year and this is after billion of dollars were put on the financial institutions, Fennie and Freddie become landlords and most of the biggest banks froze the foreclosures. Where are we going and when the bottom will be hit? Here is the article.

They hit decade lows but analysts expect the housing market to improve soon.

Home prices reached decade lows, the National Association of Realtors reported on Wednesday, but that should turn around soon as conditions change.

The pace of U.S. existing home sales fell in January to a 4.5 million-unit annual rate, while home prices and inventories dropped, the NAR said."Given so much stimulus package discussion in January, some would-be buyers simply sat out for clarity and certainty on the nature of housing stimulus," the report stated.

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Housing Plan Bails Out Mortgage Insurers

If Obama's program is put into action, many feared losses won't materialize.

Along with giving American homeowners a break, President Barack Obama's new plan to get mortgage foreclosures under control should be a boon to the troubled companies that insure home loans.

The $75.0 billion Treasury-led initiative, if it works, will pull millions of Americans into affordable mortgages, reducing the number of at-risk loans that mortgage insurers had already planned to pay claims on.

Much of the foreclosure mitigation, up to 5.0 million loans, will be done through refinancing debts owned or guaranteed by government-controlled Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ) who already shoulder $5.6 trillion in U.S. mortgages, roughly half the market.

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New study shows Dallas-area home prices rose in 2008

What home price decline?

While most recent studies show home prices in Dallas-Fort Worth decreased slightly last year, a new report begs to differ.

First American CoreLogic Inc. says in its latest study that home prices in the D-FW area were up almost 2 percent at the end of 2008 compared with a year earlier.

Nationwide prices were down 11.1 percent, according to the same report.

The study released Wednesday runs counter to others that say median home sales prices fell here in 2008.

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Will the Housing Rescue Plan Work?

Will the housing plan offered by President Barack Obama this week be enough to overcome the housing downturn? Some big guns in the world of economics have doubts.

The plan seeks to stem foreclsoures by helping home owners who are still current on their mortgage but at risk of defaulting.

"It's a positive step in the right direction," says economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. "I think it will be much more successful than those that preceded it. I worry that it's not going to be successful fast enough.

"Likewise, Dean Baker, a housing specialist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said: "I'm not impressed. There are some good things in there. I think giving servicers incentives is a good thing. But it's mostly money for banks, not money for home owners. … The banks still decide who gets into this, and that's been a problem all along."

Patrick Newport, an economist with IHS-Global Insight, is also skeptical. He pointed out that the number of people who are underwater on their mortgages has risen to 15 million, but the Obama initiative aims to help only 7 million to 9 million, "Obama's plan is an ambitious one, more ambitious than analysts had been led to expect," he says. "Whether it will stop the bloodletting, however, time will tell.

”Source: Los Angeles Times, Maura Reynolds (02/19/2009)

For more details: Read What's in the Foreclosure Plan

9 smart money moves on everything from debt management to real estate to taxes.

In residential real estate, 2009 arrives much the same way that 2008 did: via a rocky road with deepening potholes. While more homebuyers are swooping in and picking up great deals, and sales are slowly increasing in many markets, the ongoing excess inventory of foreclosed homes continues to depress the market.
While potential buyers are getting very low mortgage rates, they also are facing much tighter credit standards and demands for significantly larger down payments. And we haven't even started absorbing the financial fallout from adjustable-rate mortgages, slated to ratchet up in 2009.

No one can really say quite when this downward spiral will cease. If former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and current Chairman Ben Bernanke were surprised by the depth of this housing crisis, who among us can accurately make the call?

There is growing sentiment out there that this darkness directly precedes a new dawn. A late-2008 consensus survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute, based on input from more than 600 industry experts, projects the U.S. residential market should start rebounding appreciably in 2010.

But what about now? Well, this new economy has added some wrinkles to home buying and home selling strategies, while reintroducing some of those old-school favorites like sound fundamental fiscal practices. So here are nine tips for homebuyers and nine for sellers to help them survive and hopefully thrive in the transition year of 2009.

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Forecast: Homebuilding to fall by nearly 50% – but not in Dallas-Fort Worth

U.S. homebuilding will fall by almost 50 percent this year, a new forecast predicts.

But don’t expect such a large decline in home starts in North Texas, analysts with Metrostudy say.

The Houston-based housing research firm anticipates that new home production in the U.S. will decrease by an additional 47 percent in 2009.

“This decline would be in addition to the 33 percent drop from 2007 to 2008, and is steeper than many other housing economists have predicted,” Brad Hunter, Metrostudy’s chief economist said in the new report. “Some forecasts have been unrealistically high.”

The Dallas-Fort Worth area has already seen a 46 percent drop in single-family home starts between 2006 and 2008.

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Dallas-Fort Worth home prices down about 5% in new report

Dallas-Fort Worth home prices fell by almost 5 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the latest in a string of recent housing market assessments.

North Texas’ year-end decline in median home sales prices was modest compared to the record 12.4 percent nationwide drop reported Thursday by the National Association of Realtors. The Realtors’ quarterly home price report tracks houses sold through their multiple listing service.

D-FW’s fourth quarter annual decline was about twice the rate of the home price decrease the Realtors association reported for the area in third quarter 2008.
But it is in line with recent local studies that show median home sales prices in the area dropped by between 3 and 5 percent in 2008.

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Moratoriums Slow Foreclosures, For Now

Filings fell in January, but defaults continue to rise, suggesting it's only a temporary lull.

As the Obama administration continues to hammer out details of its grand scheme to combat the next tsunami of foreclosures, the number of homes repossessed by lenders ebbed a bit in January.
The lull was thanks largely to a recently expired ban on such seizures at government-controlled mortgage giants Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ) and Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ).

Foreclosure filings--including default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions--fell 10% to 274,399 in January from the month before, while bank repossessions declined by a much larger 15%, according to a report released Thursday by Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure data firm RealtyTrac. This indicates that a larger number of distressed borrowers are in the foreclosure process, but fewer lenders are actually taking properties back.
"Whatever drop-off we've seen month-over-month can be attributed to moratoriums at Fannie and Freddie and a similar 45-day ban by the state of Florida," said RealtyTrac Vice President Rick Sharga. And while the number of notices of default were an improvement from December's surge, "They are still the fourth highest we’ve seen since 2005 when we started tracking."

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Freddie Mac to rent foreclosed properties

Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac said it will allow some borrowers to rent out their homes after losing them to foreclosure.
The goal of the new policy, announced Friday, is to prevent properties from becoming vacant so they won't fall into disrepair.

Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ) also said it will allow renters to remain in their homes even if their landlord enters foreclosure. The McLean, Va.-based company currently has about 8,500 properties in the foreclosure process, but many of those are vacant.
"Keeping foreclosed properties occupied and in better repair will support local property values and promote a faster recovery in the housing market," said Freddie Mac Chief Executive David Moffett.

Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ), which announced similar plans earlier this month, said it has stopped about 20,000 foreclosure sales and halted 6,300 evictions of owners or renters this winter.

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Real Estate Markets Most Likely To Rebound

Real estae market most like likely to rebound? Do you think so? We may still have way to fall.

It's tough all over, but some say these 10 cities have the best--and worst--chances for speedy recoveries.

If you're a homeowner seeing property values plummet, look to the commercial real estate market for solace. It might tell you which areas will recover fastest--and which will likely remain weak.
The Urban Land Institute recently asked 700 real estate professionals to name the best (and worst) places to invest in commercial real estate in the coming year. Those surveyed included private developers, Realtors and Real Estate Investment Trust executives. Their answers also apply to the residential market, since the single-family-home sector typically follows the economy. As wages go up and there are more jobs, more people can buy homes, pushing prices up.

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