Prepping foreclosed homes for resale can be hazardous

FARMERS BRANCH – Most of the modest houses along this street off Josey Lane are sporting some kind of Christmas decorations.



Contractor Rich Dake looks over the condition of a foreclosed house in Farmers Branch before he and his crew get to work preparing it for resale.



But the only sign of the season at one home reads: "This house has been winterized."



"We put these signs up at all of the properties," said Rich Dake, who cuts off the water and treats the drains in foreclosed houses to prevent freezes.



An attic air conditioner was apparently a good idea to a former resident of a foreclosed home in Farmers Branch.



"Last week, we took three trailer loads of trash out of this place," he said. "You wouldn't believe what I've found."



Stolen appliances, oceans of junk and even the occasional abandoned cat – it's all part of the business of securing and fixing up Dallas-area foreclosed homes.



After more than 20 years in the business of handling foreclosed properties, Dake has a sixth sense about what he's going to discover in an empty house.



"Usually before I even open the door, I can tell what I'm going to find inside."



The three-bedroom house was a bit worse than usual. "It was stacked deep with boxes and trash," said Dake, of Contractor Services Unlimited Inc.



Out back, under a collapsed patio cover, were more piles of junk.



Dake and his work crew emptied the place out, swept and vacuumed the floors, cleaned the kitchen and cut the grass.



The lender that owns the property decided to sell "as is" – complete with cracks in the walls and carpet that's seen better days.



"This is the kind of house an investor will buy, put a little money into it and rent it out," Dake said.



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Nov. existing-home sales up 5.6% to 4.68 million

Sales of existing homes rose 5.6% to a seasonally-adjusted annualized rate of 4.68 million, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday, a figure that was pretty close to the MarketWatch-compiled economist poll of 4.66 million.

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Mortgage help falls far short, panel says.

Specifically, the program is expected to prevent roughly 800,000 foreclosures -- significantly less than the 3 to 4 million foreclosures that the White House aimed to stop, and vastly fewer than the 8 to 13 million foreclosures expected by 2012, the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government’s much-maligned $700 billion bailout package said in a report about foreclosures.



“Treasury has tweaked its main foreclosure prevention effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), but the changes have not resolved the panel’s core concerns,” the panel said.



The report comes as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is set to testify before the panel on Thursday about the bailout package, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Geithner is expected to be grilled with questions about the government’s mortgage modification program and the $50 billion in TARP funds it allocated for foreclosure prevention.



The Treasury Department refuted the panel’s assertion that the program has largely failed most troubled borrowers.



“This program, in less than two years, has already provided critical support to struggling homeowners,” said Treasury spokesman Mark Paustenbach. “This program will continue to help many more avoid foreclosure. The success of the administration’s efforts must also be measured in how it transformed the mortgage servicer industry. Prior to HAMP, there were few, if any, modifications taking place. HAMP was a game-changer.”



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2011 hopes for Dallas-Fort Worth housing market rest on jobs

Housing industry prognosticators are hoping for modest gains in the North Texas market in 2011.

That's what they were wishing for in 2010, too.

It all depends on the economy, industry forecasters say.

"Jobs are key – not only the number of jobs, but equally important are the kinds and quality of jobs, incomes associated with new jobs and the permanence of the jobs created," said James Gaines, economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. "If all the new employment is for low-wage, temporary workers, it won't have much positive impact on the housing market."

With expectations for modest economic growth in 2011, Gaines doesn't look for a sharp rebound in the North Texas housing market.

"Best news is probably that we don't see things getting worse, but we also don't see significant improvement," he said. "Tight credit and slow job gains will keep home sales relatively flat.

"As the job market does improve and more people are employed, there may be a slight increase in volume, but I don't think it will be more than a few percentage points, at best."

The local housing market has a lot of ground to make up.

The number of pre-owned homes sold each month in North Texas has fallen by more than 50 percent from its peak in mid-2006.

And new home sales have plunged more than 60 percent during the same period.

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BofA Restarts Some Foreclosures

Bank of America Corp. said it restarted about 16,000 foreclosure cases across the U.S. on Monday, but it may be weeks before it is known whether the bank's submission of new documents will pass muster with local judges.



The bank instructed its foreclosure attorneys this week to prepare new affidavits in 7,800 cases where court approval is required to foreclose on a home, out of a total of 102,000 frozen by the bank amid documentation concerns. In states where no court approval is required, attorneys were asked to lift the hold on 8,000 delayed foreclosure sales out of 30,000.



The nation's largest bank as measured by assets is scrambling to get its foreclosure engine restarted amid widespread scrutiny of its mortgage practices. It and several U.S. banks halted foreclosures following allegations employees signed hundreds of foreclosure documents a day without carefully reviewing their contents.



Bank of America officials previously said they would resubmit affidavits on pending foreclosures starting Oct. 25, with foreclosure sales resuming in November. But those efforts hit several snags, including the hiring of new law firms to handle new foreclosure paperwork, as the bank refiled just a "handful" of cases as part of an initial pilot test of the process. "We are taking a deliberate and phased approach," said bank spokesman Dan Frahm.



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Walk appeal

The report looked at 94,000 real-estate transactions in 15 markets. In 13 of those markets, higher levels of "walkability" were directly linked to higher home values.

The report, "Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities," was commissioned by CEOs for Cities, a national network of urban leaders from the civic, business, academic and philanthropic sectors.

It's an important point for home-buyers who are trying to identify which homes will hold their value, said Joseph Cortright, the report's author and a senior policy adviser to CEOs for Cities. Cortright is an economist and president of Impresa, a Portland, Ore.-based consulting firm.

Walkable places have some of the best chances of performing well in years ahead, he said.

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Dallas-area home prices are largely unchanged, a U.S. agency reports

Dallas-area home prices were basically unchanged from a year ago in the third quarter, according to the latest U.S. government estimate.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency also said that Fort Worth-area prices were down 1.15 percent from a year ago in its report released Wednesday.

Nationally, prices were down 3.2 percent from third quarter 2009, the agency said. That compares with a 0.3 percent gain in the Dallas area.

The federal home price index is based on mortgages issued by government-sponsored mortgage companies – Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and FHA. That makes the data different from price reports that use a broader measure.

The National Association of Realtors reported recently that Dallas-Fort Worth area home prices were up 1.6 percent in the third quarter based on sales through the local Multiple Listing Service.

Texas, with its overall 1.1 percent rise, was one of the top states for home price gains in the third quarter, the FHFA said.

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