Home Sweet Home, Insider-Tips on Minnesota real estate.

How to Avoid the Prying Eyes

Almost every major website you visit is tracking your online activity. Here's a step-by-step guide to fending off trackers

The Internet is rife with surveillance technology, read how you can cover some of your tracks.

By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES published in the Wall Street Journal

Foreclosures continue to hurt housing market

Two new reports paint a challenging picture of the housing market during the coming year, with ongoing foreclosures likely to continue to weigh on the market.

The research firm RealtyTrac said Thursday that foreclosure activity during the first half of the year increased in three-quarters of the nation's metro areas, with Las Vegas posting the highest foreclosure rate.

Read more by JIM BUCHTA published in the Star Tribune

New hope on homes front

A tighter supply of new homes in metro area and a rise in permits point to growing confidence.

Once awash in brand-new houses begging for an owner, the metro area is seeing signs of a turnaround in that part of the housing market.

Read the full article by By JIM BUCHTA and JENNIFER BJORHUS, Star Tribune staff writers published in the Star Tribune

No More Overly Easy Loans

Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams said Wednesday that Fannie’s current book of business is its strongest in 10 years.

In a speech to the group Women in Housing and Finance, Williams said Fannie is emphasizing long-term, fixed-rate loans based on more accurate appraisals to borrowers with higher credit ratings who can thoroughly document their income.

Williams called the tougher standards “the new realism” in the housing market that will make owning a home more challenging.

"Step-by-step, we are putting in place a new foundation for our industry," he said. "It's a foundation based on the right lending standards and on a broad re-examination of what constitutes sensible risk."

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Jessica Holzer (07/28/2010)

Home Vacancies Rise as U.S. Ownership Falls to Lowest in Decade

About 18.9 million homes in the U.S. stood empty during the second quarter as surging foreclosures helped push ownership to the lowest level in a decade.

The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, rose from 18.6 million in the year-earlier quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The ownership rate, meaning households that own their own residence, was 66.9 percent, the lowest since 1999.

To read the full article By Kathleen M. Howley published by Bloombergnews.com

Similiar articles appear in CalculatedRisk

For those currently under 30, the homeownership rate is above the 1989 and 1999 levels - probably because most of these people were too young to participate in the insanity and some have taken advantage of the first time home buyer tax credit.

For the 30 to 60 groups, the homeownership rate is currently below the 1989 and 1999 levels. These groups were in their early 20s to early 50s during the bubble years - the prime buying years.

For the groups above 60 years old, the homeownership rate has stayed above the 1989 level. Most of these people already owned and probably didn't participate in the insanity.

contributed by CalculatedRisk.com

Home ownership falls to lowest level in 11 years . . . CNNMoney

Twin Cities fare well in monthly home price report

Metro area home prices rose 2.8 percent in May, but a housing recovery is still elusive.

Home prices in the Twin Cities metro area rose faster than anywhere else in the nation -- 2.8 percent -- from April to May, according to the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller report released Tuesday.

Nationwide, prices rose 1.3 percent for the same period . . .

Read the complete article By JIM BUCHTA, published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune

New hurdles for home financing

Waiting for home prices to fall even more?  Well, there's other considerations; waiting for less may cost you more.

Underwriting standards have tightened, meaning that borrowers need higher credit scores, more income and higher down payments. And that's not all. There are many challenges to financing a home, but the following six are especially problematic in today's market.

1. Higher credit score requirements: Although loans can be had in most cases for credit scores down to 620, they often come with a higher rate and/or fees."
2. Greater scrutiny of income and assets. Buyers are now put through the wringer
3. Ever-changing borrower requirements. Unfortunately, a buyer can have all of these items fall into the current guidelines, only to have the guidelines change.

To read the complete list please go to 6 new hurdles for home financing in MSN Real Estate

Falling home prices

We already know existing home sales collapsed from May to June. The number of sales are reported but specific prices aren't known until closing typically months later.

June and July home sales typically don't close before August or even September and reports may lag until October or November.

Home sellers may feel the financial pinch when selling but if you're buying "up" this is a great opportunity as typically the higher the price the bigger the price reduction. 

And remember today's great interest rates.

It's Great Time for Housing Deals

If you are trading up, what better time than when interest rates are at record lows and the cost of the trade-up is much less than it used to be?" says Christopher J. Mayer, a Columbia Business School economist.

With 15-year fixed-rate mortgages at about 4.5 percent, it also makes sense to pay off the mortgage and keep the house. "At this point," says Jay Brinkmann, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington, D.C., "if they don't have anything else that is bringing a tremendous return, then they are buying themselves an annuity by paying their house off sooner than they needed to."

Bailout Watchdogs Call Mortgage Program a Bust

Government

watchdogs on Wednesday raised a red flag over the Obama administration's program for helping homeowners avoid foreclosure, saying the multibillion-dollar fund is not working and the Treasury Department refuses to fix it. 

Warning that the inefficiencies could hold the economy back, the officials told a Senate panel that changes should be made and that Treasury needs to come clean. One official called the program "one of the greatest failures in transparency and accountability" in the $700 billion bailout. 

A $50 billion fund was carved out of the Wall Street bailout for the mortgage program. The housing market being a root cause of the 2008 economic crisis, the money was pitched as a way to help millions of homeowners avoid foreclosure and get the economy back on track. 

But a fraction of that money, $248 million, has been spent. 

Read the full article by FoxNews.com