Why is my modification taking so long!!!!

Great question – there can be a number of reasons. The bank chooses to put you into the MHA/Hamp review. Currently to get an answer from the MHA (Making Home Affordable) program you’re looking at minimum 3-6 months. If there is another submission at MHA after a denial another 3-6 months. Then if it is then looked at under an internal Bank modification you’re looking at another 2-4 months.

Unfortunately the banks do not control the speed for review at MHA. If there is request for updated docs and the paperwork is delayed or misplaced additional time can ensue.

The process needs a full overhaul. But in an election year it is unlikely.

Thus it is not inconceivable to be in review for a year. If the file is not considered “imminent default” it may get little or no attention at the lender.

Although GA LAW would not advise being late under any circumstances, files that are late will be reviewed before files that are not. Lates on files can result in foreclosure proceedings, destruction of credit and ineligibility for other type of refinance programs such as – HARP.

Modifications are a slow and painful process, but when underwriting is finally achieved it can be a huge savings on the life of the loan sometimes $300,000 or more and from 15-50 thousand a year in less payments. Are they worth waiting for? Well each file is as unique as a snowflake.

The recent settlement is a step in the right direction, unfortunately it is an extremely small step. There is close to a $1 trillion dollars in negative equity out there this addresses about $17 billion. It is also allowing the banks to credit modifications in their pipeline to be credited to the pay down. It allows many investors on the notes to be exempt from responsibility. All in all its very weak help for borrowers. This all goes under the heading….. too big to fail!

MSNBC Article: Feb 9,2012

Mortgage settlement leaves most homeowners to fend for themselves
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

The landmark $25 billion settlement reached by the federal government, 49 states and the nation’s five biggest banks will provide long-overdue relief for hundreds of thousands of homeowners who have been struggling to navigate the mortgage mess created by lenders.

The wider impact for most homeowners, along with the housing market and economy, will be much more limited.

“You’re hardly skimming the surface,” said Paul Dales, a housing economist with Capital Economics. “It could help some people a lot, individually. But in terms of the big-picture, overall economy and housing market, it’s really just a drop in the ocean of the problem.”

The settlement takes a multipronged approach to try to unravel the aftermath of a housing market collapse that resulted in more than seven million foreclosures, created a legal morass for lenders and left a red tape nightmare for millions struggling to hang onto their homes.

Some of those who lost their homes may be eligible for a small cash payment, while others who are struggling to hang on may see their monthly payments lowered substantially through reductions in interest rates or their principal balance. So if you’re one of the lucky homeowners reached by the program, the impact could be significant.

That won’t happen right away: the details of who will be helped and how they’ll be chosen have yet to be worked out. (See: What the mortgage settlement means to you.)

Over the next 30 to 60 days, state and federal officials say they will pick an administrator to handle the logistics and a monitor to track lenders’ compliance. It will take another six to nine months identify eligible homeowners and notify them by mail. Lenders have three years to complete loan modifications. If they come up short, unearned modification credits will be converted to a cash penalty paid to the government.

State and federal officials say the settlement could eventually help as many as a million households. Roughly 750,000 borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosure between 2008 and 2011 will get a cash payment of about $2,000.

But the vast majority of more than 11 million homeowners who owe more than their house is worth, along with six million who are in foreclosure or behind in their payments, won’t get help. That’s because the settlement applies only to loans held on the books of the five banks that agreed to settle.

Loans held by government mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which account for more than half of U.S. residential mortgages, aren’t eligible. Nor are most loans that were sold off to private investors or are held by lenders who aren’t part of the settlement. (State and federal officials are negotiating with other lenders to try to expand the reach of the program. The deal won’t be finalized until a federal court judge signs off, which settlement negotiators say they expect in a few weeks.
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“While a significant step toward fixing the foreclosure crisis, this settlement was never intended or able to provide a comprehensive remedy,” said Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, an advocacy group. “Much more work is required.”

The five big banks included in the settlement, Bank of America, JP Mortgage Chase, Ally Financial (formerly GMAC), Citigroup, and Wells Fargo, also agreed to reform the deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure practices that have already drawn a cease-and-desist order from the Federal Reserve and sanctions from the Office of the Controller of the Currency, which regulates national banks.

Those practices include the “robo-signing” of documents without proper verification and the “dual track” process of negotiating a loan modification with homeowners while simultaneously pursuing a foreclosure. It remains to be seen whether those reforms will help prevent foreclosure abuses by servicers, who have been overwhelmed by the surge in defaults since the housing market collapsed in 2006.

Under terms of the settlement, the five lenders won’t have to pay out the bulk of the $25 billion. Some $17 billion represents credits applied toward targets lenders have to modify some of the loans on their books. Some of those modifications would have happened anyway. Based on a complex formula, bankers will earn credits on a sliding scale depending on the type of modification. The least costly refinancing methods might earn a lender as little as a nickel on a dollar; the costliest would generate a dollar-for-dollar credit.

The architects of the program say the credit system will help them “leverage” the settlement to produce as much as $32 billion worth of mortgage relief. Even if they reach that goal, that would represent less than 5 percent of the nearly $700 billion in “negative equity” inflicted on American homeowners by the housing bust.

That negative equity continues to weigh on the housing market and economy. Without widespread write-downs of underwater mortgages (or unless homeowners simply walk away from them) American households will continue to transfer that $700 billion of their wealth to lenders for years to come.

Last month, the Federal Reserve included principal reduction in a “white paper” of recommendations to revive the housing market. So far, the chief regulator of government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has resisted the idea. At a Nov. 16 hearing, Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward DeMarco said the regulator had “been through the analytics” and decided that “the use of principal reduction within the context of a loan modification is not going to be the least-cost approach for the taxpayer to allow this homeowner an opportunity to stay in their home.”
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The architects of Thursday’s agreement argue that it will help make loan modifications more widely available even to the majority of struggling homeowners who are not covered.

“I believe that this agreement will eventually make widespread principal reduction throughout the country commonplace,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who led the talks on behalf of the states, told reporters. “There’s going to be a significant amount done right away.”

But private analysts argue that the settlement does little to motivate bankers to write down loans beyond the $17 billion in credits.

“I don’t think they’re going to learn anything from this program,” said Patrick Newport, a housing economist at HIS Global Insight. “There is a danger in principal reduction, and that is that you create an incentive for people who are current and that intend to remain current to start asking for relief. Banks don’t want to do that that because that’s a strategy for losing money.”

The other major components of the state-federal settlement include about $3 billion that will be applied to rewriting mortgages from above market rates to 5.25 percent for homeowners who can’t qualify for a refinanced loan. That’s still well above the current average rate of 3.87 percent for a 30-year fixed mortgage, according to Freddie Mac.

Another $5 billion will be set aside to fund various state and federal mortgage relief programs, including the payments to homeowners who were subject to abusive or deceptive foreclosure practices. The process for determining who is eligible has yet to be worked out.

While those checks may help some of the estimate seven million households that have lost their homes to foreclosure, it will do little to help the housing market recover, according to Newport

“That’s just transferring money from Peter to Paul,” he said. “That doesn’t help the economy or the housing market.”

(Disclaimer: This is for informational purposes only it is not legal advice)

Operative paragraph here from the below article —

“One major stumbling block is California’s concern that the deal would release the large servicers from legal action, including violations of state laws, for issues that had not been thoroughly investigated, including securities probes related to losses sustained by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest public pension fund.”

Unfortunately this one country fits all doesn’t work for California. The banks need more pressure to modify and work with homeowners. They need to expedite loan modifications and Short Sales.

LOS ANGELES TIMES ARTICLE TODAY…..
By Alejandro Lazo and Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times

February 7, 2012
Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington— More than 40 states signed onto a proposed $25-billion settlement with major mortgage servicers over faulty foreclosure procedures, but California, New York and other key states were still not among them.

“This enables us to move forward into the very final stages of remaining work,” said Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, who heads the multi-state settlement negotiations. “Federal and state officials, as well as representatives from the banks, continue to address matters that they must complete before finalizing any settlement.”

Miller would not comment further.

The proposed settlement had hung in limbo most of the day as California and other key states pushed past the Monday deadline — an extension of a Friday deadline — to try to get better terms for homeowners from the nation’s five major loan servicers.

Miller’s decision to move forward, however, doesn’t stop California and the other states from joining the agreement later.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris was locked in last-minute negotiations with servicers and officials from other states and the Obama administration as the deadline expired with no decision on whether they would sign on, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Negotiations, however, remained fluid, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

Officials in California, New York, Nevada, Delaware and other states appeared to feel little obligation to meet Miller’s deadline, which was set to see whether enough attorneys general would sign onto the deal to make a settlement feasible.

The long-sought deal would provide relief for homeowners and settle a host of investigations into the foreclosure paperwork practices of the five largest mortgage servicers.

The size of California’s mortgage market — about 14% of existing home loans nationwide, according to industry data company CoreLogic Inc. — makes Harris a major player in the down-to-the wire talks with Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc.

Harris has been trying to strike more favorable terms for state residents hurt by the robo-signing fiasco two years ago in which mortgage servicers allegedly used illegal or questionable methods to sign foreclosure documents.

She walked away from a proposed deal in September because she said it was inadequate for Californians, but she and others would not disclose how much of the current $25-billion proposal was earmarked for the state.

Last month, Obama administration officials asked her to return to the negotiating table. Over the last week, Harris has been directly involved in discussions with the administration and several of the largest mortgage servicers, said the person familiar with the discussions.

Those talks have included numerous late-night and early-morning phone calls and meetings.

In a statement issued Sunday night, Harris said that progress was being made but negotiators had not yet reached a resolution.

One major stumbling block is California’s concern that the deal would release the large servicers from legal action, including violations of state laws, for issues that had not been thoroughly investigated, including securities probes related to losses sustained by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest public pension fund.

After Harris left the talks in September, the release from legal claims for the servicers was broadened to include issues related to the origination of mortgages. Harris wants to retain the ability to get restitution for such claims, particularly regarding predatory lending.

California also wants to make sure that financial restitution for homeowners goes to those hardest hit by the crisis. Harris is seeking to avoid the problems of an $8.5-billion settlement in 2008 that California and several other states reached with Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial unit.

That settlement requires banks only to offer to modify mortgages to borrowers. Harris wants provisions in the foreclosure settlement that ensure that homeowners get whatever relief is promised, the person familiar with the discussions said.

The proposed deal would provide an average of about $20,000 in relief for each of some 1 million homeowners nationwide, much of that in the form of reduced principal on their mortgage.

New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman, who has been concerned that the deal would grant the servicers too broad a release from other claims, also did not expect to announce a decision Monday, a spokesman said.

Nevada Atty. Gen. Catherine Cortez Masto said her office was “continuing to review the intricate draft settlement terms and advocating for improvements to address Nevada’s needs.”

Some Democratic lawmakers and liberal activist groups have pushed for tougher terms in the settlement and for the servicers to pay more money to help reduce principal on underwater mortgages.

“The good news is the president seems to be recognizing that reducing principal is key to rebooting the economy and may be key to his political future,” said George Goehl, executive director of National People’s Action, a network of community organizations that focus on housing and banking issues.

“The bad news is the sum. It’s a small drop in a big bucket,” he said.

Goehl hopes that the foreclosure paperwork settlement is followed by a much larger settlement of ongoing investigations into the causes of the mortgage market meltdown. He said that the foreclosure deal should not grant the mortgage servicers a release from claims in those broader investigations.

Not since the great depression have we seen such out and out hostility towards the banks. With BofA having about 40% of the bad loans on the market with their acquisition of Countrywide they are getting an earful from extremely upset homeowners – and rightfully so.

(Disclaimer: This is for informational purposes only, it is not legal advice)

7. Bank of America: 24/7 Wall Street.

In September, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) announced it was laying off 30,000 people. Its share value has dropped 55% in one year. And the bank continues to face legal actions from the federal government, several states and some of its shareholders. In early September the FHFA officially announced its lawsuit against 17 banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup (NYSE: C), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Goldman Sachs, concerning $196 billion in mortgage securities. Bank of America has even been charged with keeping one of its largest legal threats a secret from shareholders. Reuters reported in August that top Bank of America lawyers knew as early as January that American International Group (NYSE: AIG) was prepared to sue the bank for more than $10 billion, seven months before the lawsuit was filed. Retail customers have shown their disdain for Bank of America’s customer service. Not only is it near the bottom of many customer satisfaction surveys, 41.5% of respondents in the MSN Money-IBOPE Zogby International customer service survey rated its service as “poor.” That is the highest percentage of respondents giving a “poor” rating to any company.

Read more: The 10 Most Hated Companies in America – 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/2012/01/13/the-10-most-hated-companies-in-america/#ixzz1kxnMHSn6

(Disclaimer: This is informational only, it is not legal advice)

The following article outlines a settlement trying to be reached between the Attorney Generals and the Banks ( BofA, Chase, Wells, Citi etc.) for legal immunity in return for a 20 billion pay off. Unfortunately the problem, is much much bigger. The banks have trillions in bad loans on their books. Their are three parties in this problem, the servicer/bank, the investor, and the homeowner. They are equally in this mess. All three were drinking the “blue sky” koolaid that housing prices would never go down during the go go days of 25% per year increases in value. But this settlement is not the answer either. The market needs to correct. That will take focus on three areas, Modification, Short Sales and foreclosures. Streamlining the Modification and Short Sale process will be better than allowing the banks to pay off on their liability for the nasty irresponsible foreclosures they’ve done.

Push to help homeowners continues
By Jennifer Liberto @CNNMoney January 23, 2012: CNN MONEY.

A deal to help homeowners is in the works, after allegations of improper foreclosures.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — As regulators and attorneys general continue a year-long push to deliver help for homeowners, some left-leaning groups on Monday warned against any deal that protects banks against lawsuits.

Negotiations for a settlement over improper foreclosures have been dragging on for months between state and federal authorities and some of the nation’s biggest banks.

At stake could be a $20 billion to $25 billion pot of money from the banks and mortgage servicers that could help troubled homeowners modify loans and provide them with counseling, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Under the latest deal, about 1 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages could be eligible for as much as $20,000 in relief of principal owed, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan has said. In return, mortgage servicers in states that agree to the deal would get immunity from lawsuits, the sources said.

Several Democratic state attorneys general were briefed of more details of the deal on Monday in a meeting in Chicago, CNNMoney confirmed. Republican state attorneys general were also to be briefed on a conference call.

News of the briefings spurred a protest on Monday outside the State of Illinois Building in Chicago by members of left-leaning groups, including Move On and the New Bottom Line, urging states to hold out for a bigger criminal investigation and a $300 billion settlement award.

Left-leaning activists and two Democratic lawmakers said they’re fighting against blanket immunity for banks, which North Carolina Democrat Rep. Brad Miller called a “very bad deal for the American people and a sweet-heart deal for banks,” in a conference call with reporters on Monday.

The negotiations are between federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as state attorneys general and the five largest mortgage servicers:Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial (GJM).

The Obama Administration had been pushing for a resolution in time for the president to tout the deal during his delivery of the State of the Union on Tuesday.

But no final agreement is expected this week, said Geoff Greenwood, spokesman for the Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who has been leading the talks.
Foreclosures: 100 hardest hit zip codes

The final monetary award depends on the participation of larger states. But several states, including New York, Delaware and California, are reportedly cool to the latest draft, a source said. Those attorneys general have said they want the freedom to pursue their own housing investigations.

Calls to those attorneys general were not returned on Monday.

Washington analysts say they expect some tidbits from the latest proposed settlement to make Obama’s State of the Union speech.

“The President is likely to tout how the agreement will provide for principal reduction and help for more than a million borrowers,” said Jaret Seiberg, senior policy analyst with Washington Research Group in a Monday research report.

“He will emphasize how this is about helping today to correct the mistakes of yesterday,” Seiberg said in the report.

We are in a strange balance right now, with homes dropping in value and the mortgage rates remaining at historical lows the advantages to ownership are starting to be felt. The problem for most people though is that they have had credit damage and drops in income making getting loans difficult. But with FHA currently looking at a 620 credit score it can be attainable. Also with definite tax incentives on interest portion of mortgage payments, it could be a strong benefit to buying over renting.

This article lays it out in more detail.

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/23/10217301-home-buying-could-soon-beat-renting

MSNBC – Home buying could soon beat renting
By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Falling home prices have sent many would-be buyers to the sidelines. If all goes well, record low interest rates and rising rents may soon prompt some of them to take a second look at buying.

Unfortunately, that’s a big “if,” according to Paul Diggle, a housing economist at Capital Economics.

Much of the decision to buy a house still depends on your personal finances and preferences, your career or family life, or level of financial security.

But if you’re comparing just the cost of owning and renting, buying a house may soon be the better choice, according to Diggle.

Until recently, home ownership was no bargain compared to renting, according to his analysis. A 33 percent drop fall in home prices, a plunge in mortgage rates and 15 percent rise in rents since the housing crash has evened the scales. Today, the median monthly mortgage payment of about $700 has fallen to about the level of a median monthly rent check. If mortgage rates keep falling and rents keep rising, the equation will tip even further toward owning.

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But that analysis doesn’t include the total cost of owning versus renting. A full accounting includes closing costs, maintenance, insurance and property taxes, tax savings from mortgage deductions, gains or losses from home equity, among other factors. Renters have to think things about broker fees and future rent hikes. You also have to make some assumptions about future trends in housing prices and rents.

When you take those factors into account — which Diggle has done with a homegrown “calculator” — someone who plans on staying put for seven years would come out ahead by about $9,000 if they bought a median-priced home rather than being a tenant in a median-priced rental. Diggle’s calculation assumes that rents keep rising by about 3 percent a year and that house prices stay flat in 2012 and 2013 and then begin rising in 2014 at about 3 percent a year.

If house prices fall further, all bets are off, said Diggle. In that case, the renters come out ahead.

“At the moment, (that) downside scenario is more likely to materialize than the upside one,” he said.

Even if Diggle’s calculator were to signal a “strong buy” for home ownership, he doesn’t expect that would spark a buyers’ stampede. Most first-time buyers or households who lost a home to foreclosure don’t have the 20 percent down payment many lenders are insisting on. They may also have trouble getting a mortgage with a credit score of 700 or more — a higher bar than the 650 score that was the norm for the past two decades.

“A large share of the population has dropped out of the pool of potential buyers,” he said. “Given that the choice between owning and renting a home is a luxury than many Americans simply do not have, the fact that this does appear to be the time to buy will have only a minimal effect on actual sales. Accordingly, we expect only a modest housing recovery over the next few years.

(Disclaimer: This is not Legal Advice, it is for informational purposes only)

There are a lot of competing pressures here. Banks want to foreclose and liquidate. Consumers want relief. Loan Investors want to be made whole. The politicians are in an election year and are looking to their corporate and consumer constituents.

Bank Of America is currently on a foreclosure frenzy! The other banks are still underwriting modifications however very slowly.

If clients want to keep their homes they are going to have to fight. Unfortunately in California most of the law is in favor of the lenders. We think its going to be a mixed bag going forward into 2012.

Bloomberg
RealtyTrac: Home seizures may jump 25% this year
Dan Levy, Bloomberg News
Friday, January 13, 2012
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/12/BUPF1MOFAU.DTL#ixzz1k1bat1xc

Banks may seize more than 1 million U.S. homes this year after legal scrutiny of their foreclosure practices slowed actions against delinquent property owners in 2011, RealtyTrac said.
About 1.89 million properties received notices of default, auction or repossession last year, down 34 percent from 2010 and the lowest number since 2007, the data seller said Thursday. One in 69 U.S. households received a filing.
While the seizure process has been “highly dysfunctional,” there were “strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets,” RealtyTrac Chief Executive Officer Brandon Moore said in the statement.
The number of home repossessions is likely to rise about 25 percent from the more than 804,000 properties seized last year as lenders resume foreclosure actions, Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, said. Settlement talks are continuing with state attorneys general over documentation flaws, known as robosigning, that surfaced in October 2010.
About 400,000 additional homes would have been repossessed without the slowdown, Blomquist said. The increase in foreclosure proceedings that began in 2011′s second half is likely to continue this year, Moore said in the statement.
Foreclosure filings totaled almost 2.7 million last year as some properties got multiple notices, RealtyTrac said.
Nevada had the nation’s highest rate of foreclosure filings per household for the fifth straight year, at 1 in 16, while total filings were down 31 percent from 2010. A new state law that took effect in October requires lenders to file an additional affidavit before starting the foreclosure process.
Arizona had the second highest foreclosure rate, with 1 in 24 households receiving a notice, and California ranked third at 1 in 31. Georgia was fourth, with 1 in 37, and Utah fifth at 1 in 43, according to RealtyTrac.
Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Colorado and Idaho also ranked among the states with the 10 highest rates in 2011.
Las Vegas had the highest rate among metropolitan areas with populations over 200,000, at 1 foreclosure filing per 14 households. Stockton, Modesto, Vallejo-Fairfield and Riverside-San Bernardino ranked second through fifth.
Phoenix, Merced, Reno, Bakersfield and Sacramento rounded out the top 10, said RealtyTrac, which sells default data from more than 2,200 counties representing 90 percent of the U.S. population.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/12/BUPF1MOFAU.DTL#ixzz1k0YPt4x1

(Disclaimer:This is not legal advice it is for informational purposes only)

If you had asked me two weeks ago if a 1st Trust Deed principle reduction was possible at Chase, I would say NO WAY. Now having underwritten a permanent modification with a principle reduction (albeit a principle set aside with a good faith three year forgiveness clause) I’d say maybe you have a shot. The odds are very low but it is possible. 1 in 20 or less at this time but ask us in a month and they will change possibly upward.

We’ve been able to negotiate these clauses into other modification offers in the past, but this is the first one we’ve been able to get at Chase. B of A unfortunately is going in the other direction and trying as hard as they can to foreclose on properties.

This hopefully is the wave of the future as 12 million homes are upside down in value. 1.5 mil are about to be foreclosed on 3.5 mil are in default. Valuations are not coming back and now I think the Banks may be smelling the coffee. They cannot foreclose on 12 mil homes, things are bad, really bad, but that would cause a complete collapse of the real estate market – its that big. If the average home is upside down $100,000 times 12 mil that is…. 1.2 trillion. If these problems cause another 15% decline in values that could be another 5 trillion drop in national values. 6.2 trillion is almost the size of the national debt. This is a big big problem.

In any case, for one homeowner in one city their lives have been changed forever. Having $200,000 removed from their note, buying them some equity and a very low payment – is life changing.

(Disclaimer: This is not legal advice for informational purposes only)

This Associated Press article describes what we see on a daily basis. The banks have been postponing sale dates for a time, but then they push for foreclosure. We are seeing this pretty regularly. B of A appears to be especially tough lately. We believe they are being squeezed by note investors for recoupment on loses and on the other side by consumers and their representatives. So in response their attempt now is to LIQUIDATE as many bad notes as possible before they may face regulation.

Jan 12/2011 Associated Press

In the fourth quarter, there were foreclosure filings for 586,133 homes in the U.S., down 27 percent from a year earlier.

The below article from the LA Times is a good read. Accurate from what we are seeing. Rates will remain low. Although there seems to be a low inventory of new homes, we would expect that is only because there are so many short sales and foreclosures of existing homes in the system. The prediction is we are in a 5 year of a 10 year cycle. It appears it could be only 5 years into what looks to be a 15 year cycle. The previous post was predicting a 2023 recovery that would put it over 11 years out from now.

(Disclaimer:This is not legal advice it is for informational purposes only)

By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times

“I tell people we’re five years through a 10-year adjustment,” he said. “Not until year 10 will we return to the traditional rate of housing starts.”