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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nextrade! who wrote (15263)	11/25/2003 8:34:02 PM
From: nextrade!	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

Fannie Mae increases mortgage loan limits biz.yahoo.com NEW YORK, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. housing finance company, said on Tuesday it will lift the limit on single-family home loans it can guarantee and purchase to $333,700 from $322,700. The new loan limits are effective in 2004.

To: nextrade! who wrote (15263)	11/25/2003 9:16:24 PM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

$1 mln homes in hot Calif. market selling fast Tuesday November 25, 6:59 pm ET By Jim Christie SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 25 (Reuters) - For sale: Four-bedroom California home. Buyer must be braced for wildfires, earthquakes, an economy still lagging three years after the dot-com crash and a deepening budget crisis. Price: a million dollars and rising. A record number of million-dollar homes sold in California in the third-quarter, as property prices soared and well-to-do buyers took advantage of still reasonably low mortgage rates, according to data released on Tuesday. Sales of the expensive homes were strongest in Southern California, rising 68 percent from a year earlier, DataQuick Information Systems said. But even in San Francisco Bay area, home to the hard-hit high-tech hub of Silicon Valley, sales shot up by 48 percent from a year earlier, the La Jolla, California real estate information provider said. "The expectations earlier this year were that sales of prestige homes would taper off as part of a general market slowdown. That hasn't happened," said Marshall Prentice, DataQuick president. "Demand is still strong, and high-income households seem to think that property ownership is a relatively good investment." A record 5,857 California homes priced at $1 million or more sold during the third quarter, up 58 percent from a year earlier, said DataQuick said. The continued boom has a lot to do with easier credit terms, said Kevin Clay, owner of Reign Financial, a real estate brokerage in San Carlos, California. "Lenders are allowing buyers to come in with 20 percent down," Clay said. "In the past it would have been 35 to 40 percent down. Now buyers are getting into a $2.5 million house with $500,000 down compared with maybe $800,000 to $1 million in past years." Clay also believes buyers who can afford pricey real estate are less concerned about big mortgage payments: "Executives that are able to qualify for these homes and loans are feeling more confident about their jobs." WHERE HOUSING IS GOLDEN Nearly all homes in two California communities -- Ross in Marin County in Northern California and in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County in Southern California -- sold for $1 million or more during the quarter, according to DataQuick. The median million-dollar home sold in California was 2,877 square feet in size, had 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and required a down payment of $443,500, DataQuick said. Washington Mutual Inc. (NYSE:WM - News), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC - News) and Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC - News) were the lenders most willing to provide mortgage financing for the homes, DataQuick said. Meanwhile, a separate report on Tuesday by the California Association of Realtors showed strong demand for less expensive California homes amid the perceived need to lock in low mortgage rates. "Despite the fact that mortgage interest rates have leveled off in recent weeks, consumers remain concerned about rates trending up in the coming months," said Ann Pettijohn, the trade group's president. "Those concerns continued to drive buyers into the housing market in October." Thirty-year fixed mortgage interest rates averaged 5.95 percent in 2003, down from 6.12 percent a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac. Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the realtors' group, said California's housing market reflects a persistent housing shortage throughout the state. The median price of an existing, single-family detached home in California in October was $381,200, up 17.4 percent from $324,670 a year earlier. * not bad return for one year <G>