Kitsap Real Estate Blog

Home buyers and investors have been sending a lot of questions lately about housing trends. Here is a partial list of some of their questions:

• Can you tell me how to buy foreclosure homes in Kitsap?
• Can I get financing for foreclosures in Kitsap?
• What are Kitsap Foreclosures really selling for?
• How do I get the best deal on a foreclosure home in Kitsap and Gig Harbor?
• Who is the best buyer’s foreclosure agent in Kitsap and Gig Harbor?
• Who is best to help me buy a foreclosure in kitsap or gig harbor?
• Are foreclosures really a good deal?
• Where are the bank foreclosures in Kitsap and Gig Harbor?
• Where can I search foreclosure listings, best place?

A great place to get lists of bank owned properties in Kitsap and Gig Harbor is here:

Foreclosure Listings

I also have started a new service to let seekers actually get inside foreclosure homes to have a look before even thinking about making an offer on a home. Every Saturday I organize a tour of foreclosed homes. You can read more about it at:

Kitsap and Gig Harbor Foreclsoure Tours

To understand some of the fundamentals behind this massive force affecting the current market, here are some recent housing news excerpts to ponder:

Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) status report recently omitted information on how many of the 650,000 borrowers are keeping up with the payments on their trial modifications.  Lender Processing Services, which is a huge mortgage data aggregate, and suggests the news is not good:  “LPS’ October Mortgage Monitor also cites large “shadow” foreclosure and REO inventories. The number of loans deteriorating further into delinquent status is now more than twice the number of foreclosure starts, indicating another major wave of troubled loans in an already clogged loan pipeline. Nearly one-third of foreclosures remain in pre-sale status after 12 months – twice as many as the year prior. The six-month average deterioration ratio has risen the past two months to 300 percent, showing that for every loan that improves in status, three more deteriorate further.” Howard Glaser, an expert on the expanding subprime lending crisis, says:  “What I am most worried about is March and April of next year.  What happens to a housing market that seems like it is finding its footing at that point?  Because several things will happen simultaneously:  You’ve got the option ARM resets beginning to kick in, you have the home buyer tax credit expiring, maybe for  real that time, and you have the Federal Reserve maybe running out of money to buy mortgage-backed securities. If we add on top of that, banks beginning to release some of this inventory,which they have been holding on to for a long time, those three items are potentially very destabilizing to the marketplace.”

A Senior Advisor to the Treasury Department, made a recent off the record statement recently:  “In discussing the Obama Administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which is arguably less successful than anyone intended, Wheeler made a comment leading some to believe that the Administration may be shifting focus from modifications to another program which simply gets troubled borrowers out of their homes as quickly and cleanly as possible.  Wheeler told ASF members and guests, ‘Short sales, deeds in lieu are other ways to prevent foreclosures to help achieve stability [in housing].  Modifications are only for a certain subset of distressed homeowners.’”  Olick points to the widely acknowledged failure of HAMP and suggests that Wheeler’s mention of the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program (HAFA) is indicative of a shift in emphasis for the Obama administration.

HAFA specifically targets short sales and deeds in lieu of foreclosure. According to the directive: Servicers must consider possible HAMP eligible borrowers for HAFA within 30 calendar days of the date the borrower: Does not qualify for a Trial Period Plan; Does not successfully complete a Trial Period Plan; Is delinquent on a HAMP modification by missing at least two consecutive payments; or requests a short sale or DIL. “My guess is that last one is the most popular.  The HAFA program offers incentives in this program “upon successful completion of the short sale” or Deed in Lieu. They include borrower relocation assistance of $1500, a servicer incentive of $1000 to cover administrative and processing costs and investor reimbursement of $1000 for subordinate lien releases. That’s when the investor allows up to $3000 in short sale proceeds to go to subordinate lien holders.  ‘It is my belief that the success of HAFA will be vastly greater than HAMP,’ says Mark Hanson, a mortgage consultant in California.  ‘Going forward, figuring out exactly what this means for foreclosures, REO, house sales, housing inventory, values, bank balance sheets, second mortgages, RMBS prices, the builders, the mortgage insurers, and sentiment is where the focus will be.’”