Pot Pouri

The real estate news for the past two weeks has been pretty tightly focused on the faltering or collapse of some big players in the sub-prime lending arena. This naturally follows from making loans to people who have no demonstrated capacity to repay them or any track record of paying anybody on time for any type obligation. There will be more foreclosure activity from the next level of credit-worthiness, generally referred to as Alt-A. This is the level at which most of the option ARM programs originated, and were the result of people buying beyond their means, hoping for a continuation of the surge in home values to cover the increasing balance on their loans, or hoping to use refinance money to buy out of the loan when it rolled into a more realistic pay schedule. Urged on by real estate agents and lenders these people put themselves at substantial risk. Now those chickens are heading home. Whether any of the above is of interest most likely depends on viewpoint. Spectator or participant?
In the face of all the publicity about mortgages, let me tell you that every day my e-mail traffic from lenders indicates a huge amount of available mortgage money, almost all of the old programs are still available, and the only difference is that credit restrictions have tightened a bit. If you should be buying a house, you can be buying a house.
The local market, Butte and Glenn counties are seeing buying activity, Butte more than Glenn of course. Our listed properties are getting offers and our commercial loan activity is up. $300,000+ properties in Orland are tough to sell, easy in Chico. We have our listings on over twenty national real estate web sites and the number of hits on Chico properties are running 4-5 times those of Orland in all price ranges. The number of hits overall is encouraging, but if your home for sale is in Orland, not such good news.
We've had a couple of bright ideas to help sellers who want to do their own thing instead of listing with a real estate office. As soon as legal counsel gives us the ok we'll share them with you. Seems that there are laws we need to observe to keep out of trouble. The laws are presumably under the heading of consumer protection but really are for real estate people protection. When we find the way to get this done I promise you'll like it. The consumer response to our marketing program is growing, people quite simply are tired of squandering their equity on commissions. We appreciate the support. We also need, almost desperately, a licensed agent for our Chico office. Must have highest integrity and customer focus and should be willing to learn mortgage lending. Team environment, high income, and a real sense of making a difference. There may be laws about this too, but for a good referral I will spring for lunch.
Thanks for visiting.