Twin Cities Real Estate Blog

The always excellent Calculated Risk goes into the simple reasons why 2nd mortgage holders are unlikely to embrace HAFA.
When a 2nd mortgage holder can only recover 3% of the loan or $3000, whichever is LESS, and they have to release the seller from all future liability, I can see why they will not be quick to [...]

If you’re eyeing a home that’s a potential short sale, be prepared to be in it for the long haul.  Short sales can be more time consuming than traditional sales, but if you’re in a position where you can be flexible with your close date, your patience could well be worth the wait.
A short sale [...]

Most of my buyers are NOT housing experts… they are “regular people” and are experts in whatever field they work in but not in real estate.  That’s just fine because that’s why people like me have jobs doing what we do!  One of the most frequent topics that comes up is the differences between traditional [...]

10 months after the Minneapolis/St. Paul area MLS (RMLS of MN) made available the somewhat-useful-but-really-bastardized-lender-mediated-mls-field and 14 months after I started openly pushing for specific fields, they have now come to see the light and are redoing the fields as three separate and distinct fields that address each of the major questions/problems of lender mediated listings:
Three [...]

Thanks to the Minnesota Homeownership Center Blog for telling me about HousingLink’s Q4 2008 update to their Foreclosure Report.
What’s especially interesting to me is the chart showing foreclosure counts as a percentage of total houses:

MAAR did a similar “heat map” for the Twin Cities, specifically looking at 2008 “lender mediated sales” – which are foreclosures [...]

Today I am pleased to announce the release of the Foreclosures and Short Sales in the Twin Cities Housing Market: Q4 2008 Update.  This is the 4th installment of quarterly reporting of lender mediated sales and their impact in the Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area, which I co-author with the musically, intellectually, politically and statistically talented Jeff Allen.  2008 reports from quarters [...]

Short Sale
Definition: a home sale where the seller owes more than what the home is worth and is asking the lender(s) to accept an amount that is less than the amount owed to them as payment in full.
The same problem continues to come up day after day and I finally have the time and focus [...]