For Home Buying California

Super Bowl Weekend traditionally marks the start of the Spring Buying Season in real estate. Anecdotally, real estate agents will tell you that buyer activity tends to tick higher at this time of the year.

Meanwhile, with mortgage rates still trolling near all-time lows and Congress debating a first-time homebuyer tax credit, 2009 may bring out even more buyers than we’ve seen in the past.

Just having your home on the market may not be enough to attract an offer, though — the home has to have appeal. That brings us to home staging — the process by which a homeowner re-organizes and re-presents his home to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.

Home staging is part-science, part-art, and part-psychology. Homebuyers tend to judge homes within the first 8 seconds of seeing them so making a quality first impression can mean the difference between getting multiple bids, and just getting a lot of foot traffic.

The 4-minute video gives some quick-and-easy tips, including:

• Create more light in the home
• Clean up the closets and thin them out
• Remove the clutter from every room in the house

Even though home inventories are falling, supplies are still higher than in previous years. Home sellers wanting to stand out in a crowd may want to consider staging their homes to help them sell more quickly.

Staged homes sell for as much as 17% more money and as much as 40% faster than non-staged ones.

The Federal Open Market Committee voted to leave the Fed Funds Rate unchanged today. It remains within a target range of 0.000-0.250 percent.

In its press release, the FOMC reiterated most of the key points from its December 2008 statement, including:

• The U.S. employment outlook continues to deteriorate
• Consumers and businesses continue to cut spending
• The housing sector is still showing weakness

In addition, the FOMC addressed the “extremely tight” credit conditions for U.S. households and business, even as it said some financial markets are showing signs of improvement.

To the Fed, the latter is a precursor for the former. For Americans needing new mortgages or other forms of credit, it may mean that getting approved gets easier sometime late this year.

Most importantly, the Fed’s press release again mentioned the policy-setting group’s intention to “employ all available tools” to promote economic growth. This includes the open-market purchasing of mortgage-backed debt that has helped fuel the current Refi Boom. The Fed indicated a willingness to extend the program beyond the initial $500 billion, if necessary.

For each of the Fed’s interventions, though, there is a trade-off.

Buying securities costs money and the Fed — literally — comes up with the cash by printing it. The extra supplies devalue the U.S. dollar which, if left unchecked, can cause the Fed’s plan to backfire in the form of runaway money supply-led inflation. The Fed is aware of this risk and is pledged to monitoring it closely.

Overall, mortgage rates worsened today after the Fed’s statement.

Source
Parsing the Fed Statement
The Wall Street Journal Online
January 28, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/internal/mdc/info-fedparse0928.html

The Federal Open Market Committee adjourns from its 2-day meeting today.

The monetary policy-setting group is expected leave the Fed Funds Rate within its current target range of 0.00-0.250 percent.

This is the lowest range for the Fed Funds Rate in history and, frankly, there isn’t much room left to go lower. Therefore, markets aren’t really concerned about what happens to the benchmark lending rate today.

Instead, markets will focus on the Fed’s ideas to revive the U.S. economy.

In its post-FOMC press release last month, the Federal Reserve pledged to “employ all available tools” to get the economy moving in the right direction. At the time, some of those tools were already in play, including making direct loans to large companies and buying bad debts from commercial bank balance sheets.

And since that meeting, the Fed has put its money where its press release is.

Early this year, the Fed started a program to buy $500 billion in mortgage-backed debt and those ongoing purchases are part of what’s keeping mortgage rates relatively low. The Fed has since made it easier for member banks to borrow money, too.

Each of these steps is meant to pour gas into the U.S. economic engine and the Fed is pledged to keep trying new approached until something works. And this is what mortgage markets will be concerned with today.

If the Fed’s next stimulus plan is deemed ineffective or too costly for its own good, mortgage markets will likely sell off, causing mortgage rates to rise. The jump could be somewhat sudden because Fed announcements are often met with emotional, knee-jerk reactions.

By contrast, if the Fed’s next steps are deemed on target, expect mortgage rates to fall only slightly. To some extent, this outcome is already priced into rates as of this morning.

The FOMC’s official press release hits at 2:15 PM ET.

Don’t let the plunging median sales price fool you — December’s Existing Home Sales data has home sellers smiling.

Just one month after falling below the 5-million unit trend line, sales volume roared back by 300,000 homes in December, surprising housing analysts and making a case that this spring’s Buying Season could be a competitive one.

Falling home prices helped fuel home sales. Nationally, the median sales price — the point at which half of all homes sold for more and half sold for less — was $175,400, down $32,000 from last year.

However, the most important part of December’s Existing Home Sales report isn’t making headlines.

At December’s sales pace, it would now take 9.3 months to exhaust the existing home supply. Last month it was 11.2 months. This means that buyers are competing to purchase fewer homes which, in turn, puts upward pressure on home prices.

This is Supply and Demand at its most basic definition.

Economists have long said that the keystone of housing’s recovery will be rebalancing in home supply. Coupled with the all-time low in housing starts, December’s Existing Home Sales data signals future strength.

Mortgage markets deteriorated last week on the heels of weak economic data and uninspiring corporate earnings.

Mortgage rates rose for the second week in a row. They’re now measurably higher than the low point set 3 weeks ago.

For mortgage rate shoppers, though, last week’s most important stories weren’t necessarily last week’s most reported stories; the most obvious of which was soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s assertion that China may be manipulating its currency.

This assertion poses risks to mortgage rates because China is one of the largest buyers of U.S. mortgage-backed bonds. Its ongoing bond buys helps keep mortgage rates down. But an angry China is less likely to buy U.S.-backed debt and that would pressure mortgage rates hgiher. Said China of the Geithner remarks, we’re angry.

Other mortgage rate-altering stories included:

• Corporate weakness at GE, Microsoft, and nearly every U.S. bank
• Concerns that political in-fighting could derail a stimulus plan
• Mounting job losses in nearly every economic sector

In addition, just to show how backwards markets are right now, in “ordinary” times, economic weakness often leads mortgage rates lower. In this market, however, it’s having the opposite effect. Whenever the economy looks sour, mortgage rates seem to rise.

Americans in want of a mortgage have been at the mercy of Wall Street’s fickle sentiment lately. It’s a nerve-racking place to be.

This week, markets hope to be calmed. There’s a handful of news releases including Existing Home Sales, New Home Sales and consumer confidence surveys that will help paint a clearer picture of the economy, but the Federal Reserve’s 2-day meeting should steal the spotlight. The Federal Reserve is expected to hold the Fed Funds Rate at its current range of 0.000-0.250 percent.

However, the Fed Funds Rate is somewhat of an afterthought this week. Markets are more concerned with what the Fed will be doing to loosen bank lending nationwide.

Markets will evaluate the Fed’s response and if they deem the stimulus to be too large (or too small), mortgage rates should rise. If the Fed’s moves are “just right”, look for rates to fall.

The Federal Open Market Committee adjourns at 2:15 P.M. Wednesday.