The quick info is about Santa Clarita, and our local surrounding communities, home sales info.
We currently have 228 homes available for sale.
Condos, Townhouses, & Detached homes.
In our Coming Soon category we have 19. In escrow we have 313. Total number of properties that closed escrow in the last 30 days? 267. Coming soon is up from last month. Active is down. In escrow is down. And, sold in the last 30 days....is up. Keep an eye on my blog so we can see what happens next month!
Now, the 1% home loan. Yikes.
You Can Now Buy a Home With Just 1% Down,
but Should You Get One of These Bargain Mortgages?
I'm just sharing with you the worries/reasons that maybe putting so little down is not a good idea. This is from an article I just read on Realtor.com:
The risks of the 1% down mortgages
There are risks to taking out one of these loans.
Most first-time buyers don’t realize just how expensive homeownership can be. There are the big-ticket items that eventually need replacing, such as a roof or boiler or an appliance such as a stove or washing machine. Then there is the maintenance, such as having the gutters cleaned, the property landscaped, the HVAC system serviced. And there are also those unexpected expenses when something goes wrong without warning. Homes are called “money pits” for a reason.
Homeowners who don’t have much equity in their properties won’t have anything to tap into to pay these expenses. And if they opted for one of these loans because they didn’t have much in savings, they might not be able to cover these costs plus their mortgage.
“It’s potentially enabling homebuyers who should not be buying a house,” says mortgage lender Shayowitz. “The people who should be given mortgages with 1% down should be extremely highly qualified individuals with the income and the reserves to make their mortgage payments.”
Another concern is that, as the housing markets corrects and prices drop in many parts of the country, homebuyers who use small down payments could find themselves underwater on their loans.
But that’s not necessarily a problem in this era of accelerated housing cycles.
“They still have a place to live, [and] prices generally recover over time,” says Keith Gumbinger, a vice president at HSH.com, a mortgage information website.
But if they have to sell quickly, they could lose money if they owe more than the home is worth. They would have to absorb those losses.
Homeowners who don’t have much of their own money invested in their properties are also more likely to walk away from them if there are problems or their property value goes down. Foreclosure or short sales would severely damage someone’s credit.
“I don’t even think those are real concerns,” says Elezaj. He points out that borrowers still must have strong financial credentials to qualify for the loans. “These are good quality loans and good quality borrowers.”
The lender absorbs more of the risk than the borrower, says Gumbinger. If the borrower can’t pay the mortgage, then the lender doesn’t get paid until the home is ultimately sold.
Could 1% down mortgages trigger another housing crash?
While these loans might conjure up comparisons to the housing crash of the late 2000s, there are a few key differences that should prevent another crisis. These borrowers’ financials are carefully vetted versus the run-up to the recession when people were lying about how much they earned and still getting loans.
Their credit scores need to be high enough and their debt low enough, and they have to prove their income is sufficient to make the mortgage payments each month.
Plus, these loans don’t balloon in size over time or adjust as mortgage rates change. Both are 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages offering steady, monthly payments.
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Feel free to post your thoughts!
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