Archive for the 'Sacramento Real Estate' Category
Sacramento Real Estate “Less Favorable” in report… May Not Be Helped Much By Extension Ot Tax Credit
November 13th, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Foreclosures, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Real Estate Trends
Sacramento real estate market called Less Favorable in think tank report…
Urban Land Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank reported yesterday in its “Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010” report that there may be problems ahead for Sacramento real estate market.
Jonathan Miller, a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers who wrote the report,said ”On balance here, I guess it’s a sober year for 2010 and maybe not much better in 2011,” in a telephone news conference from the convention. “It all depends on how the economy behaves and if the consumer comes back. We don’t expect much of a resurgence.”
In the report, Sacramento was described as less favorable because of “concerns about government gridlock, rising taxes and an inhospitable business climate”.
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Sacramento Valley Small Towns Previously Sheltered are Now Hit Hard With Foreclosure Crisis
November 4th, 2009 Categories: National Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Foreclosures, Sacramento Real Estate
Sacramento Valley and San Juaquin Valley small towns that have been hit hard by unemployment are seeing a dramatic increase lately in foreclosure filings.
I came across this article today and though I’d pass it along…
The foreclosure crisis in the US is moving into small towns and suburbs which have previously been untouched by the economic downturn, according to new research.
A new report from RealtyTrac show a dramatic increase in foreclosures from a year ago in suburban areas previously believed to be more stable, such as Boise, Idaho, up nearly 22% from the second quarter of the year and Provo, Utah, which saw foreclosures up almost 11% in the same period.
In several states foreclosure activities have reached smaller towns with previously self-sustaining industries such as Chico in the Sacramento Valley, California, which has seen a staggering 98% increase in foreclosures from the third quarter of 2008.
The Las Vegas metro area had the highest percentage of foreclosures among its housing units in the third quarter, up 5.13% followed by Merced, California, up 3.72% and Cape Coral in Florida up 3.67%.
‘We are seeing migration into secondary markets and a migration into formerly stable areas and areas that have been wracked by unemployment,’ explained Rick Sharga, the vice president of marketing at RealtyTrac.
Sharga said that he expects a peak in foreclosures in 2010, only a marginal improvement in 2011 and a return to normal monthly foreclosure activity sometime in 2012.
‘Rising unemployment and a new variety of mortgage resets continued to gradually shift the nation’s foreclosure epicenters in the third quarter away from the hot spots of the last two years and toward some metro areas that had avoided the brunt of the first foreclosure wave,’ added chief executive James Saccacio.
‘While toxic subprime mortgages drove much of that first wave of foreclosures, high unemployment and exotic Alt-A Option ARMs are spreading the foreclosure flood to more metro areas in 2009,’ he said.
Meanwhile, a rush of property buyers is pushing up real estate transactions as they try to beat the government’s deadline at the end of November for the $8,000 tax credit for first time buyers.
The latest figures from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) show that its Pending Home Sales Index rose to 110.1 in September, its eight consecutive monthly rise.
The index now stands at the highest level since December 2006 when it was 112.8 and is 21.2% higher than September last year, marking the largest annual gain on record.
It could be a short lived blip though, as many analysts believe that the recovery in the US housing market is being propped up by the first-time buyer tax credit that was introduced by the Government to boost demand for houses.
‘What we’re witnessing is a rush of first-time buyers trying to beat the expiration of the tax credit at the end of this month,’ said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist.
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 courtesy10:03 Ray Clancy USA – US Property News
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New Loan Modification Law May Shut Down Many Sacramento Loan Mod Shops
October 28th, 2009 Categories: Foreclosure Rescue Scams, Loan Modification, Mortgage and Loans, Sacramento Real Estate
Effective immediately, SB 94, which became effective Oct. 11, will ensure anyone selling loan modification services will take money only after they do what they have promised. Also they must advise potential customers that they can actually negotiate a modification with their lender on their own or obtain help free of charge from nonprofit counseling agencies that are pre-approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The law includes penalties up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail for violation of the law for an individual and a fine of up to $50,000 for a corporation.
Consumer advocates called the law “a step in the right direction,” but say more needs to be done to make loan modifications easier to accomplish in order to reduce the frustration that leads homeowners to hire the unscrupulous.
No Telling exactly how Sacramento areaq Modification shops are dealing with the law… It’s too early to tell.
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BofA Suffers Huge Loss- More Foreclosures…
October 19th, 2009 Categories: Loan Modification, Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Real Estate, Sacramento Real Estate Trends
Bank of America (BOA) announced today that it suffered a $2.2 billion loss in the third-quarter quarter. Contributing to that was a $1.2 billion dividend payment to its preferred shareholders, including the U.S. government, credit losses within some of its consumer-related businesses, and $402 million after it agreed to eliminate a loss-sharing agreement it had struck with the government earlier this year. “Obviously, credit costs remain high, and that is our major financial challenge going forward.” Most of this quarter’s losses were in Bank of America’s mortgage and credit card businesses, which together lost more than $1 billion during the July-September period.
BOA funded $95.7 billion in first mortgages, selling purchase or refinance loans to nearly 450,000 borrowers, including $23.3bn in mortgages to 154,000 low- and moderate-income borrowers during the quarter. About 39% of all the first mortgages were for purchases. Year-to-date at the end of Q309, BOA modified the mortgages of approximately 215,000 customers, and an additional 98,000 BOA mortgage customers are in the trial stage of a Making Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) workout. The overall results were slightly worse than Wall Street was expecting. Analysts had anticipated that the company would suffer a loss of 21 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters, but in fact lost 26 cents a share.
Foreclosures up
Since government intervention began in September 2008, foreclosure sales remain stunted, dropping 8.6% from the previous month and 40.6% from a year ago. But the percentage of foreclosures sold to third parties, who are usually investors, grew by 215% from last year and 3.27% from August, according to ForeclosureRadar’s monthly foreclosure report. Arizona leads all states with an increase of filings by 36.1% in September, followed by Florida (29.6%), Texas (24.3%), and Michigan (18.22%). Filings in California increased only 1.08% in September, but the volume has grown by 123% from last year.
Urban areas were hit hardest and spurred the increases. In Arizona, the statewide increase was fueled by a massive 81.3% increase in Phoenix foreclosures. Foreclosures in Las Vegas jumped 47.4%; Atlanta had a 39.9% increase; Chicago’s rates climbed 36.2%; and Houston had a 33.2% spike in foreclosures, according to ForeclosureListings.com. RealtyTrac says foreclosure filings in Q309 increased to a level unseen since it began reporting the figures in January of 2005.
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Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and the Sacramento Property Recycling Program…
September 29th, 2009 Categories: Pre Foreclosures, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento Real Estate
Sacramento city officials gathered Monday around an abandoned, shopworn home in Oak Park to describe how they plan to use millions of dollars in federal stimulus money to transform foreclosed eyesores into gems.
The property on 34th Street is the first single-family home purchased by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency on behalf of the city under the Sacramento Property Recycling Program.
The effort is funded by part of the $13.2 million the city of Sacramento received from federal legislation aimed at shoring up foreclosure-battered neighborhoods.
“If we can rehabilitate these homes and get buyers into them, it helps the whole neighborhood,” said Chris Pahule, assistant director of SHRA.
He noted that the 34th Street house had been broken into previously, and that vacant houses “are a magnet for vandalism and crime.”
The 34th Street property was once appraised for $60,000, but it was foreclosed upon by Wells Fargo Bank. SHRA subsequently purchased it for $38,000.
Renovation on the house will begin later this year. SHRA plans to put it on the market in early 2010.
SHRA has allocated $3 million of the city’s $13.2 million in federal funding to the Property Recycling Program, which will be run in partnership with nonprofit and for-profit partners that will actually make the needed repairs.
The rest of the money is going to programs that make loans to developers who rehabilitate distressed single-family homes for sale and multi-family properties for rent to low-income tenants.
SHRA officials hope to rehabilitate 50 to 60 homes with the $3 million allocation. Proceeds from the sales will be plowed back into the program to buy additional houses.
Sacramento County received $18.6 million from the federal housing bailout bill, and through SHRA also will spend part of that money to buy and fix up foreclosed homes.
In addition to Oak Park, SHRA plans to target portions of Meadowview, North Highlands, Del Paso Heights, North Sacramento, south Sacramento and Galt.
SHRA is seeking an additional $20 million under the second version of the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Act. If it gets that money, the agency envisions rehabilitating more than 300 foreclosed properties throughout Sacramento County.
City Councilwoman Lauren Hammond, in attendance Monday, said she wants to see the bleeding stop in the Oak Park neighborhood, her entire district and countywide, and hopes the federal money will help.
She said there were 252 notices of default and 134 foreclosures in her district in the first quarter of this year alone. Last year, the county recorded 17,221 foreclosures, more than 7 percent of California’s total.
“Just before the recession, we had gone from 85 percent rentals to 60 percent, with 40 percent homeowners (in Oak Park),” she said. “I was really hoping to reach a goal of 50-50, because homeowners tend to be more dedicated to taking care of their homes and property. …
“And then (the recession) hit. Now, I’m hoping that this program will get us heading in the right direction again.”
Right now, the house on 34th Street doesn’t look like much. It needs painting, and the lawn is dead with bare patches. Inside, the floors and walls need work.
To illustrate its potential, SHRA officials on Monday showed off a nearby home renovated by a developer using a loan from the agency. That 950-square-foot home, with new carpet, gleaming features, a separate garage and a basement, is on the market for $86,000 and has a pending sale offer.
While one spruced-up home may not seem like much amid a sea of foreclosures, Sergio Barajas, West Coast community development manager with the National Community Stabilization Trust, a new national nonprofit working to fight foreclosure blight, said surgical rehabilitation of a relatively small number of houses can make a difference.
“When you look at a home like this, we look at the potential to stabilize the neighborhood as a whole, not just one home,” he said.
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Sacramento Region Homeowners Fed Up with Loan Modification Blunders…
September 11th, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, Sacramento RE Stats, Sacramento Real Estate
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – James Seeley, a machine shop supervisor at the University of California, Davis, just wants a modified mortgage that he and his wife, Sandi, can better afford.
It’s a common quest in this economy. Seeley’s wages are being cut. His house in Natomas, Calif., has lost almost half its value. And he owes more than it’s worth, even with a $125,000 down payment in 2006.
“We want to get payments down to 31 percent of our income,” Seeley said.
In Curtis Park, Calif., Hilary Egan is trying to do the same. Her contractor husband has seen a considerable drop in business. She wants a modification before their interest-only loan resets next year to higher payments.
The Seeleys and Egans, both current with their mortgages, have something else in common: Both their modification requests were denied.
Their rejections have aligned them with a broad and growing swath of public opinion: sore that a U.S. banking industry that has received billions of dollars in taxpayer support in the past year hasn’t reciprocated on their behalf.
“I don’t know a single person who has benefited from the money that was given to lenders,” Egan said.
Added Seeley, “The taxpayers are the largest investor in these companies, so I would think they would be taking care of us first.”
Banks and financial institutions aren’t usually adored even in best of times. But after absorbing much blame for exuberant lending that created the housing bubble, they are increasingly absorbing a backlash for their response to the subsequent foreclosure crisis.
It’s not hard to see why. While banks and loan servicers have promised for almost three years to better address rising stresses on their home loan borrowers, foreclosures and defaults still haven’t seriously slowed.
The eight-county Sacramento region has counted more than 42,000 foreclosures since the start of 2007. Many area neighborhoods are scarred by vacant repos and dead lawns that pull down property values of other homeowners. Statewide, the foreclosure tally has passed 410,000, and it’s believed thousands more are inevitable.
As a result, it’s not just borrowers griping about the inability of banks to contain the crisis. Elected officials, besieged by complaints from constituents, are increasingly applying pressure as well.
This month, the League of California Cities, convening in San Jose, will consider a resolution urging 480 cities to yank deposits from banks that “fail to cooperate with foreclosure prevention efforts.”
“If you count up the money cities have in banks, that’s an amazing amount of power,” said Los Angeles City Council member Richard Alarcon, a former state lawmaker. “We have never tried to seize it. I’m trying to seize it. If you’re not a good player on the foreclosure front, we’re not going to put our money in your bank.”
Last week, the Elk Grove City Council voted 4-0 to back the notion and lobby for it at this month’s convention. The city of 141,000, one of the fastest growing in California during the housing boom, in the bust became an epicenter of defaults and foreclosures.
“It’s time. It’s past due. We should have done this some time ago,” said Vice Mayor Sophia Scherman, who lives next to a foreclosed home. “It’s going to send a very strong message to these institutions.”
Others aren’t so sure. Tony Cherin, professor of finance at San Diego State University, said, “I can understand the frustration.”
But he said cities would have fewer choices for investing because of bank failures and mergers during the meltdown. He said cities’ options “may be limited even though they would like to divest themselves.”
Two weeks ago, U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui and more than a dozen other California House members applied their own pressure. They wrote Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, urging him to turn up the heat on mortgage lenders to modify more loans. Matsui and others wrote that homeowners who use HUD-approved counselors to contact loan servicers are often “rebuffed or told they couldn’t be helped until they were behind on their payments.”
Said Matsui, “The economy will not come back the way it can until we take care of these foreclosures, and this is the way to do it. There are no excuses at this time, and that’s why the letter went out.”
Last month, the U.S. Treasury Department likewise issued a so-called “name and shame” list of lender performances. The report revealed that banking giants like Bank of America had modified only 4 percent of its loans that qualified for President Barack Obama’s Making Home Affordable Program. (That program provides financial incentives to lenders to lower interest rates or stretch out loan payment times to make payments more affordable to borrowers.) The government said Wells Fargo had modified just 6 percent of its eligible loans.
Banking officials are quick to acknowledge they can do better. But they also contend that they are dealing with a crisis that keeps growing beyond efforts to staff for it.
“Unfortunately, our member banks, as committed as they are to working with their customers, still haven’t found a big enough magic wand to wave over this thing,” said Rod Brown, president and chief executive officer of the California Bankers Association. Brown noted that Wells Fargo hired 4,000 staffers in the first half of 2009 to deal with mortgages. He also cited U.S. Senate testimony by Bank of America that it handles 1.8 million calls a month about residential foreclosure issues.
In a statement last month, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Co-President Mike Heid acknowledged frustration. He said, “While the majority of our customers who request help are getting through to us and receiving the help they need, we know we’ve fallen short of our customer service goals in some cases.”
Banks, meanwhile, are also dogged by a widespread and often-mistaken perception that the purpose of so-called bailout funds – hundreds of billions of dollars in the past year – was specifically to help banks modify mortgages.
While the Obama administration budgeted $75 billion this year to help prod loan modifications, the much larger sums were designed to “better equip banks to make loans to help them get this economy out of the downturn,” said Brown. “It was also to help banks, strong banks, to give them more capital, and to work with the regulatory entities to acquire weaker or failing banks.” In other words, to prop up a banking sector reeling from losses as more Americans defaulted on residential mortgages, credit cards and commercial real estate.
“Those dollars had nothing to do with residential mortgages. They weren’t directed to banks for that purpose,” Brown said. He and others note that banks are paying back billions of dollars, with interest, to the government.
In the short run, that doesn’t spell relief for James and Sandi Seeley. Their Aug. 19 letter from Wells Fargo said the investor who owns their loan balked at modifying it. The big bank suggested the Seeleys consider a short sale – in which the bank would accept less than it’s owed to avoid foreclosing. The Egans received the same option from a Wells Fargo subsidiary.
Neither couple wants to leave their houses. Both said they’re reapplying for modifications. Said Egan, in a plea to banks, “I don’t want you to bail me out. I don’t want you to make my payment for me. Can you just play ball?”
(c) 2009, Sacramento Bee
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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Prime Fixed-Rate Loans Account Now For 1 in 3 Foreclosure Starts
August 21st, 2009 Categories: Sacramento Economy, Sacramento Real Estate
It used to be that two income families with two well educated, high paid breadwinners were nearly ‘exempt’ from the economic difficulties many are facing in the worst economic slump since the depression. Not any more.
Especially here in the Sacramento area, these are the new people in trouble as 11.6 percent unemployment and 14 percent wage cuts across state government jobs take a toll.
With the recession nationwide throwing thousands of people out of work daily, more than 13% of American homeowners with a home mortgage have fallen behind on their payments or are in foreclosure.
Thursday, the Mortgage Bankers Association spotlighted the trend nationally, saying “prime fixed-rate loans account now for one in three foreclosure starts.”
“This is further confirmation of what we’ve seen in the past year, one that’s increasingly driven by fundamental issues in the economy,” MBA Chief Economist Jay Brinkmann told reporters during a conference call. Brinkmann has long said that early-recession layoffs hit renters first, many in construction. Then it hit manufacturing-dependent homeowners. Now, it’s moved up the food chain to the professions with good educations and prime-rate “safe” loans.
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Newest Foreclosuradar Report: California Foreclosure Prevention Act Fails to Slow Filings
August 11th, 2009 Categories: Pre Foreclosures, Sacramento Real Estate
RECORD NUMBER OF FORECLOSURES SCHEDULED FOR SALE
Even though we are supposed to be in the middle of a 90 day foreclosure moratorium here in California; July saw a huge increase in foreclosure filings. The new law adds 90 days to the existing 3 months between the filing of a notice of default and a notice of trustee sale, but exempts servicers (lenders) who put in place a state mandated loan modification program. It seems most banks and servicers were already in compliance though, as the law was actually written last February and so lenders had plenty of time to get their systems up to speed. The moratorium brought only a small hiccup in the flow of foreclosures here in the Golden State.
California Foreclosure Prevention Act fails to slow filings
Discovery Bay, CA, August 11, 2009 – ForeclosureRadar (www.foreclosureradar.com), the onlywebsite that tracks every California foreclosure and provides daily auction updates, issued its monthly
California Foreclosure Report for July 2009. Once again, foreclosure stats were mixed, with Notice ofDefault filings flat, Notice of Trustee Sale filings rising by 31.6 percent and foreclosure sales dropping 22.7 percent. The number of properties scheduled for foreclosure sale – new Notices of Trustee Sale minus those sales that have cancelled or sold – rose to a record level of 124,874, nearly double the levels reached during the foreclosure peak last year.
High-level findings for July 2009 include:
o Filings of new Notices of Default were little changed from June at 44,996 filings, a 1.5 percent decrease. Year-over-year filings rose by 11.9 percent from July 2008.
o Notice of Trustee Sale filings bounced back after dropping in June to 39,294; a 31.6 percent increase over the prior month, and a 0.7 percent increase over the prior year. The California Foreclosure Prevention Act, which adds 90 days prior to the filing of the Notice of Trustee Sale for lenders that do not have a comprehensive loan modification plan in place, had only a fleeting impact last month; with Notice of Trustee Sale filings hitting their second highest level on record in July, just two weeks after the law took affect.
o After increasing for 3 consecutive months, foreclosure auction sales dropped by 22.7 percent to a total of 17,239, with a combined loan value of $8.08 Billion dollars. Year-over-year sales dropped a substantial 40.1 percent, with July 2008 having the highest level of foreclosure sales on record at 28,795. Opening bids set by lenders were an average of 39.1 percent lower than the loan balance, with 45.0 percent of sales discounted by 50.0 percent or more.
o Sales to third party bidders were flat from June, with 2,683 foreclosures sold to investors, or in increasingly rare instances, junior lenders. As a percentage of total sales, sales to third parties continued to increase; though lenders still took back 84.4 percent of foreclosures at auction, representing 14,555 loans, with a total of $6.93 Billion dollars in loan value.
o Foreclosures scheduled for sale rose to 124,874, a 10.4 percent increase from the prior month, and a 93.3 percent increase year-over-year from July 2008. The year-over-year increase is significant given that foreclosure sales in July 2008 set a record that has not again been reached. The increase appears to be primarily due to the fact that lenders are willingly postponing foreclosure sales.
o The new “Home Affordable” loan modification plans now include a 3-month trial. It is our understanding that foreclosures are not cancelled until the completion of this trial period. As such, we believe monitoring the cancellation of scheduled foreclosures should provide some insight into the effectiveness of this program, as successful trials should result in cancelled foreclosures. We had a record number of cancellations in July at 10,789, a 24.8 percent increase over the prior month and an 86.3 percent increase year-over-year. It should be noted, however, that as a percentage of the foreclosures actively scheduled for sale, there was little change from prior months. It appears that the significant increase is primarily due to the high number of foreclosures that are scheduled for sale, but postponing rather than selling.
Despite the failure of the California Foreclosure Prevention Act to slow Notice of Trustee Sale filings it is clear that lenders and servicers are delaying foreclosure” says Sean O’Toole, founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar. “More homeowners are now sitting at the brink of foreclosure, just days away from the next scheduled auction date, then ever before, yet we simply aren’t seeing the wave of foreclosures many predicted.” Political pressure, financial incentives and the postponement of sales awaiting the completion of loan modification trial periods are likely reasons for the delays. The vast majority of foreclosures, 72 percent, are postponing either due to lenders request, or mutual agreement between the lender and borrower. Only 10 percent are being postponed due to bankruptcy. With few exceptions the remainder have not yet een postponed and are scheduled for their first sale date. The average California foreclosure has a total loan balance of $425,134 on a home that is now worth $236,739. While negative equity is a prerequisite for the vast majority of foreclosures in California, the degree of negative equity varies a great deal by location. Foreclosures in Santa Cruz County had loan balances just 110 percent of the current estimated value, while Foreclosures in Merced County had loan balances an average 283 percent higher than the estimated value. The Bay Area counties of Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo were among the least underwater. Inland counties including Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Solono, Sacramento, San Bernardino, and Riverside were among the most underwater.
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Mortgage Fraud Crime Grows in Sacramento Area
August 11th, 2009 Categories: Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate News, Sacramento Real Estate
Mortgage Fraud…
Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado Counties all have different approaches to the growing number of mortgage fraud cases popping up– Prosecutors from the three counties are in the midst of a great wave of fraud cases, with more popping up constantly.
SacBee ran this story this morning By Chelsea Phua:
About two years ago, El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson hired a forensic auditor and increased training for his prosecutors in the area of real estate fraud and other financial crimes.
He dedicated two prosecutors and two investigators to handle a majority of the fraud cases.
As a result, more financial schemes that in the past might have been dismissed as belonging in civil court are instead being prosecuted as criminal offenses, El Dorado prosecutors and investigators said.
Pierson said his office has made mortgage fraud crime cases a priority. “The magnitude of the loss is so great on the individual victim and also on our economy as a whole,” he said.
Prosecutors in the Sacramento area have taken varying approaches to the surge in real estate fraud. Some, such as El Dorado County, have devoted more resources, while others have used existing anti-fraud units.
Nationwide, the number of suspected cases of mortgage loan fraud has increased from 52,868 in 2007 to 64,816 in 2008, the FBI says.
Former U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said that about 2 1/2 years ago his office started receiving reports of mortgage fraud on an increasingly regular basis.
“It was just a recurrent theme I was hearing over and over again,” said Scott, now a partner with Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe.
Scott pushed for a mortgage fraud task force that included the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and the state’s real estate board.
As the cases poured in, Scott said his office and the task force realized that “we need to find allies in the region.” The task force started to offer training to law enforcement agencies and local district attorney’s offices in the investigation and prosecution of mortgage fraud cases.
“We realized we were ground zero here for mortgage fraud in this district,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Stegman.
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of California, which handles cases from the Oregon border to Bakersfield, had the most mortgage fraud indictments in the nation during fiscal year 2008, Stegman said.
Training provided by the federal government and organizations such as the California District Attorneys Association is helping smaller district attorney’s offices to handle the increasing workload as a result of the mortgage meltdown, said Bob Cosley, supervising investigator with the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office.
Larger agencies such as the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office usually have an established unit that handles real estate fraud and other types of white-collar crimes
“We have a unit specializing in this type of caseload for more than 20 years,” Sacramento County Assistant District Attorney Albert Locher said.
The office participates in the Sacramento-area mortgage fraud task force.
“In times of economic downturn, there are more of these kinds of cases that surface,” Locher said, but said it’s not necessarily because more crime happened.
“When times are flush, criminals can churn enough fraud to cover their tracks,” Locher said. “When the tide goes down, you’ll see more rocks, but the rocks have always been there.”
In Placer County, the District Attorney’s Office’s elder abuse unit encounters most of the real estate-related fraud cases. About 70 percent of elder abuse cases are financial in nature, Deputy District Attorney Jim Deslaurier said.
The number of cases hasn’t fluctuated much in the last few years, but as the population ages, the office might see more of these cases, Deslaurier said.
Yolo County District Attorney’s Office hasn’t had many mortgage fraud cases referred to the office, said Dan Stroski, lieutenant of investigation in charge of the insurance fraud unit at the District Attorney’s Office.
Stroski said the courts seemed apprehensive to hear them because it takes about three years for such cases to make their way through the system. Suspects in such cases also typically do not have an extensive criminal history and end up serving little time.
“That doesn’t mean we’ll give up,” Stroski said.
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Sacramento One Of Fifteen Cities With 99% Chance of Lower Prices
July 9th, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, Real Estate Trends, Sacramento RE Stats, Sacramento Real Estate
Mortgage Insurer PMI Group said in its quarterly Economic and Real Estate Trends (ERET) report (see US Market Risk Index ) that the Sacramento—Arden-Arcade—Roseville CA real estate market has a 99.9% chance of lower home prices through March 31, 2011.
The 15 Real Estate Markets with the highest probability of lower prices in 2011 each have a 99 percent chance, PMI said. They include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville in Florida; Riverside, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Sacramento and San Diego in California; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Providence, Rhode Island; and Detroit.
“The housing market has been hit by a demand shock of high unemployment and a supply shock of distressed foreclosure sales,” LaVaughn Henry, senior economist at PMI, the fourth- largest U.S. mortgage insurer, said in an interview.
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