Home sales, prices increase in Lake Tahoe
While third quarter home sales in the Lake Tahoe Basin surged, the federal government shutdown could bring those numbers down this quarter.
Ninety percent of the Federal Housing Administration has been furloughed. FHA-approved loans account for about one-third of the loans. The IRS doesn’t have the staff to verify income. Cash sales won’t be impacted.
Most experts are saying the housing market will weather the shutdown as long as it doesn’t last long. The nation is now in week two of the shutdown.
For the quarter ending Sept. 30, the number of home sales in the Tahoe basin with a price tag of less than $1 million was up 293 percent. Overall the volume was up 60 percent from a year ago.
“The luxury market seems to be adding to our market rebound,” Sue Lowe, corporate vice president for Chase International Real Estate, said in a statement. “Sales across the board are increasing, but luxury is making a substantial comeback.”
The median price of a home in Lake Tahoe is up 33 percent from 2012 to $440,000.
According to the National Association of Realtors, sales across the nation are at the highest pace since February 2007, and have remained above year-ago levels for the past 26 months.
California is second to Florida for the most attractive state for foreign buyers of U.S. property, according to an Asia Society report. More than half the homes sold to foreign buyers in California go to Chinese nationals, estimates CNN Money.
Representatives from Sierra Sotheby’s International Realty recently attended an event in Hong Kong in an effort to form relationships with Asian homebuyers in the market to purchase property on the California side of Lake Tahoe.
The median home prices are up on the South Shore 36 percent to $325,000 for the third quarter compared to 2012.
In the same time period, Tahoe City is up 18 percent to $499,900; Incline Village is up 26 percent to $885,000; Truckee is up 13 percent to $499,90; Carson Valley is up 28 percent to $250,000; and Reno-Sparks area is up 31 percent to $210,000.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
As a Notary Public who works with people buying, selling, and doing a refinance on their property, I’ve seen my business with loans come to a complete halt since the shutdown. They need to conclude this business for individuals to be able to get and close their loans!
Just a thought, Lisa; Perhaps if the Federal government wasn’t so wrapped up in the business of lending money, your business would still be ongoing whether the politicians were getting along or not.
The feds are extending their tentacles into every aspect of what SHOULD be private life. Now it’s banking. Soon it will be your medical care. Think carefully before voting to give them any more power over your daily life.
Absolutely right, the government is way to involved with controlling the lending industries, both home owner and small business as well as the early stage VC business. Every reputable authority I know that has studied the issue considers the Community Reinvestment Act (Jimmy Carter) a major if not the primary contributing factor to the housing bubble.
Get government out of business and back to enforcing uniform laws. Government croniness is at the heart of our decline. Certainly it is at the heart of Tahoe’s own little bit of he11 known as SLT.
Dog, Fanny and Freddie increase liquidity in the real estate markets by purchasing mortgages. That directly injects cash into the market. So your comment is exactly wrong.
Here is your argument against Fanny and Freddie: Fanny and Freddie allow banks to make loans and then divorce themselves from the consequences of the bad loans. It creates an incentive to make as many loans as possible without regard to quality.
Now here is your problem with the argument above. Going uninsured is the exact same thing. People choose to go uninsured when they do not bear the ultimate cost of going uninsured. Hospitals cannot turn emergency patients away.
So you cant really argue against Fanny without arguing for Obamacare on the same financial principals.
Nope, you’re putting words into my mouth that are not there.
I think people ought to be insured. It’s the prudent thing to do. I don’t believe that government has the authority to force them to. I also don’t believe that hospitals should be forced to care for people who will not pay. Again, government sticking its nose where it does not belong.
I think you’ll generally find that I’m pretty consistent on these things.
Dog, the law about emergency care was enacted when a pregnant mother in labor was turned away from a hospital and both her and her unborn child died.
Is that acceptable to you?
Wow. I hope she reads that and is embarrassed.
Dog, the reason the lending has come to a screaching halt is not because goverment is involved in lending it is because lenders can not verify with the IRS that the person who is borrowing money really makes the income that is on the loan application. This is needed in order combat loan fraud and toxic bad loans. Fannie, Freddie and FHA have been making guareenteeing loans before you were even born(at least in the case of FHA) There job was to give liquidity to the market by taking morgages off of banks books thereby allowing the banks to make more loans. These loans are then bundled with other like loans and sold into the mortgage back securities market. The melt down that caused the great ressesion was mainly caused by loans in the subprime market(which fannie, freddy & FHA were not in for the most part) these loans which were made to people who could not afford them(and for the most part never should have gotten them) caused a panic on the real Estate market and mortgage market, when people started defaulting right away. when this happened real estate prices dropped very quickly and loan standards tightened up(in some cases way too much) which increased the home inventory causing more home price drops and foreclosures.
Fannie, Freddie, & FHA were also forced by congress to find ways to put more people into more homes and increase home ownership. The only way to do this was to lower underwriting standards and allow increased debt to income ratios.
Sounds like a good excuse, Reloman, but it’s not true. Except for the part where they reduced the requirements for home loans. That worked out REAL well, didn’t it?????
And with regards to the woman who died, that’s a shame. But you can’t tell me that under government control things will work more smoothly. Government specializes in inefficiency.
I believe in voluntaryism. I am absolutely against coercion as a means of accomplishing your aims. If you want something done, go ahead and do it. Do not try to force other people to do it for you by enlisting a tyrannical government’s power.
http://www.hhnmag.com/hhnmag/HHNDaily/HHNDailyDisplay.dhtml?id=4770007463
Some background on the good old days when some hospitals let patients die on the front steps.
Watch out for these people and their statistics.
Remember when the market was tanking and they claimed prices were still going up because only a couple of high end homes sold and they averaged them?
Also the home across the street from my house sold at foreclosure. The new owners hauled two roll off boxes of old carpet and sheet rock away. Remodeled the entire house, installed a new roof and paved the driveway. It sold for 33% more than the foreclosure price.
PS
If FANNIE and FREDDIE make/bought good loans they wouldn’t have needed a bailout.