Orlando Short Sale Expert | Orlando Short Sales, Orlando Short Sale Realtor

“Home prices began double-dipping months ago, but now that S&P/Case Shiller has chimed in, it really must be so.  This report is the most widely-followed home price index, equally quoted in bank boardrooms, Treasury Department back rooms, and Congressional Committees.  The report finds home prices in Q1 of this year are now 2.9% below the previous quarterly bottom in Q1 of 2009, effectively giving up all the gains of the past few years, which were of course fueled by the home buyer tax credit.

Just about everybody agrees we’re going to miss the seasonally strong period in 2011, which we should be at the very beginning of right now with May, but nobody thinks that will make any difference,’ says S&P’s David Blitzer. ‘Everybody’s now keeping their fingers crossed for 2012 and wondering whether people just don’t want to own homes anymore.’  Keeping your fingers crossed for the housing market is just the tip of the iceberg. Prices have now fallen, on this index, more than they did during the Great Depression. ‘On that occasion, the peak in prices was not regained until 19 years after they first fell,’ notes Paul Dales at Capital Economics.

So what about the banks? Sure, they took huge write-downs already, but there is clearly more pain to come, especially given that this report out today is actually a three month running average based on home sale closings in March, so really you could say the whole thing is based on sales contracts signed around six months ago. We’ve seen considerably more housing weakness since then.  ‘All will have to take new markdowns if these price pressures continue, which everything points to the fact that it will,’ says Peter Boockvar at Miller Tabak.

Bank balance sheets are still cluttered with mortgage loans, and they are still being asked to take back bad mortgages from those that bought them, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so the lower home prices go, the risk rises that another round of balance sheet write downs may be necessary.’  And speaking of Fannie and Freddie (and I’ll throw in private label and FHA), when you consider the enormous volume of bank-owned (REO) inventory of foreclosed properties they’re holding, you have to also consider what a drop in home values means to all that.

The chart we have shows all the REO without the banks included, as we don’t know that, but if you take additional data from RealtyTrac showing total REO inventory at 872,990 in May and multiply it by the latest median home price from the National Association of Realtors ($163,700 in April), you get around $142.9 billion in value at risk minus at least a 25% discount because it’s a foreclosure already.  ‘With each subsequent dip in home prices, the portfolio is worth less and the banks will suffer increasing losses,’ notes RealtyTrac’s Rick Sharga.

It’s impossible to say what the bank losses are right now, especially when you have to add in more potential put backs, where Fannie and Freddie force the banks to buy back bad loans.

All we know is that the more home prices fall, the more the banks stand to suffer, and we all know what happened the last time they suffered.  If we don’t see a meaningful recovery in home prices by the end of the year, we may need to contemplate impairment charges on first liens owned by banks and wholesale write-downs of second lien exposures.”

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Jerry LaRose is an Orlando Area Residential Real Estate Expert, who can assist you with the purchase and/or sale of Real Estate in Orlando, Windermere, Winter Garden, Kissimmee, St. Cloud, East Orlando, Longwood, Altamonte Springs, Maitland, Winter Park, Oviedo, Apopka, Lake Mary, Clermont, Ocoee  Florida or any place in the country. Jerry has created a team of professionals throughout Orlando and the country to ensure that you enjoy a smooth transition to your new area.

Please visit:

Avoid Foreclosure / Short Sale Help  http://OrlandoShortSaleExpert.com, or http://ShortSellMyOrlandoHome.com

Our Website http://JerryLaRose.com or www.JerrySellsOrlando.com,  or http://OrlandoRealEstateVoice.com ,

If you’re a Buyer looking for Great Deals –  http://InvestmentPropertyDealsOrlando.com

Please give me a call if you have questions about the Orlando and Central Florida real estate market.

P.S. If you are listing your home as a short sale in Orange, Seminole, Polk, Lake  or Osceola County Florida and Orlando, East Orlando, St. Cloud,  Davenport, Clermont, Longwood, Windermere, Winter Garden,  Kissimmee, Winter Park, Altamonte Springs, Maitland,  Apopka,  Lake Mary, Oviedo or Ocoee Florida make sure you hire an agent who knows how to do short sales and has the experience to get the job done. We are doing successful short sale packages. The short sale process is complicated and we can help simplify it.

Call us at 407-580-7011 or email at jerry@JerryLaRose.com to find out more about Orange County Short Sales and Orlando Area Short Sales.

Despite signs of recovery in the U.S. economy, the recent failure of another large, locally based bank in Central Florida is an indication the state’s community banks are still reeling from the real estate slump and recession, experts said Monday.

Winter Park-based First National Bank of Central Florida, closed late Friday by regulators, had struggled for nearly three years with sour real estate loans and shrinking capital. Chief Executive Officer Susma Patel, family members and other investors lost millions of dollars in the bank’s collapse.

First National’s six branches reopened Monday as part of Florida Community Bank, a unit of Miami-based Premier American Bank, an acquisition-minded institution owned by financier Dan Healy and other private-equity investors based in New York. The South Florida bank, in addition to acquiring First National’s branches and customers’ deposits, signed a loss-sharing agreement with federal regulators covering $270 million of First National’s troubled loan portfolio.

The local bank’s failure, which cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund nearly $43 million, was the fourth in Florida this year – and the third in Central Florida. Orlando-based First Commercial Bank failed in January, and Sunshine State Community Bank of Port Orange in February. The fourth bank, Cortez Community in Brooksville, was closed down Friday and, like First National, acquired by Premier American.

With the demise of First National, once the region’s second-largest locally based bank, Central Florida has already had more banks fail in 2011 than during all of 2010, when Orlando-based Old Southern and Clermont-based AmericanFirst went under.

Dozens of other troubled banks statewide could fail by year’s end, said Kenneth H. Thomas, a Miami-based economist and banking consultant.

“I’m afraid Florida still has more banks in shaky condition than anywhere in the country,” he said. “We’ll certainly have more failures this year, though I don’t believe we’ll have as many as 2010,” when 59 failed. “Still,” he added, “the number will be significant.”

In Central Florida, at least five community banks are in serious financial shape, according to Bauer Financial, an independent financial-ratings firm in Boca Raton that has accurately identified the deterioration of many of the banks that have subsequently failed in recent years.

In Bauer’s latest survey, based on fourth-quarter data, the banks with the lowest safety-and-soundness ratings included Coastal Bank (Cocoa Beach), Fidelity Bank of Florida (Merritt Island), Friends Bank (New Smyrna Beach), Independent Bankers Bank (Lake Mary) and Sunrise Bank (Cocoa Beach). Each received a zero, Bauer’s lowest rating.

Such ratings have become the bane of bankers’ existence in recent years. The industry disputes their validity and appropriateness, insisting they can cause a bank’s insured customers to become unnecessarily concerned.

Ratings systems such as Bauer’s “can create confusion for people whose money is safe and secure,” Florida Bankers Association Chief Executive Officer Alex Sanchez said in a March statement. Ratings firms don’t have access to important, non-public data available only to the FDIC, he said.

“The only ratings list that matters is from the FDIC,” Sanchez said. And under FDIC coverage, deposits are generally insured up to $250,000 per customer.

Jack Greeley, an Orlando banking lawyer who represents many of Florida’s community banks, said privately generated ratings can mislead because they don’t account for a bank’s reserves and capital-raising resources. He cited what the banking industry considers a better measure of soundness – what’s known as the “Texas ratio” – which divides a bank’s most troubled loans by its total capital and loan-loss allowance.

“We think there is more precise information that goes beyond Bauer which gives you a handle on the real viability of bank,” he said. “Bauer does not assess the total strength of capital as it relates to a bank’s problem assets, and that is a better gauge of a bank’s long-term health.”

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Jerry LaRose is an Orlando Area Residential Real Estate Expert, who can assist you with the purchase and/or sale of Real Estate in Orlando, Windermere, Winter Garden, Kissimmee, St. Cloud, East Orlando, Longwood, Altamonte Springs, Maitland, Winter Park, Oviedo, Apopka, Lake Mary, Clermont, Ocoee Florida or any place in the country. Jerry has created a team of professionals throughout Orlando and the country to ensure that you enjoy a smooth transition to your new area.
Please visit:
Avoid Foreclosure / Short Sale Help http://OrlandoShortSaleExpert.com, or http://ShortSellMyOrlandoHome.com
Our Website http://JerryLaRose.com or www.JerrySellsOrlando.com, or http://OrlandoRealEstateVoice.com ,
If you’re a Buyer looking for Great Deals – http://InvestmentPropertyDealsOrlando.com
Please give me a call if you have questions about the Orlando and Central Florida real estate market.
P.S. If you are listing your home as a short sale in Orange, Seminole, Polk, Lake or Osceola County Florida and Orlando, East Orlando, St. Cloud, Davenport, Clermont, Longwood, Windermere, Winter Garden, Kissimmee, Winter Park, Altamonte Springs, Maitland, Apopka, Lake Mary, Oviedo or Ocoee Florida make sure you hire an agent who knows how to do short sales and has the experience to get the job done. We are doing successful short sale packages. The short sale process is complicated and we can help simplify it.
Call us at 407-580-7011 or email at jerry@JerryLaRose.com to find out more about Orange County Short Sales and Orlando Area Short Sales.

Banks continue to receive backlash for their handling of a flood of foreclosures across the country. A new report released this week by federal regulators finds that banks failed to do a good job in handling foreclosures and sometimes evicted homeowners when they clearly should not have.

The problems were “significant and pervasive” and added up to “a pattern of misconduct and negligence,” according to the Federal Reserve. The Fed says it soon plans to announce monetary penalties against mortgage servicers.

The report revealed several cases “in which foreclosures should not have proceeded due to an intervening event or condition,” such as families in bankruptcy or homeowners who were eligible for a loan modification or even in the process of doing a loan modification.

The report also noted that banks had inadequate and poorly-trained staffs and improperly submitted paperwork to the courts.

In response to the report, several mortgage servicers signed a consent agreement this week, agreeing to changes that include new oversight procedures of foreclosures and reimbursing homeowners who were wrongly foreclosed upon. One of the servicers signing the agreement, JPMorgan Chase, says it would add up to 3,000 employees to meet the new regulatory procedures.

“The banks are going to have to do substantial work (and) bear substantial expense to fix the problem,” says John Walsh, the acting comptroller of the currency.

About two million households are in foreclosure, and several million homeowners have already lost their home to foreclosure.

More penalties coming

The banks still face punishment and settlement talks with other agencies. The state attorneys general are conducting their own probe into shoddy foreclosure procedures and working with the Obama administration to overhaul the foreclosure process to prevent future abuses.

Source: “Report Criticizes Banks for Handling of Mortgages,” The New York Times (April 14, 2011)

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Jerry LaRose is an Orlando Area Residential Real Estate Expert, who can assist you with the purchase and/or sale of Real Estate in Orlando, Windermere, Winter Garden, Kissimmee, St. Cloud, East Orlando, Longwood, Altamonte Springs, Maitland, Winter Park, Oviedo, Apopka, Lake Mary, Clermont, Ocoee  Florida or any place in the country. Jerry has created a team of professionals throughout Orlando and the country to ensure that you enjoy a smooth transition to your new area.

Please visit:

Avoid Foreclosure / Short Sale Help  http://OrlandoShortSaleExpert.com, or http://ShortSellMyOrlandoHome.com

Our Website http://JerryLaRose.com or www.JerrySellsOrlando.com,  or http://OrlandoRealEstateVoice.com ,

If you’re a Buyer looking for Great Deals –  http://InvestmentPropertyDealsOrlando.com

Please give me a call if you have questions about the Orlando and Central Florida real estate market.

P.S. If you are listing your home as a short sale in Orange, Seminole, Polk, Lake  or Osceola County Florida and Orlando, East Orlando, St. Cloud,  Davenport, Clermont, Longwood, Windermere, Winter Garden,  Kissimmee, Winter Park, Altamonte Springs, Maitland,  Apopka,  Lake Mary, Oviedo or Ocoee Florida make sure you hire an agent who knows how to do short sales and has the experience to get the job done. We are doing successful short sale packages. The short sale process is complicated and we can help simplify it.

Call us at 407-580-7011 or email at jerry@JerryLaRose.com to find out more about Orange County Short Sales and Orlando Area Short Sales