Investors becoming the new landlords

FORT MYERS, Fla. – April 25, 2012 – Gene Richards is a lifelong Vermonter, but on a recent weekday afternoon he found himself back on Florida’s west coast, scouting foreclosures to add to the collection of rental properties he has amassed in the wake of the housing crisis.

“I just started buying them and I haven’t stopped. I have 15 right now, and I’d buy another 15,” said Richards, 51, who runs a mortgage company and also owns rental properties back home in Burlington, Vt. “This to me is a no-brainer of an investment.”

With home prices at historic lows and rental rates on the rise, Richards and a growing number of investors with cash to spare are seeking lucrative returns by gobbling up foreclosures in distressed markets across the country and turning them into rentals.

“The investors are seeing bargain opportunities,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. “The numbers are just very attractive, given the alternatives.”

The real estate data firm CoreLogic estimated in a report this month that the burgeoning foreclosures-to-rental business could become a $100 billion industry this year as bigger investors get involved in hard-hit markets from Florida to California to Arizona to the Midwest.

Yun cited a recent NAR survey that shows sales of investment homes soared nearly 65 percent in 2011 over the previous year. By contrast, the number of purchases by owners who intended to occupy the homes fell more than 15 percent.

Those numbers reflect the fact that investors often have the ability to purchase in bulk and with cash, bypassing the need to rely on credit approval from banks. But the survey also suggests that the combination of bargain prices and a steady stream of rental income seems more attractive to many investors than having their money languish in banking accounts or bonds.

Of course, the speculators who furiously acquired properties and flipped them in search of quick profits played a key role in fueling the housing bubble that wrecked the U.S. economy. But for the moment, Yun believes, the current investor boom in turning foreclosures into rentals could actually help to heal the ailing housing market.

“In the current market situation, I would say the investors are very helpful. …We don’t want to see foreclosed properties linger. The investors are clearing this inventory out of the system,” Yun said. “Investors during the bubble years were not helpful; they were just adding fuel to the fire. But now they’re playing a stabilizing role.”

In the past, the investors willing to buy bank-owned, single-family homes and turn them into rentals predominately were individuals or mom-and-pop outfits with only a handful of properties. They’re still in the mix, but larger players have entered the business, and even larger ones – including hedge funds and private equity firms – have said they plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in such properties.

California-based Waypoint Homes has amassed about 1,300 rental houses in California since the business began in 2008 and has begun expanding into Phoenix.

“We’re not looking at this as a short-term opportunity in a distressed market,” said Waypoint co-founder Colin Wiel, noting that some large hedge funds and private equity funds are looking to spend hundreds of millions of dollars going into the single-family rental business. “There’s so much big capital that’s so eager to get into this space. It’s the emergence of an enormous industry.”

In the Washington area, investor Dan Magder recently left his job with the private equity firm Lone Star Funds to start the District-based Rock Creek Capital Group and focus on the single-family rental business. He has partnered with Greenlet Investments of Texas, which owns hundreds of homes throughout the South, and he expects to spend as much as $200 million in coming years buying foreclosures, renovating them and renting them out.

“There are a tremendous amount of these homes that are going to be sitting there. At the same time, you have many people who were in these homes who are looking for a place to live,” Magder said, adding that between rising rents and low vacancy rates, “the financial proposition starts to look good.”

Banks and lenders currently own 634,282 distressed properties across the country, a 16-month supply at the current sales pace, according to RealtyTrac. An additional 717,874 properties are in the foreclosure process but have not yet been repossessed.

In February, the federal agency that oversees government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced its intention to hold bulk sales of about 2,500 foreclosed homes in some of the nation’s hardest-hit areas, such as Las Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta and parts of Florida. The program could expand if successful.

The following month, Bank of America announced that it will test a pilot program to allow as many as 1,000 struggling homeowners to hand over the deed but stay in their homes and rent from the firm. The bank said it will work with property management companies to maintain the homes and eventually sell them to investors.

Some housing advocates say the idea of hedge funds and other large investors becoming large-scale landlords raises red flags. Will they abide by fair-housing laws? Will they actually maintain the homes or just slap on a coat of paint and ignore tenants until it’s time to sell?

“It’s a whole different thing than an apartment building, where all of your tenants are in one place. The fact that you have properties that may be scattered across a metropolitan area has its own set of challenges,” said Deborah Goldberg, special projects director for the National Fair Housing Alliance. “We’ve never been in this kind of situation before where you have so many vacant properties in so many places.”

The Federal Reserve recently issued a policy statement about bank-owned rental properties in which it urged banks to hire only reputable vendors and to comply with all landlord-tenant laws and property maintenance provisions.

Investors such as Wiel and Magder say they are aware of the potential problems and are using updated technology and infrastructure to make sure their properties are well maintained and their tenants treated fairly.

“The onus is on us to be effective stewards of these assets,” Magder said. “We’re dealing with real people and their lives, and you have to be sensitive to that. It’s actually the right business proposition, but it’s definitely the right thing to do.”

It’s a business proposition that isn’t likely to lose steam anytime soon. From institutional investors to small-time buyers, turning foreclosures into rentals seems to be one boom that has emerged from the housing bust.

Richards, the investor from Vermont, says he has no plans to cease his regular trips to Florida. Unlike the cavalcade of speculators who flocked to the state during the boom years to make a quick buck, he said he intends to be a responsible landlord and watch his investment grow over time.

“It isn’t about the flip for me,” he said of the foreclosures he has purchased. “I really like fixing them up. I feel like I’ve helped stimulate the economy down here. I don’t want to be the one who continues to hurt it.”

Copyright © 2012 washingtonpost.com, Brady Dennis

Investors eye REOs as a ‘gold rush’

NEW YORK – April 16, 2012 – Investors are pouncing on foreclosure bargains and then turning the properties into moneymaking rentals, which has some drawing comparisons to a “Gold Rush” of sorts.

Diane Gozza, the executive vice president of Integrated Mortgage Solutions in Houston, recently wrote in an article for National Mortgage News that investors are eyeing the properties similar to how those risk-takers did back in the 1848 California “Gold Rush,” who also had dreams of striking it rich.

In recent months, investors have been buying up investment properties in bulk at rock-bottom prices.

They have plenty to choose from: The government-sponsored enterprises (GSE), which includes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, own more than 200,000 single-family foreclosed homes, and banks own about 600,000 more. To help accelerate the “rush,” the Federal Housing Finance Administration recently launched a pilot foreclosure-to-rental program, offering investors the chance to bid on 2,500 foreclosure properties owned by Fannie.

But some housing experts, including the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), have argued that such REO-rental programs aren’t needed because investors are already flooding the market to buy up foreclosures, making a government intervention unnecessary. (Read “NAR: REO Rental Programs Largely Unnecessary.”

“Taking into account the enormous stockpile of REO properties currently held by the GSEs, the auction and bulk investment in REO to rental properties may indeed be the next gold rush,” Gozza writes. “Much in the spirit of the 1848 gold rush, there will be risks and tough lessons learned. But this private-sector initiative has the potential to be the catalyst for a housing market recovery.”

Source: “Tapping into the Next ‘Gold Rush,’” National Mortgage News (April 10, 2012)

Will housing prices soar by 2014?

NEW YORK – April 4, 2012 – Real estate economists and analysts are increasingly optimistic that the housing market will have a dramatic recovery in the next two years, according to results of a new semi-annual survey of 38 real estate economists and analysts conducted by the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate.

The economists predict that the national average for home prices will stop falling by this year and a subsequent turnaround will occur. By next year, they project that home prices will begin to rise by 2 percent, and then get a larger boost of 3.5 percent by 2014. The economists also predict that housing starts will nearly double by next year.

They also foresee rental prices continuing to increase for all property types, ranging from 0.8 percent to 5 percent.

The economists’ predictions were made on assumptions that the economy would continue to strengthen, including a larger drop in unemployment.

“While geopolitical and global economic events could change the forecast going forward, what we see in this survey is confidence that the U.S. real estate economy has weathered the brunt of the recent financial storm and is poised for significant improvement over the next three years,” says Patrick L. Phillips, ULI chief executive officer. “These results hold much promise for the real estate industry.”

Source: “Real Estate Will Rock in 2014,” RISMedia (March 31, 2012)

CoreLogic: Fla. home prices rising

SANTA ANA, Calif. – April 4, 2012 – CoreLogic today released its February Home Price Index (HPI) report. Excluding distressed sales, month-over-month prices nationally increased 0.7 percent in February from January, but fell year-over-year by 0.8 percent if distressed sales are backed out of the equation and 2.0 percent if they’re included.

In Florida, however, prices rose in February 2012 compared to February 2011 whether distressed sales were included or not. The CoreLogic HCI found that Florida home prices rose 4.7 percent overall, and 1.6 percent without distressed sale numbers. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions.

Even with the declines, however, the national housing market shows signs of improvement.

“House prices, based on data through February, continue to decline, but at a decreasing rate. The deceleration in the pace of decline is a first step toward ultimately growing again,” says Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Excluding distressed sales, we already see modest price appreciation month over month in January and February.”

“Non-distressed home sale prices, which represent two-thirds of all sales, have appreciated by just over 1.0 percent since the beginning of the year,” adds Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic.

HCI highlights February 2012

• Including distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were: West Virginia (+8.6 percent), Michigan (+5.8 percent), Florida (+4.7 percent), Arizona (+4.5 percent) and South Dakota (+4.1 percent).

• Including distressed sales, the five states with the greatest depreciation were: Delaware (-11.2 percent), Connecticut (-7.9 percent), Rhode Island (-7.8 percent), Illinois (-7.1 percent) and Georgia (-6.6 percent).

• Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the highest appreciation were: South Dakota (+5.9 percent), West Virginia (+5.6 percent), Maine (+4.5 percent), Utah (+3.7 percent) and Montana (+3.6 percent).

• Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the greatest depreciation were: Delaware (-8.7 percent), Connecticut (-4.9 percent), Nevada (-4.6 percent), Vermont (-4.0 percent) and Minnesota (-3.3 percent).

• Including distressed transactions, the peak-to-current change in the national HPI (from April 2006 to February 2012) was -34.4 percent. Excluding distressed transactions, the peak-to-current change in the HPI for the same period was -24.6 percent.

• The five states with the largest peak-to-current declines including distressed transactions were Nevada (-60.2 percent), Arizona (-49.8 percent), Florida (-48.6 percent), Michigan (-44.0 percent) and California (-43.7 percent).

• Of the top 100 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) measured by population, 67 are showing year-over-year declines in February, nine fewer than in January.

© 2012 Florida Realtors®

Buffett: ‘I’d buy up a couple hundred thousand’ homes

WICHITA, Kan. – March 1, 2012 – Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” recently that he’d “buy up a couple hundred thousand” single-family homes if it was practical.

Buffett said that’s because he believes purchasing a home with ultra-low mortgage rates and holding it for the long-term has become a better investment than stocks right now.

“Housing will come back, you can be sure of that,” Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders recently.

Buffett forecasts an increase in household formations, as more people who moved in with their parents or family members during the recession look to move out and get their own home soon.

“People may postpone hitching up during uncertain times, but eventually hormones take over. And while ‘doubling-up” may be the initial reaction of some during a recession, living with in-laws can quickly lose its allure,” Buffett said.

Buffett said the recovery in the housing market could vary quite a bit among local housing markets, however. He did not provide a timeline of when he expected a full housing recovery, admitting that his prediction last year that a housing recovery will take shape within the year turned out to be “dead wrong.”

Source: “Housing Market Forecast Beyond 2012 From Warren Buffet,” International Business Times (Feb. 28, 2012) and “Warren Buffet on CNBC: I’d Buy Up ‘A Couple Hundred Thousand’ Single-Family Homes If I Could,” CNBC (Feb. 27, 2012)

Renters are losing their leverage

NEW YORK – Feb. 29, 2012 – During the boom years of homebuying, property manager Charlie Biter used to offer new apartment tenants one or two months’ free rent as a lease enticement. Now, as rental demand continues to surge, no such offers are necessary.

“Back then, everybody was being creative to bring renters in,” said Biter, who oversees 2,000 apartment units in the Nashville area for Continental Property Management. “But now I’m not aware of any units offering concessions.”

Across the country, as more people compete for apartments in the wake of the housing collapse, the market has swung in favor of landlords. For tenants, that means saying goodbye to move-in incentives and watching rents edge higher.

About a quarter of all apartments nationwide offered some type of concession in last year’s fourth quarter. By comparison, 53 percent of apartments offered concessions in the first quarter of 2010, according to data tracker MPF Research’s latest report.

“The industry moves in cycles, and right now not a lot of apartments are available,” said Jay Parsons, an analyst at MPF Research. Until apartment construction catches up to demand, landlords will maintain their control of the market, he said.

The vacancy rate in Pittsburgh, at 2.2 percent, is among the lowest in the country, according to MPF’s fourth-quarter data from 2011. University of Pittsburgh master’s student Harrison Murphy knows the difficulty first-hand. Four years ago, he found an apartment within an hour of searching, he said. Now, not only are rentals harder to come by, but many landlords require stricter background checks.

“I have been unable to find a single place that doesn’t require a recommendation from your previous landlord, with some even asking for recommendations from teachers,” Murphy, 24, said.

In New York, too, as rental demand swells in some of the most desirable neighborhoods, rates are reaching new highs. In 2011, average rents across all apartment categories rose 8.4 percent compared with the year-ago levels, according to the Citi Habitats annual report.

In Chelsea and the East Village, average monthly rent in January for a one-bedroom apartment hit $3,218 and $2,616 respectively. Both neighborhoods have vacancy rates below 1.5 percent. Furthermore, landlord concessions in New York plunged 68 percent from 2010, according to the report.

“With high demand in the marketplace, landlords were not likely to negotiate with potential renters, and needed to do little to attract clientele to their available apartments,” said Citi Habitats President Gary Malin.

In Portland, Ore., one of the country’s tightest markets, the year-end vacancy rate was 3.1 percent, according to the Barry Apartment Report, a local data tracker.

“Nobody’s giving concessions. That’s history,” said Joe Weston of Weston Investment, which owns 3,000 apartments in the Portland area.

In April, his firm plans to raise rental rates about 5 percent. “People living in suburbia are moving to the city center,” he said. “And some of those people were foreclosed on and are now renting.”

Feeling squeezed

Increasingly, real estate observers say, more people are finding themselves in situations like Chicago resident David Sundquist, who says his rent, which continues to inch up, squeezes his budget. He said most affordable apartments he finds on Craigslist ads are in unsafe neighborhoods. In addition, “It seems like the only way to get a place is to have a roommate,” said the 31-year-old commodities trader.

In the heyday of the housing market, when the country saw droves of empty apartment units, some landlords attempted to woo tenants in striking ways.

For instance, Woody McLaughlin of Nashville’s apartment association remembers one landlord offering a trip to the Bahamas to new lease-signing tenants. But now, deals offering even one free month’s rent are scarce, he said.

Todd Jackovich, a developer with Atlanta-based Stonehenge DCM, said he and other property managers use a computer program that shows how much rents can be increased based on rates at nearby apartment buildings. “Landlords are trying to set a new floor (price) on some of their products,” he said.

Construction up

While the country’s single-family home construction is still recovering from the depths of the downturn, this year is expected to be an important milestone in the tide of new multifamily home construction occurring in many cities. MPF Research estimates 125,000 apartment units will be completed by year’s end, an 89 percent gain from 2011.

“That sounds like a huge increase,” MPF’s Parsons said. “But it’s really still on the low side by historic standards. (It) puts in perspective just how very, very low 2011 was.”

Waiting lists are getting longer at apartment buildings around the country, which is fueling a spike in apartment development, real estate professionals said.

Skeptical observers, such as Weston, the Portland apartment manager, worry some markets may be over-betting on construction, creating the conditions for a speculative bubble several years from now.

“The income the developers want for some of their units is too high,” Weston said. “By 2015 we’ll have a lot of apartment products, but will there be enough people?”

© Copyright 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc., Bobby Allyn, The (Nashville) Tennesseean

A new breed of investors steps forward

NEW YORK – Feb. 17, 2012 – “Mom and pop investors” are trying to capitalize on a depressed real estate market in the hopes of cashing in one day.

This new breed of small-scale investors likes to buy and hold properties, as opposed to the high-dollar large investment firms that once dominated the real estate market that flipped properties quickly.

For “mom and pop investors,” the strategy is to buy homes at rock-bottom prices, rent the properties out to cover all of the costs of homeownership for several years, and then one day sell the homes when prices recover.

“An unprecedented number of investors are looking into this,” John Burns, CEO of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, told USA Today. Investors purchased more than 26 percent of single-family and condos in 167 U.S. markets in the first nine months of last year, according to data supplied by Burns.

For investors in the rental market, an 8 percent annual return is fairly normal, according to Burns. “That means that someone who buys a $100,000 property – and pays cash for it – makes $8,000 a year after expenses, including maintenance and taxes,” the USA Today article notes.

Of course, the threats of tenant and maintenance issues always has the potential to derail that potential profit, so investors need to be careful before jumping in, some experts warn.

Source: “Mom and Pop Investors Propping Up Home-Buying Market,” USA Today (Feb. 14, 2012)

Beat the competition in buying foreclosures

NEW YORK – Feb. 7, 2012 – While bank-owned homes are plentiful in many markets, they aren’t always easy for a buyer to get. Foreclosures sell at bargain prices – sometimes at 35 percent discounts when compared to nonforeclosures. But the ultra-low prices attract investors and all-cash offers, which makes it difficult for other buyers’ bids to win out.

So how can buyers beat the competition to get a foreclosure?

Get the first look: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s First Look program offers first-time homebuyers and others who need financing and are looking for a primary residence the first opportunity to see bank-owned homes before investors. Buyers have a 15-day window to submit offers before investors have the opportunity to start bidding. Homebuyers can search for Fannie Mae’s REO properties at HomePath.com. Properties owned by Freddie Mac can be found at HomeSteps.com.

Submit a competitive offer: Homes priced at heavy discounts are usually in high demand and attract multiple bids. Lowball offers won’t likely get far. Some housing experts suggest starting with your best offer. “My advice is to offer the most you feel you would ever pay for the property,” said one recent foreclosure buyer.

Make a large deposit: If a buyer wants to get the banks attention, they could offer a larger than typical good-faith deposit. But if the buyer has to back out of the deal for some reason, he or she may be risk losing the deposit.

Even if buyers really want the property, don’t let them cave in to unreasonable demands, like waiving a home inspection. Otherwise, it may be a decision they quickly regret if the home is later found to be rife with problems.

Source: “How to Beat the Competition and Buy a Foreclosure,” Sun Sentinel (Fla.) (Feb. 5, 2012)

Foreign buyers see big bargains in U.S. real estate

MIAMI – Jan. 16, 2012 – Foreign investors are finding plenty of deals in the U.S. when it comes to real estate, and, as such, more international investors are flocking to key states to buy their piece of the American Dream.

Mexico is the top country of origin for foreign buyers purchasing U.S. homes, according to a recent study by Credit Sesame, which used National Association of Realtors® data for its findings.

“In this period of tremendous uncertainly globally, real estate here is a safe haven,” Susan Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at The University of Pennsylvania, told MSNBC.com.

The top destinations of foreign investors for U.S. real estate purchases are:

1. Florida: Thirty-one percent of all home purchases are made by foreign buyers, with most coming from Cuba, Haiti and Colombia.

2. California: Twelve percent of all home purchases, with most coming from Mexico, the Philippines, China, India and Vietnam.

3. Texas: Nine percent of all home purchases, with most coming from Mexico, India, Vietnam, China and the Philippines.

Source: “Housing more affordable than ever … for foreign investors,” MSNBC.com (Jan. 13, 2012)

(Sarasota) November 2011 sales up 12.7 percent over last year

November 2011 property transactions in the Sarasota real estate market totaled 602, up 12.7 percent over last November.  The total also exceeded the October 2011 sales figure of 577.  The market has remained strong and stable as the winter season gets into full swing, reflecting continued confidence in Sarasota as a destination location.

 

In fact, the Today Show‘s real estate report from Barbara Corcoran in late November noted that Sarasota was one of the top recovering markets in the nation. (emphasis added)  Corcoran said Sarasota is a “beautiful beachfront community” that offers residents and visitors “a sophisticated, urban cultural experience” that is propelling sales and prices in 2011.

 

Overall, sales in 2011 continued on pace to exceed last year by a wide margin, and should put the Sarasota market at the highest level since 2005. In fact, at the end of November, overall sales were within 186 sales of exceeding all of last year. This sales resurgence has paralleled the drop in the available inventory, and put the remaining months of inventory in the range of a seller’s market.

 

The inventory of available properties for sale in Sarasota was at 4,672 in November, up slightly from October’s level of 4,525. The inventory sunk to a 10-year low of 4,408 in August 2011.

 

The November 2011 median sale price for single family homes rose to $162,000 from the October 2011 median of $149,838, a rise of 8 percent. This month’s figure was also higher than last November, when the median was $160,100. The condo figure has been fluctuating for several months, and again dropped in November to $127,000 – lower than last month’s figure of $143,000 and last November’s figure of $159,000. The year-to-date median sale price was $155,000 for single family homes and $157,250 for condos. These figures have remained remarkably steady for the past year, indicating a stabilizing market.

 

…Pending sales were up in November 2011 to 782 compared to last month’s figure of 772 and last November’s total of 764. Last month, 552 single family homes and 230 condos went under contract.

 

The distressed property market was relatively unchanged, but did drop slightly from 43 percent of the total market to 41.3 percent. At the height of the foreclosure crisis, that figure topped 51 percent in the second quarter of 2010.

 

Click HERE for the complete press release in PDF format, plus six pages of statistical charts.