Joseph & Cheryl Melendez's (melendezteam) Blog

  If it wasn't so serious, it would be laughable. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has taken the lead in an effort to institute an appraisal code of conduct. The assumption is that the current wave of housing foreclosures is partially driven by inflated home appraisals. It is also assumed t...

  The bipartisan mortgage bill recently passed by the Senate will allow the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure up to $300 billion new loans for at-risk borrowers. LendersLenders must write down (a loss to the lender) the loan principle to 90% of the new appraised value, roughly the am...

Fannie Mae News   Fannie Mae will allow more struggling homeowners to sell their homes for less than they owe on their mortgages in a gambit that could hit the mortgage finance company with upfront losses but stave off massive hemorrhage from foreclosures.The program by the largest U.S. financier...

Up with the Down Payment   Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, proposed something last week that no other major presidential candidate has advocated in decades: raising minimum down-payment levels for home mortgages.That would mean no more zero-down deals. No more "pi...

HOME PRICES ROLL BACK TO 2004 LEVELS... Sales data for the first quarter has arrived and for March specifically, prices have hit the 2004 watermark.  That means the median price is down almost 20% from a year ago.  Both the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register reported the Dataquick f...

PRICES ARE DOWN, BUT SALES ARE UP... The next paragraph will have the exact numbers of sales which will still be down from the previous year, but up from the previous month.  The fact is sales are way up from February.  March sales (the latest month available) in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San...

BUYING BANK OWNED, FHA LOANS AND THE WHOLE ENCHILADA... There is a lot of conflicting information out there.  Have foreclosures peaked?  Maybe not everywhere, but Orange County is getting close.  The banks took possession of 698 properties in March, down 4% from February and down 13% from January...

HOME PRICES ROLL BACK TO 2004 LEVELS... Sales data for the first quarter has arrived and for March specifically, prices have hit the 2004 watermark.  That means the median price is down almost 20% from a year ago.  Both the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register reported the Dataquick f...