Jason Bernabei, TriCastle Realty
DEL MAR January 2 2012 -- Gooooooood Monday morning Saaaan Diego! I am so glad to return with the New Year to America’s Finest City, that I’ve called home for nearly a decade. For those of you complaining about the weather, try spending the end of December in Illinois next year. I assure you it would give you a little perspective as to just how good we San Diegans have it.
Meanwhile, some pretty interesting industry news has occurred. Under the radar to most folks, even industry folks, but significant nonetheless, the Federal Housing Administration, or more commonly referred to via the acronym “FHA,” has made another move in an effort to further stabilize declining housing prices, in this still soft market. It is no secret that foreclosures are continually stacking up in low-income communities, heck, even some of the nicest necks of the woods have been plagued. Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe and other “lands of the haves” right here in San Diego are no different.
FHA has announced that they have extended a waiver of certain “anti-flipping” regulations throughout the end of fiscal year 2012. To understand what this means to housing here in SD and across the land, you need to first understand why the reg exists in the first place. The waiver was incepted in 2010 by FHA, and effectively what it has done since is made it easier, made it allowable for the mortgage insurer to insure mortgages utilized in the purchase of homes bought and resold in less than ninety days. Anti-flipping regulations have been designed to protect the public from predatory flippers reselling at inflated prices to unsuspecting buyers/borrowers. Amidst these concerns is the overall big picture, that neighborhoods in communities, from low to high income alike, suffer when foreclosures dot the block. Values of surrounding properties sink, and in lower income areas, these vacant foreclosures can become havens for criminal activity. Acting FHA Commissioner Carol Galante praised the waiver extension as a continued opportunity to “accelerate the resale of foreclosed properties in neighborhoods struggling to overcome the possible effects of abandonment and blight.”
Enter “The Realty Insiders” project. The Realty Insiders Movement here in San Diego highlights various “flippers” in their pursuits of foreclosures and other “rehab” projects through an expansive web, television, and other multi-media endeavor. FHA considerations, inspections, mortgage lending, are just some of the many considerations in the flip-game. While the overall objective of local flippers is certainly profits, they play their role in reshaping and rehabbing our communities to combat the aforementioned ill-effects that plague housing and the economy right here in SD. The Realty Insiders' pilot episode highlights two local investors who do just that, in the SD neighborhoods of Spring Valley and North Park.
Give me a holler today at jasonb@tricastle.com, and check me out each and every Monday here at www.therealtyinsiders.com, and on www.tricastle.com for more, and tune in to The Realty Insiders on the tube this winter to see myself, and other local property rehabbers flip SD.
Jay’s Outlook: partly sunny
Jason P. Bernabei, TriCastle Realty, Carmel Valley home search
DEL MAR January 2 2012 -- Gooooooood Monday morning Saaaan Diego! I am so glad to return with the New Year to America’s Finest City, that I’ve called home for nearly a decade. For those of you complaining about the weather, try spending the end of December in Illinois next year. I assure you it would give you a little perspective as to just how good we San Diegans have it.
