Jonathan's Real Estate Website — Call me at 650 619-9255

65 Maywood Drive, San Francisco, CA

Incredibly rare opportunity in Monterey Heights overlooking the St. Francis Woods neighborhood in a home that has not been on the market for over 45 years,

4BR/3BA Single Family House offered at $1,149,000
Year Built 1962
Sq Footage 2,461
Bedrooms 4
Bathrooms 3 full, 0 partial
Floors 2
Parking 2 Car garage
Lot Size 4,011 sqft

DESCRIPTION
Marvelous Mid-Century Modern style home located in the coveted Monterey Heights neighborhood. This home has been lovingly care for by the original owner for over 45 years. Downstairs has the potential of a 5th bedroom or a completely separate in-law unit. Excellent condition for those that have the creativity to upgrade this home into an incredible contemporary creation. Use your imagination and remember its all about Location…. Location…. Location.

Jonathan Y. Lee | Realty World-Success | request more info | (650) 619-9255

WASHINGTON – Federal banking regulators are examining whether mortgage companies cut corners on their own procedures when they moved to foreclose on people’s homes, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday.

Preliminary results of the in-depth review into the practices of the nation’s largest mortgage companies are expected to be released next month, Bernanke said in remarks to a housing-finance conference in Arlington, Va.

“We are looking intensively at the firms’ policies, procedures and internal controls related to foreclosures and seeking to determine whether systematic weaknesses are leading to improper foreclosures,” Bernanke said. “We take violation of proper procedures very seriously,” he added.

The central bank’s decision adds weight to federal and state investigations into whether banks used flawed documents to foreclosure on homeowners.

Attorneys general in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia are jointly investigating whether paperwork and legal procedures were handled properly. At the federal level, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency last month asked seven big banks to examine their foreclosure practices. The OCC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are also working with the Fed on its examination.

In addition to probing the banks handling of foreclosure documents, Fed staffers and other federal agencies are evaluating the potential effects of the foreclosure debacle on the real-estate market and on financial institutions, Bernanke said.

The Federal Reserve oversees bank holding companies — typically Wall Street’s biggest banks — including Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo.

The inquiries come as Bank of America and Ally Financial Inc.’s GMAC Mortgage have resumed processing foreclosures, after halting them temporarily to review documents. Both lender face allegations that employees signed but didn’t read foreclosure documents that may have contained errors. Other companies, including PNC Financial Services Inc. and JPMorgan, have halted tens of thousands of foreclosures after similar practices became public.

The federal agencies have a range of options at their disposal. They include issuing a “cease and desist” order requiring a company to stop engaging in a specific practice. They can impose fines on the companies. Agencies also can take less drastic actions, such as crafting a plan with the company to fix any problems.

Bernanke didn’t provide details in his speech.

According to people familiar with the examination, the banking agencies are looking into whether companies had controls in place when foreclosure documents were signed, what procedures were in place to proper handle documents, and whether employees involved in the foreclosure process were adequately trained.

Dubious mortgage practices and lax lending standards were blamed for contributing to a housing bubble that eventually burst and thrust the economy from 2007-2009 into the worst recession since the 1930s. Many Americans took out home loans that they didn’t understand and bought homes that they couldn’t afford.

As a result, foreclosures have soared to record highs. It’s one of the negative forces restraining the economy’s ability to get back on sounder footing.

Now more than 20 percent of borrowers owe more than their home is worth, and an additional 33 percent have equity cushions of 10 percent or less, putting them at risk should house prices decline much further, Bernanke said.

“With housing markets still weak, high levels of mortgage distress may well persist for some time to come,” Bernanke warned.

That dreaded shadow inventory of homes that has captured headlines and gripped the industry and market analysts with angst is beginning to make its way out of the darkness, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting (JBREC).

The California-based firm says loan modifications “were certainly successful in delaying the inevitable – foreclosure.” But homes that have been stuck in that neverland of somewhere between delinquency and repossession are now winding their way through the foreclosure pipeline at a quicker pace and will soon come out the other end as a short sale or REO.

In its September market report, JBREC colorfully illustrates what it calls “no more free lunch,” meaning the days of defaulted borrowers staying in their home, mortgage- and rent-free, for extended periods are coming to an unavoidable end.

One of the company’s staff members said their neighbor, who had a Notice of Default filed last September, continued to dress the home up with elaborate decorations on all holidays. Occasionally, the “owners” moved the BMW and SUV out of the driveway to pull their two jet skis out of the garage. Last month, they moved all the vehicles to clear a path for the new furniture being delivered. The Notice of Trustee Sale recently appeared.

Another JBREC staffer said a neighbor mired in divorce and job loss lived free in their house for almost a year, while having lavish birthday parties with petting zoos and buying new high-tech equipment for the home. The property recently turned over as REO and promptly sold for about $100,000 less than it should be worth. (The distressed sale price proved to be a painful comparable for the staff member when she tried to refinance her own home shortly after.)

According to JBREC, there are now approximately 2.5 million foreclosures in process, and another 2.5 million mortgages that are 90-plus-days delinquent. The company says these numbers will soon begin to trend
down, while REO (which JBREC says is currently at 562,000 bank-owned homes) and short sales will trend up.

When this happens, the company says the greatest levels of distress will be in the markets already hit hard, such as Stockton, California, and Orlando, Florida. JBREC’s assessment of the top five shadow inventory markets in terms of months of supply include Modesto, California; Miami, Florida; and Riverside-San Bernardino, California, in addition to Stockton and Orlando, which top the list.

Naturally, the question on everyone’s mind is: what will happen to prices with the shadow supply coming to light? The answer, according to JBREC, is “prices will decline, potentially significantly.”

“Prices will decline because there is more than a one year supply of homes on the market, and several bank servicing arms and REO managers have told us that they will drop price to get the loans and homes off their books,” JBREC said in its report.

The company warns that only a quick economic recovery, or a government mandate to rent the homes out, can prevent further price declines.

JBREC says tremendous affordability and investor appetite for REO could create a pricing floor that isn’t too far below today’s prices. However, the company points out that price declines are already showing up in the new home market. In the three months following the April 30 tax credit deadline, home builders dropped price an average of 3 percent, according to JBREC.

How much further will prices fall? JBREC says that varies by market and price point. But the company argues that Case-Shiller and median prices have already overstated the correction on most homes, so the declines reported in the news will be far less than what is really occurring in the market.

Not everyone is expecting such a dire outcome. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiaros, Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, thinks the shadow supply of homes will be much more manageable.

Based on a paper by Mallach, Timiaros says some delinquent loans have “cured,” either naturally or through loan modifications; banks are getting better about approving short sales; and even when a foreclosure happens, more investors are buying the properties at courthouse auctions before they show up as REO.

From Mallach’s analysis, Timiaros says the likeliest outcome is a steady flow of foreclosures over a longer timeframe, which will stave off another crash in home prices, but will probably lead to low or no appreciation in home prices for several years.