California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest movie, The Expendables, is a summer hit and Californians are now waiting for him to morph into the homeowners’ hero by signing SB 1178, the bill extending anti-deficiency protection for consumers facing foreclosure who refinanced their original mortgage loans that was approved by the California Sate Assembly earlier this month.

Currently, if a homeowner defaults on a mortgage loan, their liability is limited to the property itself.  However, homeowners who refinanced their original mortgages did not have the same protection.  Sponsored by the California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.), SB 1178 was passed to protect homeowners in foreclosure from lenders suing for the difference between the value of the foreclosed property and the outstanding balance on the loan.

If the Governor signs the bill, it will become law effective June 2011.

You know it can’t be good news when an article about home sales starts out like this:  Analysts’ estimates for July home sales aren’t even close.

And it wasn’t good news.

According to HousingWire.com, the sale of new single family homes hit an all-time low of 276,000 units for the month of July, down over 12 percent from the revised June estimates of 315,000.

That’s 35 percent lower than one year ago.

NAR reported a 27 percent decline in existing home sales for July, which is the lowest in more than a decade.  The estimate on the street had been a 12 percent decline.

Not surprisingly, real estate brokers and agents are feeling the pain.  NAR and other state realtor associations are reporting double-digit drops in membership.  NAR alone has lost 200,000 members since 2006.  Some California agents are reporting business is off some 65 percent from peak years.

New research from The Urban Institute’s MetroTrends, which reports on social and economic trends in urban America, shows that despite a drop in home prices, affordability continues to be a problem for many Americans, especially in coastal metro areas.

According to the MetroTrends data, the share of American households spending more than 30 percent of monthly income on housing costs rose from 30 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2008.

The research also showed that residents of coastal communities have been especially affected, particularly those in California, Florida, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.  According to the report, 12 metro areas in central and southern California have 43 percent or more of their populations spending more than 30 percent of monthly household income on housing costs.

Researchers said that most of the coastal metros suffered a double whammy of unemployment and house price declines, but the impact was particularly severe in Western metros, particularly Los Angeles county, which continues to lead the state in foreclosures.

ForeclosureRadar reports that California foreclosure activity was “mixed” in July, with foreclosure filings and cancellations dropping from June and foreclosure sales rising.

California foreclosures moving to REO status were up 13.46 percent in July from the previous month, but down over 18 percent from July of 2009.  Notice of default filings were down 4.8 percent from June, and down 47 percent from July of 2009.

ForeclosureRadar CEO Sean O’Toole said that despite a “tsunami of mortgage delinquencies, we continue to see no signs of a foreclosure wave.”  He said that government and lender intervention programs are continuing to delay foreclosures.

The report also said that in July, it took an average of 226 days to foreclose in California, down slightly from a 2010 peak of 239 days in April.

To read ForeclosureRadar’s July 2010 California Foreclosure Report, go here.

July foreclosure data from RealtyTrac shows that REO levels in July were at the second highest level since the company started reporting in April of 2005.

The highest point ever recorded by the company was just two months ago, in May, when there were 93,777 properties that went back to banks as REO.  In July, that number was only one percent less, at 92,858.

However, RealtyTrac said that foreclosure filings categorized as a notice of default through REO dropped almost 10 percent in July from the same month one year ago.  It also dropped in June, making July the second consecutive month for yearly declines.

In July, Nevada continued to hold the #1 position as the state with the highest foreclosure rate at one in every 82 houses.  Arizona was second, with one in every 167 houses and California was fourth, where one in every 200 houses received a foreclosure filing in July.

Things are gonna get better, or things are gonna get worse.  Take your pick.

Two top economists, the kind that institutional investors rely heavily upon, have weighed in on which way the economy is going to go.  And they disagree!  (No surprise there, really.)

Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley is the more optimistic of the two, saying that things will pick up in the second half of this year and unemployment will begin inching its way down.  Deflation?  Fuhgeddaboutit.

Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs says the market is poised for a sharp slowdown in the last half of this year that will send unemployment rates shooting up again, potentially triggering deflation.

Here’s the article from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/business/economy/06deflation.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Now, if the guys who are supposed to know, don’t know, or can’t agree, what the heck are we simple humans supposed to do?  Hold on tight, I guess.

The Obama administration is holding a conference today to discuss ways to overhaul Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying that doing so will be important to fixing the country’s broken housing finance system.

The conference will focus on a review of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the FHA, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Home Loan Banks and the “significant private sector role” in mortgage origination, funding and servicing.

To date, the U.S. Treasury has spent more than $145 billion to keep Fannie and Freddie solvent, after seizing the lending giants in September of 2008, as they teetered on the brink of collapse.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the Obama administration wants a “comprehensive reform proposal that protects taxpayers, institutes tough oversight, restores the long-term health of our housing market, and strengthens our nation’s economic recovery.”

According to the Treasury, Fannie, Freddie and other government entities currently guarantee more than 90 percent of new mortgages.

KnowYourOptions.com is the new Fannie Mae website launched last week to help distressed borrowers understand more about mortgage financing and prepare them for dealing with lenders in the foreclosure process.

Available in both English and Spanish, the new site aims to help struggling homeowners find alternatives to foreclosure.  According to a Fannie Mae press release, key features of the site include:

• Interactive Options Finder to help homeowners identify options that might be right for their situation;
• Calculators to help borrowers understand how many of the options work, including refinance, repayment, forbearance, and modification;
• Videos featuring real homeowners discussing how they received help and housing counselors providing advice;
• A virtual assistant to walk homeowners through key areas of the site; and
• Next steps and helpful forms, including a financial checklist and contact log to help borrowers be prepared when contacting their mortgage company or housing counselor.

The site also provides details about Fannie Mae’s Deed-for Lease program, which gives borrowers the option to remain in their home by becoming renters.

Fannie Mae has relaxed the limit of 30 REO listings per broker from any one Fannie Mae source, according to a report from REO Insider.

In June, Fannie imposed a strict limit of 30 REO listings per broker at any one time, and imposed a 25-mile restriction as well.  The new rules elicited an immediate response from NAR and Keller Williams Realty.

In a letter to the president of Fannie Mae, Mark Willis, Keller Williams CEO, said that the REO listings limitation “will impede the objectives of both Fannie Mae and the real estate professionals who have invested heavily in people and systems to efficiently move REO properties. Clearly, the REO arena is an extremely specialized field, requiring dedicated professionals who possess distinct expertise and sufficient financial and organizational resources.”

Apparently, Fannie agreed and said it would approve special exceptions to the limit.  Fannie also made the clarification that a broker could have 30 REO listings directly from Fannie Mae and take on additional listings from outsourcers without the need for approval from Fannie.

Bloomberg Businessweek has listed the top 10 markets that will lead the housing market recovery by early 2014 from data provided by Fiserv Case-Shiller Indexes and Moody’s Economy.com.

The housing forecast is based on factors that include income growth, unemployment rates, demographic trends, construction costs and foreclosure rates.  There were 384 markets surveyed, and the Top 10 include:

1.  Bremerton-Silverdale, WA (44.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

2.  Bend, OR (33.6 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

3.  Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI (33.1 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

4.  Napa, CA  (31.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

5.  Carson City, NV  (31.6 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

6.  Panama City-Lynn Haven-Panama City Beach, FL (26.9 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

7.  Flagstaff, AZ (26 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

8.  Santa Fe, NM (25.8 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

9.  Cheyenne, WY (23.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

10. Anchorage, AK (20 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)