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Last Visited: 9/30/2009
Keller Williams Realty agent Richard Daskam, who represents a large number of buyers and sellers in Long Beach and surrounding areas, says regular homes are getting a lot of offers.
Equity sales or REOs (real estate owned properties), theyre getting multiple offers.
And he says that in some parts of Long Beach selling prices have risen 10% or greater from a year ago.
One driver behind home sales and increasing interest in the market is what some would classify as rock bottom home pricesparticularly prices on foreclosures and properties whose owners are in some stage of foreclosurewhich are sparking the interest of people who have for the last two years steered clear of the market.
Many of the foreclosures are still priced under market, Daskam says.
Thats partly because market values were set three or four months ago.
The lag is due to the failure by banks to recognize the current market value, because they are relying on initial valuations conducted before the federal and state moratoriums on foreclosures, he adds.
(For more on the foreclosure moratorium and how it will impact home sales and pricing, as well as details on home prices and sales in Long Beach and surrounding areas, see my updated column on Friday).
The backlog of foreclosures, which some say is due to the moratorium, among other factors, points to more foreclosures on the way.
We know that theres a wave of foreclosures coming, says Daskam, who does home valuations for banks as a side business.
In whats known as broker price opinions (BPOs), agents are often hired by banks, at smaller fees earned by appraisers, to obtain three listing and three sales comparisons, giving banks a quick value, or snapshot, of the current value of a property so a property can be quickly priced and put up for sale.
Daskam says hes received e-mails from three banks saying that they all had over 5,000 orders for these snapshots.
All of those orders for property snapshots from are for properties in some mode of foreclosure, adds Daskam.
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