We need more builders to build.

“Phoenix, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Atlanta were the four cities with the highest year-over-year price increases,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Atlanta metro are home prices were up 16.5% year over year as of February 2013.
Sonja Bullard with Angle Oak Funding.
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In Chapter 4 of The Compassionate Samurai, Brian Klemmer tells us to focus.  All the assets we need to focus squarely on, the things that make us most successful are all around us.  We're just not concentrating them in the right direction.  Use the phrase, "How can I" to focus ourselves and our assets in the right  directions. Step back and look at the assets we already have and ask, "How can I use this asset or that asset in a more focused direction to get the most energy?"
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To entice (private) investors, Ed DeMarco, current acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, proposed two broad approaches designed to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"In each approach, private investors would be compensated for pricing and bearing mortgage credit risk ahead of a government guarantee, if such a guarantee exists at all," DeMarco said Thursday.-- cmlynski@housingwire.com
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Nat'l Real Estate Post:
If you buy a house which shares a well with other homes, you need a Proportional Responsibility agreement signed by all the home owners who share the well.  If you don't get the agreement, you won't get the financing on that house.
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Buyers using mortgages are up 12% from a year ago.  Until recently, cash buyers were the dominated the market, read investors.-- The Ticker
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Home owners insurance does not cover mold damage or remediation or earthquake damage.  However, it may cover items stolen from your car.
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Nat'l Real Estate Post:
In Sunnyvale, CA there is a lottery for the chance to put in an offer for a 128 unit development (townhouses?).  This to to keep bidders from pitching tents on the front lawn to have a chance to bid. 
 The Housing Market Index is at 44 for the month of May.  An index of 50 means more builders have confidence in the market than not.  44 means we are almost there.  More buyers are needing more homes and the inventory is dropping.
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Rick Sharga, the executive vice president of Carrington Mortgage Holdings, said the end of the foreclosure crisis is in sight.

"It’s not over yet. There are probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 and a half to 3 million seriously delinquent loans or loans that are already in foreclosure and we’ll need to work through that pipeline of troubled loans before we can really officially declare the foreclosure crisis over."
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The median housing costs of working renters rose nearly six percent between 2008 and 2011 while their median incomes fell more than three percent. Working owners experienced a decrease in median housing costs over the three-year period, but the lower costs were accompanied by an even larger decline in their median incomes, so affordability did not improve, the study found. -- editor at Real Estate Economy Watch
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Policy makers agree we need private lending.  While Federal Home Lending banks will never disappear, they need to take a back seat in the lending market.

"To establish a liquid non-government guaranteed market there would seem to be a need to have greater homogeneity in borrower characteristics. For borrower characteristics that do not fit neatly into the secondary market, we need to find a way to get insured depository institutions back into the business of funding mortgages," DeMarco said.
A solution is to establish some type of cooperative to meet the needs of these institutions, which is already established in the FHLBanks. -- cmlynski@housingwire.com
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First time home buyers, those of average age of 31, will give up many things to get into the neighborhood of choice.  They also will give up luxury items and entertainment to save for the first home.  65% of first time home buyers are open to considering foreclosures, more so than repeat buyers. -- cmlynski@housingwire.com
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