Houston in 2012 will enjoy a stronger real estate market, thanks to steady increases in the energy-related job market. It was this market that kept real estate agents busy leasing commercial property and showing homes to relocating individuals.

Housing in Houston in 2012 may see about a 5-percent increase as we head into the upcoming year, and the median price of a Houston home is expected to increase from 2 to 3 percent this year. Although these numbers are lower than what we may expect historically, they are still showing a steady growth in the Houston housing market.

Foreclosures in Houston

Since 2010, foreclosure postings and actual foreclosures have declined, and most real estate experts expect these declines to further accelerate in 2012. These declines are likely attributed to the tight lending standards that took place starting in 2009. It is also likely that the financial industry has finally started to make headway in their backlogs of foreclosures resulting from the recession.

It is clear that in order to begin seeing a turnaround in the real estate market lenders must deal with the foreclosure problem, which has been a strain on the industry since 2009. It is also important to understand that lenders will experience issues now for foreclosures that occurred three years prior, meaning that they are just now facing the music from the steep increase in foreclosures in 2009.

Home Loan Lending in Houston

The national mortgage market is still expected to decline in 2012 about 25 percent, although the large markets in Texas, such as Dallas and Houston, are expected to outperform national averages due to the strong job markets found here.

Houston continues to experience increases in its energy sector, which always buoys along the real estate market.

There are plenty of good reasons to look forward to a healthy real estate market in Houston in 2012, so many real estate experts will be keeping a close eye on this market in the months to come.

What happens in most cases, a married couple or even an individual will come into a lending institution to get approval for a home loan. The agent or broker will run their credit checks, and look at everything pertaining to their income, and backgrounds. They already know that these prospective applicants cannot be approved for a loan, but instead of telling them no, they falsify the records that they submit on the application to the host loan grantor to ensure approval.

Everything seems fine for a while, and the homeowners are happy to have received the loan, and have settled into to their new lives of home ownership. Then one day an FBI agent shows up at their front door and delivers the news about the loan being illegal due to the falsified information that was listed on the application. Usually these investigations are launched when a certain loan brokerage in the Houston area are having too many defaults under their name.

This causes an immediate foreclosure on the home, and the buyers are not only out of a place to live, they have lost their down payment, and all the closing fees that go along with the purchase. This happens more than some might think, and as home sales dwindle across America, these loan agents are becoming desperate to maintain certain levels of income from their commission on deals that they close. This is a very hard crime to prevent in the first place, as it is done without the applicants seeing the flawed information, and there is no way they can verify that the real documents were sent.

The outright defiling of the great American dream is happening all too often and is financially destroying families left and right. One way of verifying that the company cutting the check for you loan has the right information, is to contact them directly once approval is received, and ask for a copy of the application to verify it’s correctness.

Right now a home shopper in the Metro area can find three bedroom two and one half bathroom homes that are new construction from the $121,000.00 range and up. Dual income households can easily afford the monthly mortgage payments, and up keep costs. One problem is that those typical thirty year mortgages are harder and harder to come by today. Most home loan lenders want bigger down payments, and a fifteen-year term. They are still gun shy from the fall out of all those sub-prime loans that were approved in the 2000s.

If you do not mind the commute, some super custom luxury homes, in areas like Spring, The Woodlands, Conroe, Magnolia, and Tomball are widely available. The Spring Texas area has been voted one of the most affordable and best places to live by many real estate, and financial publications in recent years. It is perfectly situated for work, outdoor activities, dinning, and entertainment. Add all those previously mentioned attributes to a reasonably, or below market priced home, and you have your own personal nirvana.

Prices remain extremely high in the Galleria, Hedwig Village, Memorial, and Spring Branch area, and unfortunately, $200k is not going allow for the purchase of a mini mansion or personal compound anytime soon. However, looking further west there also seems to be homebuyers frenzy out toward the Cypress, Texas area, and many PGA designed golf courses are popping up out there too.

For persons relocating their families to the Houston Metropolitan area, you will be like a kid in a candy store when you start shopping for a home. The overall lot sizes, options, and amenities in most suburban neighborhoods outshine any state in the Union when it comes to the bang for the buck factor.

Debt To Income Ratio

There are stricter standards being laid out as this is being written, and the old sixty percent debt to income ratio will no longer be tolerated. The new figure that Fannie Mae has put into operation is forty five percent, which cuts down on the consumer’s buying power quite a bit. The government and the lending industry as a whole know that all to often homebuyers, mortgage agents, and realtors will try to force a sale on a home that cannot be afforded. In a perfect world your housing costs would not run over twenty-five percent of a person’s annual income. This is a figure that is from the 1970s and 1980s, and people do not mind being drowned in debt currently.

Foreclosures

This has put many people in the rental market, and there currently not any home loan companies that will take a chance on someone that has already lost their home due to financial difficulties. For these future homebuyers, it would be wisest to get out of debt and rebuild their credit file, and score for a purchase a few years down the road. It is also a good time to just completely get out of debt, so when your credit is restore, there will only be the house note on your debt to income ratio.

Mortgage Lenders Missing The Closing Dates

This issue has everyone involved in the home buying process enraged currently. Home loan companies are given a closing date, and they agree to it, but just as quickly they will add, “but we cannot guarantee the date”. What happens is that the closing day comes, and the lender has not responded, or worse yet the day before, they have new issues about the loan, and they will need more time to let the borrow correct the situation. No one really understands the stall tactics, at all, but it is making home sellers rich, because the can refuse to extend the closing date, and just pocket the earnest money that was put down.

Usually any planned community will have a swimming pool or two, but the water features in this slice of paradise challenge vacation resorts built for family fun. To call anything in the Cinco area a pool is understatement, as they are more like “Water Entertainment Features”, there is something for any age level in your family. They even have fishing in the five lakes, but it is noted on their website that all anglers must practice catch and release.

Do you want to go to the beach without having to travel down to Galveston? That is no problem, as C.R. has it’s own beach with lagoon for you and whole family to catch some rays, and further your outdoor living experience. The kids have a couple of water park features where they can run around umbrellas that double as fountains let them get wet for fun, and to stay cool, plus another area that has two story water slides for some exhilarating slide and splash activities.

The Beach Club by far can create many great family memories, as you and the kids can build sand castles right at the waters edge. The water and sand are not seperated so you have more of a beachfront experience than most manmade beach areas usually offer. There are also the standard neighborhood pools that are closer to everyone’s home, but getting out to the The Lake House Pool will by far be most fun the whole family can have at one location. There is even a big screen display to watch movies at night while splashing around in the pool.

The real estate offerings at Cinco Ranch and all the superb amenities make this a great choice for any age range, and the school system in Katy Texas is second to none, when it comes to your child’s education.

Since most loans are secured with the guarantee of the Federal Housing Administration currently, people inflating their incomes, and having others verify the lies all fall under eye of the federal government. Ten years ago, they could not tell who was lying on the home loan application more, the broker, or the applicant, and the truth is both were doing it without the other knowing. Now more exhaustive background checks are being done on home mortgage documents, and the odds are that you will be doing a few years in a federal prison for what you might have thought was just a little white lie.

It is not worth the few months or even maybe two years of living in a home of your own, to only losing it, and possibly your family, and all personal possessions. This type of crime brings down the full weight of the US District Attorney, FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service on your head. Climbing out of such a scenario and rebuilding your life will take years if not decades.

Do yourself a favor and use the time when you cannot qualify for a home loan, to clean up past credit infractions, get more education for a better paying job, and get that credit score up to 750 if not higher. Staying out of debt will also help in getting to that place you need to be for buying a home as well.

There is a reason there are certain guidelines for mortgage approval, and the lender will know if you fit the guidelines when telling the truth. Dishonesty about income will only help for a few months, because in reality the funds from your real monthly salary will not be able to cover the loan payments anyway.

Bridgeland is an 11,400 acre master-planned community in northwest Houston, which includes 3,000 acres of open space. Bridgeland’s appeal lies in its fusion of outdoor amenities and its award winning schools in Cypress Fairbanks ISD. Offering 60 miles of interconnecting trails, Bridgeland connects community residents from border to border. Breathtaking views, courtesy of over 900 acres of Bridgeland lakes and waterways along with vast outdoor space won’t be diminished by unsightly power lines because Bridgeland has buried all underground power lines.  Most appealing to the environmentally friendly residents is Bridgeland’s self-sustaining irrigation; it is the first community in Houston to embrace the ‘Purple Pipe’ system, which uses recycled water from Bridgeland lakes to irrigate all common areas. Bridgeland offers a variety of housing options with prices ranging from the $160s to custom home designs over $1 million. These are just some of the qualities that have earned Bridgeland the title of #1 master-planned community in the nation by the National Association of Home Builders.

Contact  Bonny Roman @ 832-878-7713 to find your Bridgeland home.

You see these before and after type of home staging shows on the Home and Garden television network where they have a group of realtors come in and inspect a property to see why it’s not selling. Many times, it is the overall decor of the home that is not appealing, but cracked floor, and counter tiles, or chipped bricks on the fireplace will be glaring warts on your home when prospective buyers are doing a formal walkthrough. The wood-trim around doors and windows may be faded or scratched up from years of pets putting their paws on them and scratching the surface. As you can see the to-do list is getting bigger than you thought it might.

The most important room in the house currently is the kitchen, followed by the bathrooms. If they are dated, and dingy then do not be surprised if shoppers do an about face, and leave before even inquiring about the asking price. It is fairly normal to spend fifteen to thirty-thousand dollars on fixing up, and properly staging a home for the most possible buyers currently. If this is not in your budget, then chances are you will have to take a large chunk of your selling price off the table.

People in general are not that creative when it comes to making a home appealing, but they know what they like when they see it. Therefore, if you have the creativity of a fence post then seek immediate professional help. Your agent can give you all the references needed to get the repairs, proper decor, and overall exterior rejuvenation done, and create a showplace that people cannot wait to buy.

If you want to kill any chance of your agent working their magic, then stick around for the open house. This is the kiss of death, as other real estate agents, and prospects will be very open about their comments concerning your home, and even if you are thick skinned it makes for awkward moments that could reduce the chances of moving the property. So take the family and make it a day at the Zoo or nearest water park while the open house is in operation.

It is definitely a buyers market still, but for first time homebuyers, the signals are mixed for those that are almost at a point of being able purchase right now. Even though Oil prices are high, that means that even Houstonians are going to have to shell out five dollar per gallon prices that are on their way. Household budget in general wane when taking a monetary hit like that, and could cause some homebuyers to pause their real estate hunting for now. When you hear stories about people having to get personal loans to buy fuel to drive to work that is a red flag that should heeded.

For those who have the funds on tap to buy a home in the Houston Metro area right now, the timing could not be more perfect, as many luxury custom homes can be found at near wholesale prices. This is also a great time for real estate flippers that can wait out the market, and let prices naturally rise back to where they were just a few years ago.

Jobs are being added daily and from 2010 to 2011 the oil and gas sector added nearly sixty thousand jobs in the Bayou City. The real problem for brokers and agents is finding the perfect storm for a sale, and that means having the properly priced inventory, and prospective homeowners that have excellent credit. The fall out of foreclosures that has taken place over the past thirty six months has tarnished credit scores, and forced many to search for apartments, since they can no longer qualify for a home mortgage. Sadly now there is an apartment shortage, and landlords are requiring excellent credit to be approved for a lease.

The home prices have lowered but so have salaries, so if people can get their credit scores back up to the mid seven hundred range, a save up a decent down payment, then they should have no trouble purchasing a home.

The next step is downsize what you are buying at the grocery store, and the first thing to go is all those processed foods, and prepared meals that save you time, but charge you three times as much as cooking yourself. In addition, it will not kill the family to not have meat on their dinner plate a couple of times a week. Beans and rice with some flour tortillas will be hot, and nourishing, and the more you can save in these small ways will add up to big amounts of money to payoff that snowball of debt. Next cut way back on all the snacks, paying five to seven dollars for a ten ounce bag of “gourmet chips” is insane, and just a plain waste of personal funds.

Forget going out to the movies for the duration, and introduce family movie night at home. It only costs a dollar to rent a DVD from one of those big red boxes in front of the local McDonalds or Walgreen’s. A couple bags of microwave popcorn will only cost about thirty cents each, and have iced tea, Kool-Aid or water as a beverage. There for about two bucks everyone can enjoy a movie, or even two without dropping sixty to ninety dollars at the movie theater.

This next subject might get a little touchy especially with teenagers, but the cell phones have either got to go away, or be reduced to the most basic plan available. Spending several hundred dollars a month so everyone in the household can surf the net, and send text messages on an unlimited basis is just a waste of time, and money. Explain to your children why you are doing this, and it is for the overall good of the family’s financial future. Then tell them that if they need to text, and send photos, or update their Facebook pages all the time, then they need to get part time jobs to pay for their own service plan.

It will be tough at first, because everyone is going to be taken out of their comfort zone, and the children will declare they are victims of child abuse because they cannot have everything they want when they want it, but everything will level out, if you stick to your plan.