All Real Estate is Local – You Could be Less Screwed than Others

About a week ago (on my birthday no less) Countrywide sent out a list of Soft Markets (Countrywide Soft Markets PDF) across the country rated from 5 (the worst devaluation in property value) to 1 (less devaluation). They issued this list with changes made to lending criteria for new mortgage loans made in those areas of the country. Areas rated at 5 were seeing reductions in lending limits by 5% of the loan to value guidelines on first mortgages and 10% on second mortgage products (like home equity lines of credit).

One famous refrain of Realtors everywhere is that all real estate is local – which of course it is – but in general real estate has been across the board flat or declining regardless of your locality.

I recommend having a look at this soft market list if you are considering purchasing a home so that you can get more insight in to that particular area above and beyond the “all real estate is local” smokescreen bandied about by your hometown Realtor.

You can use this to get one lenders opinion on the state of affairs in your area. Of course not every lender agrees but listening to the number 1 or 2 lender in the country (depending on the quarter) probably has some merit. You can guarantee they have a ton more research and analytics backing up their claims to market strength than your neighborhood Realtor.

As the market changes and they republish this list we will repost and keep you up to date on your favorite local soft real estate markets.

Here’s a map of the data as done by FortiusOne and published over on Bloodhound on a post about redlining.