not sure if its just me or my location in the Midwest ... but since about a week or so ago...I am using owner occupied listing comps but my recent sold comps are only REOs...I am having some trouble with GCs with this as the variance in percieved values are wide...the only comment that I have been able to come up with is...I suspect occupied homeowners are starting to feel underlying pressures to list homes in this unpredictable market...I wonder why the lack of REO listings are occuring...and what this will mean in the near future?

Yep I've been seeing this too. Not a lot of REOs coming on the market. They're there, just not for sale. Results in a smaller pool of REO sales to choose from too.

I saw prices increase when the tax credit was out there. Buyers were so hot to get the credit, stuff was selling over what it should. That was kinda hard to explain. We are gonna be seeing this for awhile -no reo listing out there and as Grexley said no REO sales to use as comps is next - won't that be fun?? I'm already fighting high appraisals on my listings - its only gonna get worse. Time to start coming up with some stock BPO comments for this situation - who wants to start?

Have seen the same thing here in central Ohio. The number of REO homes has dropped alot. It seems as if a number of them are under contract and sold in the last few months, but fewer homes are coming on the market. We see them sitting there, boarded, signs posted, weeds growing, vacant homes, but the banks are sitting on them. We have some that have been sitting in the banks names for almost a year or more. I know HUD inventory has dropped to just about 100 active homes in our County where it was at 150-170's at beginning of the year.

I have also been getting some BPO assignments for Fannie Assets listed by other agents in last few months, and are now temp off market. Don't know what is going on there....

Same drill here

158,000 REOs sold nationwide in the first quarter of 2011.
350,000 REOs sold nationwide in the first quarter of 2009.

Current backlog of inprocess foreclosures is about 1,000,000 units. Plus any others that go into foreclosure in the future.

There is the possibility that the real estate market might have hit the bottom and is now beginning to bounce back, the banks realize that home prices are on the rise and so it will be worth it for them to sit on these properties and even spend some money to bring them up to shape. If the market is recovering then there will be a whole new set of factors and parameters affecting sales than when the market was in freefall, because homes are going to be looked at more as an investment again and not the liability that they were for the past two years. Some say that this might be the best time to invest in real estate, but then a lot of people are gun shy and so they probably are going to wait to see some proof for themselves before feeling comfortable enough to put their money in to real estate which might slow down the recovery a little bit.

(just my opinion, I am not a real estate agent)

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Very unlikely. If home prices increase it will not be because buyers are getting hot again for property it will be that inflation will have caught up with the housing market. Then we will get all kinds of propoganda for NAR and media talking of a recovery, house prices rising, when really it is taking more dollars to buy less home.

Inflation is a tax, most people don't look at it like that or even have a concept of it. When you have a manipulated money supply and dumb downed public gone ADD, it's rather easy to rob them blind.

Isn’t that true for any investment in any other market, one of the main reasons that people have been investing in real estate in the past was to beat inflation, otherwise they might have as well just kept their money in the bank. Regardless of why the prices are rising what is considered important is the return on the investment. If the return is more than the inflation then that’s what attracts the investors and if the return is equal to the inflation at least the investors are not loosing money which in either case will be better than what it has been in the past two years.

(just my opinion, I am not a real estate agent)

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If in the past you mean within the past decade, they didn't beat inflation and lot of them lost their heads in it. There is also a good portion of them still losing limbs. Those that haven't did not beat inflation either, they are underwater. The market is manipulated, it's a control grid of regulations enforced by faceless money changers.

But to support my claim, our economy is going to see another bubble burst in the years to come and that is going to be the college debt bubble. Even if I didn't have numbers to back it up, my own subjective observation would tell me there is a big problem. Besides the fact that most people I know go into debt when they are unemployed for school and bury themselves deeper, I know plenty of people with degrees out of work. Student loan debt is not bankruptable either (most of it anyway).

You are seeing inflation right now in gas price, food prices, NAR dues (lol), and a host of other goods. It is taking more money to chase after less. Unless you're buying a home to live in it (and I suggest you pay cash and take less), I would suggest holding on and waiting for your investment. The next taxpayer bailout will be aimed in the realm of the universities that have indoctrinated economic bullcrap into the minds of our 20 and 30 somethings.

I don't think we've seen anything yet.....

The same thing has been happening in my market for around three months now. Of course, sometimes those REO listings are right there under my nose, but I'm not allowed to use them, because they're pending. I love it when that happens.

I have a uncomfortable feeling as to why owner occupied homes would list in this troubling times...unless there are underlying reasons why...perhaps the beginning of the double dip in the real estate market...

I did a BPO a few weeks ago where I did a prior in 2009. In '09 the neighborhood was completely REO driven, and I gave the subject a value of $80,000. All the REOs in this neighborhood are now gone, and even the short sales are few and far between. So for the BPO of a few weeks ago, I gave the subject a value of $115,000!

QC reluctantly approved my report, but the bank rejected it. What am I supposed to do? I can only use comps that exist. The bank was trying to force me to come in near or below my 2009 value.

BTW this is from a mill that has a mandatory class they want their agents to take. Part of that class states that we should never have a pre-determined value of a home we do a BPO on. Maybe it should be mandatory for the bank to take the same class.

Despite our always giving it lip service, I think there's a growing and general failure to understand the actual workings of a "free market", to ignore the ebbs and flows of prices, and to focus only on trend analysis.

Just as some people mistakenly thought that real estate "always" appreciates, there are those who now have adopted the opposite mindset and believe a downward trend must necessarily be projected into the future.

They're always behind the curve. That's why some people make money simply by being "out in front" of the curve (regardless of its direction) and others lose money by thinking past trends will prevail forever.

Nothing lasts forever (except wishful thinking).

I have noticed that some REO listings are not being marketed as REO's with no comments concerning banks and etc. I believe that this type of marketing may be a smart move on the part of the banks.
Comments such as: "Subject to bank approval" may be turn offs to potential buyers and may be a smart marketing move.
When pulling comps and I suspect property is actually bank owned I check tax records.

There are multiple AMC's that insist you do not identify the property as an REO, I suppose with the thought that buyers automatically think the property should be sold for less. The problem is our mls requires that you disclose the REO status. I see many realtors ignoring that disclosure and some not even commenting in Realtor comments the REO status; you find out when you attempt to place an offer. Probably is fineable in my mls if anyone makes an issues of it.

Yes, showing a total lack of sensitivity to the critical role this information plays in our nation's vital BPO Industry.

Some of these REO sellers are at the back end of the curve. I belong to 3 MLS's and each one now requires that REO's and Short Sales be identified. There is a field in the input status for "REO?" and "Short Sale?" that must be answered yes or no. And if it was entered before the requirement, when you do any kind of update (listing extension, price change, etc) these fields pop up as unanswered and the changes can't be saved until they are answered.
Luckily, most of the REO listers in this area are straight shooters and answer YES. The same can't be said for the general agent population that seems to be handling short sales.