Where Can You Find the Cheapest Homes?

Buyers can snag plenty of deals in housing today. Falling home values and record-low interest rates continue to push affordability to record highs. 

Nationally, the median list price for a home is $189,900, up 4.05 percent year-over-year. 

The following cities offer the lowest median list prices in the nation as of November: 

• Detroit: $84,900
• South Bend, Ind.: $102,000
• Dayton-Springfield, Ohio: $109,900
• Fort Wayne, Ind.: $109,900
• Toledo, Ohio: $109,900
• Las Vegas, Nev.-Ariz.: $122,000
• Cleveland-Lorain-Elyria, Ohio: $129,900
• Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fla.: $129,900
• Akron, Ohio: $129,900
• Ocala, Fla.: $129,500
• Springfield, Ill.: $129,250
• Wichita, Kan.: $130,828

38% of Homes Purchased in 2011 Bought with Cash

Despite record low mortgage rates, 2011 has seen an amazingly high-level of cash home purchases, according to the real estate research firm Hanley Wood Market Intelligence. No doubt that investors love that real estate environment and know that in the future they will be making big profits when real estate goes back up.

Jonathan Dienhart and Ken Lee, two analysts with the company, say between tight lending standards and a desperate search for yield by investors, cash purchases of homes – particularly for distressed properties – became even more common in 2011 than last year.
Dienhart and Lee analyzed data collected through Hanley Wood’s Housing IntelligencePro, and shared their findings in a blog post.

The two discovered that 38 percent of homes purchased in 2011 were bought with all cash. That’s up from 34 percent in 2010, and double the 19 percent rate in 2006.
According to Dienhart and Lee, this trend is likely to continue in the near term. They note that cash-paying investors are responsible for an increasing share of home purchases nowadays as prior homeowners abandon the ownership market and head back to rentals.

5 States With the Most Mortgage Fraud

Mortgage fraud continues to climb in the country as $1.3 billion in questionable loans surfaced in the third quarter, according to a mortgage fraud index by Mortgage Daily.

Florida continues to have the most cases of mortgage fraud, according to the index. In Florida alone, mortgage fraud activity included more than $144 million in loans that were questioned in court, and Florida’s mortgage fraud index soared 45 percent in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter.
The five states that had the worst index ranking with mortgage fraud cases, according to Mortgage Daily, are:

1. Florida
2. California
3. Minnesota
4. New York
5. Texas

10 States Hit Hardest by Foreclosures

The following are the top 10 states with the highest foreclosure rates in the country in November, according to RealtyTrac data.

1. Nevada: 1 in every 175 home received a foreclosure filing in November
2. California: 1 in every 211 homes
3. Arizona: 1 in every 256 homes
4. Utah: 1 in every 290 (This state saw a 74 percent increase in November from October in foreclosure activity.)
5. Georgia: 1 in every 330 homes
6. Michigan: 1 in every 330 homes
7. Florida: 1 in every 358 homes
8. Illinois: 1 in every 427 homes
9. Ohio: 1 in every 500 homes
10. South Carolina: 1 in every 517 (This is the first time South Carolina has made it into the top

BofA Considers Renting REOs Back to Previous Homeowners

In facing large inventories of foreclosures, Bank of America is considering a program that would allow investors to buy a foreclosed home and then rent it back to the former home owner, HousingWire reports.
Bank of America is looking for ideas on how to handle the large inventories of foreclosures in some areas where demand hasn’t picked up.

"We are looking at programs where you can capture somebody before the REO process and offer a deed-for-lease," Ron Sturzenegger, who leads the bank's legacy asset servicing division, explained to HousingWire. "We would go to the customer and say, 'We'll do a short sale. Will you be interested in leasing your property back? We're still going to sell the property. You will no longer be the owner. But you can be a tenant now in that same property and save you from moving on.'"

The program is still in very early stages and more details need to be worked out, Sturzenegger noted.