Texas real estate industry goes across the boundaries of the state and affects the financial activity of other parts of the nation as well. The interrelated finance dealings form a complex web that reflects the scenario of the modern economy. So whatever happens in Texas influences the entire country, and to some extent, the world as a whole.

U.S. bureau report highlighted some facts: 

• For every $1 million of revenue generates by the Texas real estate industry, about $0.5 million of revenue is earned in other parts of state economy.
• For every $1 million of revenue generated by Texas real estate industry, 5.16 jobs are generated in the real estate industry, and 5 jobs are generated in other industries in the state.
• Texas real estate industry has the largest proportion of self employed individuals

About 0.5 million people of the state work in the real estate industry, making it 3.9% of the statewide employment.  Looks like it’s a good time to buy a home in Central Texas.

Looking for Seguin Homes for sale or other Real Estate in Seguin, San Marcos, New Braunfels, or any where in Central Texas? Then check out our home and property listings.

Corner Post Real Estate is locally owned and operated near San Marcos, Seguin, and New Braunfels TX, and services all of Central Texas. We can serve all of your real estate needs.

Curious about what to do in Central Texas? Then look at our local area information.Are you looking for water front homes?  Then come on in the water is fine.  With Lake McQueeney, Canyon Lake, the Guadalupe, Comal, and San Marcos rivers, all which run through the New Braunfels, San Marcos, and Seguin real estate areas. There are always plenty of water front homes and water front properties available.

In need of farm or ranch land? Corner Post Real Estate has strong expertise in agricultural requirements. The real estate around Seguin, San Marcos, and New Braunfels areas is full of small, medium, and large acreage property. Whether it’s raw land, or a home with acreage, we would love to help you find the perfect property.

Maybe you want to know what a home or property is worth or interested in mortgage rates and loan calculations? Then check out the realty tools designed for you.

Whether you are looking for seller representation and would like to list your house and/or property, or you are looking for buyer representation to purchase your dream home or land, we look forward to serving you with a down home family friendly style.

Be it commercial property or a residential home, if you are looking for a great investment opportunity, we are here to serve you! All of our listings are in three powerful MLS systems; Central Texas, Austin, and San Antonio MLS to maximize advertising, and match up buyers and sellers.

We look forward to serving all your realty needs!

(Bloomberg) — Government efforts to make lenders pay for soured mortgages may be keeping potential borrowers from record-low interest rates, slowing home sales and refinancing as banks tighten standards to avoid more demands for refunds.
Lenders are insisting on higher credit scores and more documents than required by the Federal Housing Administration and government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Quicken Loans Inc. and Vision Mortgage Capital are among firms saying they are increasing scrutiny of would-be borrowers in response to pressure to cover losses incurred on U.S.-backed housing debt.
“You’ve got to take measures now to protect yourself,” John B. Johnson, chief executive officer of Birmingham, Alabama- based MortgageAmerica Inc., said during a panel discussion this month. Demands that lenders repurchase bad mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are “casting a pall over the market. I fear that it will face a much longer recovery because of this.”
Mortgage rates as low as 3.94 percent are proving insufficient to revive housing. Sales of existing homes fell 3 percent last month, National Association of Realtors data show, and 18 percent of the group’s members reported contract cancellations, at least twice as high as in normal circumstances. Among the reasons were refusals of loan applications after appraisals came in below sales prices.
Faulty mortgage lending and foreclosure practices have cost the five biggest U.S. home lenders more than $68 billion since 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. Much of the amount has stemmed from losses tied to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA, which together buy or insure more than 90 percent of new mortgages.
‘More Onerous’
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have drawn $170 billion of U.S. aid since being seized 2008. The companies are under orders from their regulator to recover as much as they can for taxpayers.
Lenders’ contracts with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac allow them to force buybacks of mortgages if the loan originators fail to properly vet debt, such as by accepting inflated borrower incomes or appraisals. Flawed paperwork can lead to pressure from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac even on performing mortgages.
“Documentation standards are getting more and more onerous because no one wants to manufacture an imperfect loan, even if the imperfection is really insignificant,” said Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson, who leads the eighth-largest U.S. home lender and No. 1 online mortgage originator.
The response by his Detroit-based company includes having each of its loans reviewed by a second underwriter to ensure the quality isn’t later questioned, Emerson said in an Oct. 11 interview during the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual conference in Chicago.
Septic Tank
MortgageAmerica has had to deal with repurchase demands for seemingly minor issues or ones outside a lenders’ expertise, according to Johnson. In one case, the septic tank for a home was located slightly beyond the mortgaged property. The natural response, he said, is to limit lending.
The Justice Department sued Deutsche Bank AG in May for more than $1 billion for alleged failures by the company’s shuttered lending unit to meet FHA standards. The U.S. sued under the False Claims Act, which allows damages three times the size of loss. Deutsche Bank has said the case targets conduct that occurred before it bought the unit and a spokeswoman for the company called the allegations “unreasonable and unfair.”
Lenders are probably “overcompensating” for the risk they face from soured mortgages, said Robert C. Ryan, a senior adviser to the head of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the FHA. “We’re not in the business of trying to scare lenders.”
‘The Right Balance’
The government must “strike the right balance between providing financing and access to borrowers and, at the same time, making sure the loans originated are fair and sustainable for the borrowers,” Ryan said in an interview.
Freddie Mac is doing what it should to protect itself and taxpayers, and is being reasonable in its demands, said Brad German, a spokesman for the McLean, Virginia-based firm.
“We don’t want to pay for mortgages that should never have been sold to us,” German said in an interview. “When minor defects in a loan file are found, it does not necessarily trigger a repurchase; it triggers a request to the lender to remedy the defect, either by finding a missing document or taking similar corrective actions.” Andrew Wilson, a spokesman for Washington-based Fannie Mae, declined to comment.
“Mortgage originators are more closely adhering to underwriting guidelines resulting in fewer of the mortgage defects of prior years,” said Corinne Russell, spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates so-called government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “This lowers default risk to the GSEs.”
‘Substantial’ Relief
President Barack Obama’s latest push to help more borrowers refinance into cheaper rates may hinge on the effectiveness of changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac repurchase rights. FHFA acting Director Edward DeMarco told reporters yesterday that the companies would offer “substantial” relief from buyback demands without providing “blanket or absolute” protection as they expand the federal Home Affordable Refinance Program for borrowers with little or no equity in their houses.
While the average rate on a 30-year fixed loan was 4.11 percent in the week ended Oct. 20, the historically low costs don’t capture the “very, very harsh underwriting standards” that potential home buyers face, said Ron Peltier, CEO of HomeServices of America, the property brokerage owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The process is “the most embarrassing, difficult thing you can imagine,” Peltier said in an Oct. 13 interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York.
‘Gone too Far’
The average time between mortgage application and closing rose to about 52 days last year, three weeks longer than in 2008, according to J.D. Power and Associates surveys.
Pressure from the GSEs has “definitely stanched the flow of credit to the mortgage market, but we had clearly gone too far,” said Richard Eckert, an analyst in San Francisco at securities firm B. Riley & Co. who wrote research on subprime lenders during the housing boom and then joined a hedge fund betting against property loans during the collapse. “We’ve got to return to some kind of happy balance.”
Bank of America Corp. has scaled back mortgage lending as CEO Brian T. Moynihan prepares for new capital requirements and grapples with demands that it compensate investors including Fannie Mae and Freddie for losses.
‘Increasingly Inconsistent’
“Our repurchase experience with the GSEs continues to evolve and their repurchase requests and resolution processes has become increasingly inconsistent with our interpretation of our contractual obligations,” the Charlotte, North Carolina- based bank said in a slide presentation last week.
Terry Francisco, a spokesman for Bank of America, had no immediate comment. Wells Fargo & Co., the largest U.S home lender, had no comment, according to Vickee Adams, a spokeswoman.
The prospect of reimbursement demands has hurt home sales, said Brian Chappelle, a partner at consulting firm Potomac Partners LLC, during a panel at the mortgage conference. While the FHA allows down payments as low as 3.5 percent from borrowers whose credit scores are at least 580, lenders are setting the bar higher, such as at 620, he said.
Lenders “feel like they’re being held accountable for things beyond their control,” he said. “The only thing the industry can do is tighten up on the front end.”
Vision Mortgage Capital President Regina Lowrie has her staff conduct extra quality-control reviews on all of its loans before closings, up from 10 percent before housing slumped. “That adds cost to the process,” hurting consumers who ultimately must pay for the work, she said at the conference.
The unit of Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania-based Continental Bank also started taking additional looks at consumers’ credit files shortly before completing loans, based on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidance, Lowrie said. It finds more situations like the potential borrower who took out a new car lease while waiting for the application to clear, “and now that loan’s going back to underwriting again,” she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jody Shenn in New York at jshenn@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net

I traded in my old Supra Key to an E Key for my iPhone which is an asset to my Buyers. It automatically updates! Yea! No more mundane, slow updates, but it will always be ready to open those lockboxes. If I’ve shown you very many homes, you will have watched me be torchered at least once by an update. The new E Key also has additional technology that I will learn more about as I use it.

I just love how Real Estate embraces new technology!–Katie

Thanks to our brave firemen and women, the wildfires in Central Texas are currently under control. Strong winds and high temperatures on Sunday kept the safety officials on their toes. As the Central Texas authorities issued red flag warning levels, the safety officials have kept a close watch on the current fire scenario.

The fire that started Labor Day weekend in Bastrop County consumed an enourmous amount of the Lost Pines and devastated many homes. There were several fires in Central Texas that broke out the same weekend due to the extreme, dry, windy conditions. Many of us in Central Texas were extra vigilant and worried about our own homes and an evacuation plan. It also alerts us property owners to check if we have adequate home insurance.

As reported by a 2010 survey, most Texas real estate insurance claims were weather related. Top claims of the past year were related to wind, water, and hail. Though these claims are generally covered under the homeowner’s standard policy, people need to purchase separate flood insurance via the NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program).

In case there is hail and wind exclusion on the policy, it can be obtained via the TWIA (Texas Windstorm Insurance Association).

Make sure you have adequate insurance policies to protect your real estate investments.