Whether looking to sell or buy a home in Kingstowne, Alexandria, Woodbridge, Lake Ridge, Fairfax or any other Northern Virginia community,  home buyers and home sellers have some more good news.  CNN.com reports recently that home mortgage rates fell last week, “with the 15-year fixed rate hitting yet another record low, amid news of weak job growth during the month of March.”

A popular choice for those seeing to refinance,  15-year mortgages are at an average interest rate of just 3.11%, down from the week before which was at 3.21% and more than one percentage point lower than a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage rate survey.

The rate on 30-year fixed home mortgage also fell, to 3.88% from 3.98% the week before, just short of its own record low of 3.87%, set back in February.

Just a few weeks ago it appear as if interest rates would start to creep up, so this is a welcome reversal for Northern Virginia Homebuyers.  According to CNN.com, Frank Nothaft, Freddie’s chief economist, attributed the drop to concerns over the economy brought on by a weak jobs report for the month of March.

Is it a good time to sell a home in Northern Virginia? Spring is traditionally the home-buying season and this year is no different.  Buyers are out looking, but the Northern Virginia region is still looking like a seller’s market. This is good news for those selling a home in Northern Virginia as found in RealEstate Business Intelligence’s most recent report.  It shows another increase in buying activity, but low inventory in the Northern Virginia area continues to cause prices to rise.

Closed sales were up 28.84 percent month-over-month in March. Meanwhile, the active inventory of homes, although up from February, is still lower than March of last year: There were only 6,553 active listings in the area last month compared with 7,255 last year.

As a result, median sales prices in the region reached $365,000 in March, an 8.96 percent increase over February, and 10.33 percent increase from last year.

If you are looking to sell your home or buy a new home, contact AJ Team / Keller Williams Realty at 888-NOVA-BUY.

A new report put out by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation compares how healthy residents are in more than 3,000 counties and the District of Columbia.  The 2012 County Health Rankings are put out annually and highlights the healthiest and least healthy counties in every state.  Factors considered for these rankings according to the Robert Wood Johnson website are “education rates, income levels, and access to healthy foods and medical care.”
Other factors considered include how many fast food restaurants are in a county and the levels of the residents’ physical inactivity.
The higher rankings highlight those counties where people live longer and have a better quality of life with lower rates of smoking, physical inactivity, teen births, preventable hospital stays, unemployment, children in poverty, and violent crime and higher levels of education, social support, and access to primary care physicians. “But healthier counties are no more likely than unhealthy counties to have lower rates of excessive drinking or obesity or better access to healthy food options.” (rwjf.org)
Ranking the healthiest of the 134 Virginia counties is Fairfax County, with Arlington County and Loudoun County coming in second and third.  Alexandria City came in sixth.  Prince William County, Manassas Park City, and Manassas City came in eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth respectively.  The lowest rank Northern Virginia county was Fairfax City coming in 34th , which is still in the top 25 percent of the Commonwealth rankings.

The Obama administration has unveiled a new plan to encourage borrowers, especially those underwater, to re-finance their Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgages.

Although, admittedly, this will in all likelihood help many people, especially those who owe more than their home is worth, many may miss the chance to switch to a below 4 percent loan rate.

In order to qualify for this home loan you must meet all these criteria:

•  Your current home loan MUST be an FHA-insured loan and must have been endorsed no later than May 31, 2009.   Your lender can tell you when your loan was endorsed – the May 31, 2009, date is not referring to the date you applied for the loan or the date of settlement on your house.

•  If you have been late for payment on your mortgage in the past 12 months, you will also not be eligible.

•  You must net a savings of at least 5 percent in your monthly principal, interest and mortgage insurance payments.

There is more, but these alone exclude many FHA borrowers who are looking for a way to make their monthly payments more affordable.  According to a recent Washington Post article “an FHA spokesman, Brian Sullivan, FHA has roughly 500,000 active loans in its portfolio that are eliminated from participation solely on the basis of the May 31, 2009, cutoff date. Of those, an estimated 145,000 have interest rates higher than 5 percent, which would make them prime candidates for a refi if it weren’t for the cutoff date.” (WashingtonPost.com)

If you do happen to qualify for this “streamlined re-fi”, there are some major benefits to going this route:

•  No new verifications of your income or employment status.

•  No new credit evaluation, credit reports or FICO scores.

•  No new physical appraisal.

So, what can you do if you don’t qualify, can’t pay your home mortgage and want to avoid foreclosure?  You can consider short selling your home?  Give us a call to discuss option – 888-NOVA-BUY

On the other hand, if you do qualify and are looking for a lender, we have some top-notch lenders we can refer you to.  Just let us know!

Looking for some great lunch spots in Northern Virginia?  Here’s a breakdown of some of our favs:

Santini’s New York Style Deli –( http://mysantinis.com/location.html) – Locations in Chantilly, Reston, Sterling & Oakton.  Great sandwiches, Steak & Cheese, curly fries. True NOVA natives know this spot!

Tony’s N.Y. Pizza – (http://www.tonysnewyorkpizza.com/) – The best pizza in NOVA Area! Ciro’s in Centreville being a close 2nd.  We actually prefer the Bristow & Manassas Locations.  More pepperoni and calamari!

Jamaica Jamaica –  City “carryout” charm with Authentic Jamaican dishes, just off Fairfax county parkway.  Recommend for good quick Caribbean carryout if you’re in the Reston/Herndon area.

Ray’s Hell Burger – (http://rayshellburger.com/)  – Best burger spot in NOVA!  Juicy burgers with an crazy mix of sides & toppings.  Last time we went it was cash only (ATM right next to the counter). If you’re in the north Arlington are check it out and let us know what you think.

Whole Foods Market (Fair Lakes) – (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/) Best lunch spot in Fairfax area.  Actually it’s 5 lunch spots in 1 place.  Barbeque is fab, sandwiches, salad bar, sushi….basically whatever you want!  Great place to network during lunch.  Convenient, too – pick up some groceries on the way out!

The Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently sent a letter and white paper to Congress outlining his recommendations for curing the ills of the US Housing Market.

Among the interesting findings on current national market conditions:

• Housing prices remain 33% below their early 2006 peak, reflecting in part “the costs that an often unwieldy and inefficient foreclosure process imposes on homeowners, lenders, and communities.”
• Currently, more than 1 in 5 mortgage holders are underwater (about 12 million homeowners)
• In states with the price declines (i.e. Nevada, Arizona and Florida) “roughly half of all mortgage borrowers are underwater on their loans”
• The number of properties currently in the foreclosure process is more than four times larger than the number of properties in REO inventory

The white paper suggests that no single solution exists and that progress will come through “persistent and careful efforts to address a range of difficult and interdependent issues”—a position AJ Team has consistently stressed.

Among these efforts, the paper strongly recommends incentives for alternatives to foreclosure, namely a short sales stating that these alternatives “can help reduce transaction costs and minimize negative effects on communities” and emphasizes a fact that all homeowners everywhere already know: foreclosures decrease property values in the community.

The Washington, D.C. metro area housing prices are up 0.3% from the previous month while the rest of the country is still showing a flat-line market. This may seem like nothing to celebrate, but with a year-over-year price rise of 1.3% showing a continuing trend in which prices increased by 2.6% from the year before that, it is a reason to take notice. The D.C. area appears to be having the strongest and steadiest recovery in the US. But why?

• Low inventory. The 2006 bust caused excess inventory in places where overbuilding was occurring such as Miami or Las Vegas. The Washington D.C. metropolitan area, (DC, MD, NOVA), was without thus excess inventory. According to a report by the analytics firm Metrostudy, resale inventory in the D.C. area has tightened from 11 months of existing supply in 2008 to just 4.7 months of existing supply this past September. Six months of supply is generally considered a “balanced” market. Anything lower than that is said to give our power to homesellers — which is exactly the situation in the D.C. area today.
• Jobs. Many of D.C.’s suburbs in Virginia and Maryland have among the nation’s lowest unemployment rates, and a lot of the jobs in the D.C. area are good ones. By one estimate, one out of every eight D.C. workers is tied to the federal government — and even though their cost-of-living raises were canceled this year, wage growth of 1.3% kept pace with the private sector, reports USA Today. More importantly, those jobs are highly paid (an average of $75,296) and with good benefits — just the kind of financials that mortgage lenders like.

Reason enough to buy or sell? Contact AJ Team / Keller Williams Realty at 888-NOVA-BUY today.

NOVA’s November, 2011 statistics overall show a stabilizing market. Although the total dollar volume is down over November 2010, the amount is modest in comparison to the drops experienced in years past. November 2011 statistics show total dollar volume down 15.33% and closed sales down 15.87% for the same period. The median price has increased a modest 2.14% and the average price essentially remained level with an increase of only 0.64%. This shows that inventory of available homes has gone down allowing prices to increase. Indeed an increase has occurred in both dollar volume and closed sales, along with both median and average sold prices over October 2011 figures. This is positive news as we have entered a traditionally slower sales time of year.

Looking to Buy or Sell? Call AJ Team Now! Our agents were born and raised in the Northern Virginia area! 888-668-2289.

In a study done for the Washington Post by Ted Mellnik & Laura Stanton where they assumed a down payment of 20%, a 30-year mortgage and that payments for principal and interest did not exceed 25% of income, the results showed that for Virginia the most expensive place to live remains McLean where the income needed to purchase a home is $201,264 (down 36% from 2007). The most affordable zip code is 20109, Manassas, where the income needed to purchase here is $36,480. The smallest change was seen in Arlington (22206) with only a 8% decrease to $100,608.
Since the start of the recession, interest rates have dropped almost 2% from 6.58% to 4.62% and the median price of a single-family home as dropped $94,010 ($424,000 to $329,990). As a result the income needed to buy a home has dropped 37% ($103,776 to $65,088).
There were actually 134 zip codes in the Maryland, Virginia, DC region that are affordable for people making between $40,000 and $80,000 a year. That’s an increase of 92 zip codes from 2007!
This study once again confirms that now is the best time to buy since 2007. If you are in the market for your first home, to get more space or to invest, call AJ Team/Keller Williams Realty. 888-668-2289.