All Forum Posts by: Will E.

You asked a straightforward question, and it is strange that not one person even attempted to answer it with a quantified answer.

I did not ask about Google Maps.  I asked about Google Earth.  They use the same imagery, but Google Earth is a much more robust environment that gives you tons of additional information.

One advantage of using Google Earth would be the ability to pull in more than one vendor's data for the same home, on a single map.   *IF* Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc all offered their data superimposed on Google Earth, you could see unique data points for each vendor inside of a single map.   

Do any of the major consumer real estate data firms like Zillow or Trulia offer a tool that would show their various data inside Google Earth?   Google Earth is a natural platform for combining together many kinds of metrics into a single view of the geography.

Thanks Fred, and I have bookmarked that one.   The reports look good.

Is there any option to do a 20 year analysis (or at least more than five years)?

Logan and Che Chiu: with any software tool, the quality of data is primary.   If I want to buy tax software, then it goes without saying that bad input data results in bad output data.   How is that an argument against buying tax software?

I completely respect an advanced real estate investor telling me they developed their own Excel tools to evaluate deals.   But part of the reason that I as a beginner prefer to buy into an established tool is that it might help to educate me about what issues are important.

I have also developed enough Excel tools to believe there are better uses of my time if someone has solved the problem for a few hundred dollars.

I am looking for real estate investment analysis software that will work well for a beginner, but has enough depth that it will serve me well as I become more knowledgeable and gain multiple properties.   I'm starting with single family homes for rent.   To put a scope on this, I want software to analyze the purchase or sale of the home.  I am not asking in this thread about administrative applications, contact managers, tax software, etc.

I use Microsoft Windows, and after some review of the market, I bought Realty Analytic's software.  It looks great, unfortunately it only works on older versions of Excel.   I'm trying to find an older Excel to install, but in the meantime I am willing to consider other products. Realty Analytics posts no phone number, and they never respond to any email inquiry.

Another product I bookmarked that looked good was Proapod "Executive 10".  I went with that version (they have three levels and Executive 10 is the highest) because I want to consider all of the tax aspects as well as the time value of money.

I am sure I do not know enough yet to even know what I need to ask for.   Having said that, I want software that is extremely good at calculating internal rates of return on the investment over its full life cycle.   I want to understand cash on cash returns over time.  I want to test different assumptions for home appreciation over time, and I also want to test assumptions about inflation rates (those are different things in some cases, as when home prices go up by 40% in two years due to limited supply in a low-inflation-rate environment).

I understand that many experienced investors use nothing but Excel.   It might be that the software I am buying is simply training wheels for using Excel alone, but I suspect that well done software will save me a lot of time in developing my own Excel templates.

I would like to spend under $300 for the software.

What are my best options?

Just a quick comment: I think this thread is getting into a tangent. My main interest was to identify WHO OWNS THE MORTGAGES that are in default and not being foreclosed. Because I assume it is the owner who is making the decision to not foreclose. My assumption has been that most of these are owned by banks, but in reality maybe most are owned by securitizations?

If a defaulted loan is owned inside a securitization, who makes a decision to foreclose? Is this a trustee of the securitization? What are that trustee's financial incentives to foreclose or not foreclose?

Rob K, I think you misunderstood my message in its conclusion. The banks are *REFUSING* to foreclose. They are leaving these shadow properties unforeclosed because they don't want to overwhelm their own loss reserves too quickly.

That means the price of housing is being artificially elevated by keeping the inventory of REOs and pending foreclosures low. There is not going to be any rush of foreclosures.

In a real capitalist resolution to this mess, we would have a 1991 style wipeout where large numbers of properties get sold off to investors. For whatever reason, this time around they are pursuing a Japanese-style, 10-year, one-tiny-drop-at-a-time workout.

There is no conspiracy theory. Banks have a lot of defaulted mortgages. That is a fact. Just read their financial statements. They aren't foreclosing most of them. The regulators are not forcing them to foreclose. Call it cooperation to survive.

What is more efficient about sitting on an asset that pays no income for three years and allowing someone to live in the property for free for another three years more?

It seems to me that the real truth is that if enough of these properties were sold at sizeable losses all at once it would overwhelm the bank's reserves for loss allowance, and would require that many banks either recapitalize or fold.

You can call it conspiracy - or practical reality - but the US regulators are allowing the banks to hold onto these properties in a limbo state in order for their losses to be slowly absorbed over time against other income. They are simply trying to earn their way out of a very large hole.

For those properties owned by Freddie and Fannie directly, do Fannie and Freddie foreclose the property directly, through a servicer? What percentage of the defaulted properties are Fannie and Freddie foreclosing on each year, based on last two years of activity?

I have been told by real estate brokers in different geographies of the Western US that the local banks control more than three years of supply of homes that are in default but that they refuse to foreclose on. The robo-signing scandal aside, it appears that the banks are simply allowing the homeowners to continue to live in these properties rent-and-mortgage-free. The banks only foreclose on small numbers of properties at a time, thus artificially limiting the supply of homes on the local market, and sending home prices higher.

My question is does someone have a percentage breakdown of who actually owns these defaulted mortgages that remain unforeclosed? Specifically:

- What percentage are owned by banks outright?

- What percentage are owned by agencies (Freddie, Fannie, etc)?

- What percentage are wrapped up in securitizations which are then in turn owned by corporate and bank owners across the world?

- What percentage are owned by other types of owners?

I'm hoping that understanding how the ownership divides up might reveal insights into why so many of these "shadow inventory" homes remain unforeclosed.

Any and all insights to this interesting situation are appreciated.