Yes, Virginia, it is still possible to buy a home with no money down. After all, millions of new home owners with no money in the bank and poor credit have taken advantage of incredibly lax lending standards and purchased their homes this way, partially fueling the last housing boom in the process. Bob Bruss thinks it’s a good idea. But is it really?

When you purchase a home with no money down, you have to be aware of the inherent risks - the largest one being that your new home may not appreciate as rapidly as you would like, giving you little if any equity, and therefore, little cushion should you need to sell quickly.

With that said, buyers still wanting to get into the market with no money in the bank should have little trouble securing a loan.

If you have good income and good credit, mortgage lenders are thrilled to loan you 100 percent of your home’s purchase price. But it won’t be cheap!

If you are a bit short of cash, the nation’s largest secondary mortgage market home loan lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will even loan up to 103 percent of your home’s purchase price to help pay the closing costs.

Read the whole article here (Mortgage 101).

A three-day gathering of more than 13,000 builders, developers, remodelers, subcontractors and consulting professionals in New Jersey has left many of the attendees pleasantly surprised by the conditions they’re seeing in the marketplace. After years of gloomy predictions that the bubble is about to burst, housing prices continue to rise in New Jersey - almost 60% above the national average.

Still, the signs of a real estate slowdown lurk beneath the surface. Nationwide, a costly war, increasing interest rates, a federal deficit and high energy costs could derail an economy in its 53rd month of expansion, said Joseph Seneca, professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers.

“Inflation is the wild card for 2006, with rising oil prices, an increase in commodity prices, slow productivity gains and rising interest rates,” Seneca said in his annual economic forecast at the convention. The Feds expect to raise interest again next month, he said.

Read the whole article here (Courier Post Online).

And the development keeps coming in the super-hot LA commercial real estate market. Dallas developer Lincoln Property Co. is in final negotiations to purchase 14 acres of raw land in Playa Vista, a long dormant site that was once part of Howard Hughes’ empire and was once expected to be the home studio of DreamWorks SKG. Although the deal isn’t final, the land is expected to sell for upwards of $100 million, according to real estate sources familiar with the deal.

Office vacancy on the Westside has fallen to about 8% after years of softness following the dot-com crash and 9/11.

With the market tightening again and rents rising, developers are scrambling to find land for new construction and Lincoln Property outbid several other large national players for the Playa Vista land.

Read the whole article here (LA Times - reg required).

Using the latest technologies to buy or sell a home these days is not just a matter of convenience - it’s one of necessity. Agents and home buyers/sellers who neglect to take advantage of all the tools available to them will soon find themselves losing out to those who do. Lead tracking, PDAs, 800 Call Capture (IVR) systems, and Search Engine Marketing are all must-have tools for dealing in today’s real estate world.

When agents explain how these tools help sellers obtain the best possible price for their property, they normally will sign a listing agreement on the spot. In response to her comments, one of the more than 40 agents said that he only wanted clients who would call him. When I mentioned the importance of using new technologies such as texting or the new search-engine products, he wasn’t interested. The younger agent emphasized how that every one of her friends used these tools when they were looking for property.

Read the whole article here (Inman News - subscription).

How hot is the Calgary real estate market? Hot enough that a mold-infested house that was once used to grow marijuana plants indoors has triggered a bidding war. The four bedroom, 2,000 sf home has even been described by its realtor as being in “bad shape,” and “as bad as I’ve ever seen.”

No matter, In oil-rich Calgary, real estate prices are going through the roof and appreciations are reaching 20% a year.

Housing prices have risen 22 percent in Alberta since last year as expansion of oil sands extraction attracted workers to the province. About 25,000 people moved to Alberta in the fourth quarter, the most in 26 years. Energy producers plan to spend as much as C$73 billion in the next 20 years to develop the oil sands, according to the provincial government.

Read the whole article here (Bloomberg).

Dallas-based home builder Centrex missed quarterly earnings estimates today, sending its shares down 8%. The latest news from another large homebuilder might be an indication that rising interest rates are starting to affect the housing market.

Management also slammed the door on robust growth for 2007, slashing earnings forecasts to a range of $8.50 to $10 a share, down from earlier estimates of $10.75 to $11.25 a share. Orders fell 11% year-over-year for the March quarter, an important precursor to actual revenue that gets booked three to six months later when home sales close.

Read the whole article here (Smart Money).

Once upon a time, you could not hedge against risk when it came to home prices. You could on any other asset - from airline shares to cattle, but real estate was strictly verboten. But this is about to change thanks to a new futures and option contract based on residential real estate indexes created by Wellesley economist Chip Case and Yale’s Robert Shiller.

These contracts are expected to begin trading within weeks on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Those kinds of derivatives could help homeowners protect their equity from the dangers of a bursting real estate bubble, or any kind of price decline in their market, for up to one year. Companies could offer more formal kinds of equity insurance policies and use the derivatives to manage the risk they have taken on for the price of a premium.

Exchange officials say companies directly connected to residential real estate, like home builders and mortgage lenders, also have expressed interested.

Read the whole article here (Boston Globe - reg required).

Yes, it looks like the wild days of the US real estate frenzy are over, to the relief of buyers everywhere. But what about Canada? Are they experiencing a bubble, and if so, on what scale? According to this article, there is little “froth” in the Canadian housing market, and values are expected to continue their upward ascent, at least for the time being.

First, the market itself is not sending the same bearish signals as in the States. Both prices and sales in Canada have accelerated on net in recent months; new listings have barely kept pace. Markets in Ontario and Quebec do seem to have downshifted a bit, but this has been more than made up for nationally by exceptional strength out west. Notwithstanding the inevitable pockets of weakness, the Canadian housing market is not demonstrating the behaviour we would associate with looming bust.

Nor have the increases in Canadian house prices to date delivered the frothy valuations currently challenging the U.S. market. The consistent valuation approach, which found many U.S. markets to be significantly overvalued, found housing in Canadian cities to be, by and large, moderately undervalued.

Read the whole article here (Canadian Business Online).

One of the prime movers in the UK’s real estate market may just be Mom and Dad. According to High Street Lender Bradford & Bingley, roughly half (42%) of the parents in the UK have supported their children financially when buying their first home. Their assistance has come in the form of digging into savings accounts, remortgaging their own property and in some cases, taking on a joint mortgage.

‘As house prices continue to rise families are having to help more to get the next generation on the property ladder,’ noted Bradford & Bingley’s mortgage development manager, Duncan Pownall.

‘I think that is a sign that they have already propped up the market, have already addressed the affordability problems that individual first time buyers would have,’ director general Michael Coogan told BBC Breakfast this morning.

Read the whole article here (Monsters & Critics).

Have you always wondered about the home buying patterns of the rich? Wonder no more, because The Harrison Group and Worth Magazine have just released their findings from a new study that surveyed members of 500 households with net investable assets of at least $5 million (the median was $28 million).

Among their findings: the newly rich are conservative in most aspects of spending, except for home purchases; wealthy Americans usually pay cash for their house, typically a seven-figure, stand-alone on a good-sized lot in an upscale suburb; and they continue to pour money into their houses after purchase, between $100,000 to $250,000 in taxes, upgrades and maintenance every year.

In addition, they are looking toward the future and they don’t want to spend their last months or years in an institution. “The home amenity of the future figures to be a home-suite medical care facility,” says Taylor, “where aging moguls can be nursed in the comfort of their home.”

Read the whole article here (CNN Money).