As I have posted before, it’s near impossible to get a rental here.  Apartments are at 99% occupancy.  Finding a house to rent is like finding a needle in a haystack.

KEPR-TV broadcast a story last night that shows how the problem isn’t going away, and in fact, is getting worse because, as the story relates…

At the end of a lease, many landlords have the ability to reevaluate apartment rental rates based on market demand. Since demand has been steadily increasing in the last year, most apartment managers have increased prices between $25 and $45 a month each time a lease is renewed.

So, not only can you not find a place to rent, if you do, you’re paying a premium for the privilege.

This is where buying a house comes in….

If you bought a house a 3-bedroom, 2 bath home with a garage for $150,000, at a fixed interest rate of 5% over a term of 30 years…

and put 3,5% cash down ($5,250)…

and taxes hovered in the $1700 range…

and your homeowners insurance was about $750 annually…

Your mortgage payment would be less than $1,000 a month!

(Calculations courtesy of the iPhone Mortgage Calculator application)

And you’d have more bedrooms than the apartment provides you with, and a yard for a pet or a BBQ AND you’d be building equity.  You’d be working toward owning something instead of supporting someone else’s ownership of property.

Of course, every person’s financial picture differs, and for some it might make more sense to rent.  However, this might just be the right time to buy since it costs so much to rent.

…the number of U.S. homes taken over by banks jumped 35 percent in the first quarter from a year ago. In addition, households facing foreclosure grew 16 percent in the same period and 7 percent from the last three months of 2009.

Ouch.

What about Tri-Cities Foreclosures?

In the last quarter of 2009, we had 124 Notice of Trustee Sales issued. The first quarter of this year we had 176. That’s a 40% increase. Sounds awful, doesn’t it?

Compare it, however, to the first quarter of 2009, when we saw 259 Notice of Trustee Sales issued in the Tri-Cities. The first quarter of 2010 saw a 33% DECREASE compared to the year before. The last quarter of 2009 saw a 39% DECREASE from the same period in 2008 (201 Trustee Sales). So, while it looks like we’re following the nation in this wave of foreclosures, we’re actually gaining some ground and doing better than we had in years past. Good to know!

Data used in this post is courtesy of the Benton Franklin Title Market Report, distributed monthly.

Anyway, some Staten Island Homeowners were pressured into a high-cost subprime loan, when they would have qualified for a regular loan without inflated associated costs.  Later, when they were facing foreclosure, they took the mortgage company to court and the court found in the buyers’ favor!  Excellent!

Read the whole story here.

Last year I sold a house to a lovely young woman with a poor credit score.  She was already set up with a lender that I came to despise.  Over and over I encouraged her to talk with someone else, as I felt what her lender was doing wasn’t right.  Well, the sale closed, she moved in, and within a year she had been foreclosed upon.  And guess why?  The subprime loan she was in was far too expensive for her to maintain.  Would the lender I wanted her to talk to have gotten her into a better situation?  I don’t know, but I would have preferred to know that she had explored all of options.

 This paragraph struck me -

The administration plan is designed to deal with the crisis by letting subprime borrowers who are living in their homes and are current on their payments to avoid a costly reset for five years. The hope is that by that time the housing downturn will have stabilized, clearing out the glut of unsold homes and halting the steep slide in prices that is hitting many parts of the country.

So, will people in our market, where the sales are strong and where we don’t have the same ‘glut of unsold homes’ be eligible for the program?