Morning Briefing: Completed foreclosures fell sharply in the year to December

Completed foreclosures fell sharply in the year to December… This is the best place to be a real estate agent right now… Lenders better than sports teams for customer relationships…

Morning Briefing: Completed foreclosures fell sharply in the year to December
Completed foreclosures fell sharply in the year to December
There were 21,000 completed foreclosures in December, a drop of 40 per cent from a year earlier, CoreLogic reported.

Completed foreclosures over the 12 months were highest in Florida, Michigan, Texas, Ohio and California; and lowest in North Dakota, DC, West Virginia, Montana and Alaska.

The foreclosure inventory was down 30 per cent year-over-year to 329,000, representing 0.8 per cent of all homes with a mortgage. In December 2015, the proportion was 1.2 per cent.

The data shows that 2.6 per cent of all homes with a mortgage were in serious delinquency (90 days or more), the lowest level since August 2007. The 19.4 per cent year-over-year drop to 1 million properties was widespread nationwide, although there were exceptions to the declining numbers.

“While the decline in serious delinquency has been geographically broad, some oil-producing markets have shown the effects of low oil prices on the housing market,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Serious delinquency rates rose in Louisiana, Wyoming and North Dakota, reflecting the weakness in oil production.”

This is the best place to be a real estate agent right now
Real estate agents in Honolulu should be enjoying the good times currently, according to analysis by WalletHub.

The site considered 150 of the largest US cities and 14 metrics of a healthy real-estate environment including sales per agent, annual median wage for agents and the health of the housing market.

Following Honolulu, the top five includes Seattle, Denver, Boston and Aurora, CA while Jackson, MS and Shreveport,LA are at the bottom of the list.

On individual metrics, highest sales per agent were achieved in Oxnard, CA; Knoxville, TN; and Modesto, CA. Lowest sales per agent were in Houston, TX. Top earners were in Bakersfield, CA while those agents in Laredo, TX had the lowest median wages.

Lenders better than sports teams for customer relationships
Banks and credit card companies beat airlines, insurers, telecoms and even pro sports teams when it comes to building relationships with their customers.

That’s the finding of a survey by Canadian PR firm Argyle which analyzed the relationship-building abilities of the five sectors.

It discovered that 82 per cent of customers are more likely to do business with a brand that builds a relationship with them or to recommend them to a friend.