It’s kind of amazing, in a way.  No matter how much time goes by, “the market” never seems to pick up much speed.  Home prices are down, mortgage interest rates are waaaaaay down.  You would think that this would be the time to buy, buy, buy and, conversely, time to sell, sell, sell.

Yet, nothing good seems to be happening. Why?

My take on this is the enormous pressure the mortgage industry is putting on both buyers and appraisers.  They want the buyers to be platinum: great credit, money in the bank, good income producing jobs, low debt.  In other words, they want the potential home purchasers to be 99.9% able to repay the mortgage. No risk.

They want the appraisers to create reports that value the home as low as possible. This hedges the mortgage company’s bets about the borrower.  Even if the borrower is platinum plus, there is always the unforeseeable and if the appraisal is low from the git go than there is a possibility that there will be some positive equity in the home if the home owner defaults.

Bottom line: lenders aren’t really lending despite what all the ads say.  It’s kinda like getting that credit card solicitation in the mail (haven’t seen too many of those, either, lately).  They say you’re pre-approved  and just sign on the bottom. But they run your credit and income history and send you a nice letter saying REJECTED!

Same way with the banks and mortgage companies. They want you to apply. After all it’s a numbers game.  Sooner or later someone will qualify for the loan. A lot of people, though, won’t qualify.

No money. No house purchase. It doesn’t matter what the price is…period.

The Stats for College Park, MD

I’m not really a big table guy but if you want to see all the stats for the College Park, MD housing activity as of May 2011 – Click Here for a PDF version of the report.

Here is a short graph (graphs are more my style) of the median price of homes in College Park over the past year —

Here is a graph of how long homes are taking to sell —