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• DoveBid and CataList Homes form home auction partnership

  DoveBid, Inc ., one of the world’s largest capital asset auction firms, and CataList Homes , a California based alternative real estate brokerage company, have announced a home auction partnership geared to sell lender-owned foreclosure properties in addition to new home development closeouts for builders. This alliance reunites DoveBid Chairman Ross Dove with Grubb & Ellis founder Hal Ellis, who now serves as CataList Homes’ CEO. In 1992, The Ross Dove Company (now DoveBid) and Grubb & Ellis Company held the largest one day real estate auction ever held on behalf of the FDIC in 1992 where over $400,000,000 worth of real estate was sold in one day. The team sold over $1.2 billion in real estate at auction during the early 1990s. “The auction sales method always surfaces in challenging real estate markets when buyers sit on the sidelines waiting for prices to decline,” says Hal Ellis. “With lender-owned foreclosures surging and new home sales slumping, the traditional sales channels alone are not sufficient to move the inventory fast enough given the huge market risk and holding cost to hold these homes for extended time periods. Since we worked with Ross Dove in handling over $1 billion dollars worth of real estate sales at auction, it was a natural partnership, especially with DoveBid's international presence and highly sophisticated technology that none of the real estate auction firms can offer.” DoveBid, with the great majority of the Fortune 500 and financial institutions as its clientele, brings a tradition of technological leadership in the auction industry to the partnership with its webcast auction ability and powerful online auction engine. This benefits sellers by maximizing the universe of potential bidders and therefore their total dollar return, while simultaneously benefiting bidders by increasing the convenience of bidding . “Running a sophisticated ballroom auction with live worldwide bidding online is a complicated process that gives our clients the best methods to achieve top value for the homes,” says Ross Dove, Chairman of DoveBid, Inc. We partnered with CataList Homes because we wanted a technology savvy broker partner who can market our auction assets in the local Multiple Listing Service to gain access to owner-user buyers who typically pay more for properties than investors.” The auction alliance has four foreclosure auctions scheduled for California, Nevada, and Arizona with a national program slated for mid 2008. The company is also slated to run auction events for homebuilders on an as needed basis. The company is also slated to run auction events for homebuilders on an as needed basisDoveBid.com recently announced a merger with London UK based GoIndustry which makes the new entity a global auction powerhouse with over 600 employees, half of which are international. With a declining dollar, the group is poised to reach foreign home buyers who are clearly eyeballing US real estate investment opportunities About CataList Homes, Inc. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Feb 07 2008, 01:16 AM by mdavin with | with no comments Filed under: foreclosures, auction

• Company launches a new database mash up showing active and pending home listings which are bank owned.

  Responding to overwelming demand CataList Homes has just launched a new technology that allows consumers to flag bank owned listings. A copy of our press release is below: LOS ANGELES , CA – August 25 th , 2007 – CataList Homes , a California based alternative brokerage company, has launched a new technology which allows home buyers to search for bank owned foreclosures which are listed for sale in the Multiple Listing Service (“MLS”). The firm knows of no other website differentiating bank owned listings from private party listings. “In today’s tough real estate environment, home buyers (outside of the upper-end markets) are looking to buy homes ‘on-sale’ not ‘for sale.’ Buyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for buying opportunities,” says Michael Davin, Co-founder of CataList Homes. ”We have had tremendous demand by consumers wanting to search and view just the bank owned listings on the market. When we found no such site existed, we built the technology ourselves.” Contrary to popular belief, almost no lenders sell foreclosed residential properties directly to consumers. “Banks also want top dollar and almost exclusively list their homes with a broker who than puts these properties in the local Multiple Listing Service. By comparing the homes which are active and pending sale on the MLS with a database of properties owned by the lender, CataList Homes can flag these listings as bank owned,” Davin continues. “The majority of active listings in troubled markets are not going to sell, as it seems many home owners are very reluctant to make the necessary price adjustments required to stimulate an offer. However, the institutional bank owner must, at some point, price the home at the new market level and that is why consumers want to focus on these listings.” Other websites such as RealtyTrac.com and Foreclosure.com provide paid subscriptions to search for foreclosures, but most of the homes are not on the active market for sale. With the debate raging between the statistical accuracy of the true number of foreclosures, this data is now center stage in a growing political hot potato. CataList Homes will be tracking its own set of statistics focusing on bank owned homes active and pending on the market, and the percentage of the overall market of the bank owned properties. For the media, CataList Homes will make available real time interactive maps plotting the bank owned homes to illustrate the regions most affected, and compiling custom statistics on the sales activity of bank owned listings. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Aug 21 2007, 04:12 PM by mdavin with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, foreclosures

• The mortgage meltdown threatens US economy

  So Wall Street has seen the Dow lose 1000 points due to the chaos in the mortgage business. Banks are sending us notices that buyer prequalification notices dated in June and July may not be honored. Heavy down payments are now required...what does all this mean??? There is a major international credit crunch which is causing lenders to be unable to sell their loans to the secondary market. This means that thousands of mortgage professionals will be out of business, and home buyers will find getting a loan very tough unless they have lots of cash or great credit. It also means prices will continue to slide in weak markets that were heavily dependent on loose credit during the rapid run up in prices in 2002-2005. Whenever we see an inverted yield curve (short term rates higher than long term rates), trouble soon follows. For those selling in San Diego, Orange County, and the Inland Empire, get your home sold now or risk further market erosion in market value. If your home is not selling, and you aren't willing to drop another 5%, take it off the market....its going to be a while until prices rebound. Upper end markets like Westside, Pasadena, and the South Bay have been imune to the lending crisis because those buyers typically have large down payments and supply is short. We expect those markets to soften, but be spared the painful erosion of equity that will be seen in the slower markets. If the real estate industry triggers a massive economic slow down, all bets are off. Look for the Fed to step in once some of the ugly data comes out soon. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Aug 10 2007, 05:25 AM by mdavin with | with no comments Filed under: foreclosures, market conditions

• What Those "Create Wealth" Gurus Won't Tell You About Foreclosures

  Couple of notable stories this morning on the front page of the LA Times' business section. The first was a piece on foreclosures in the state of California hitting a 10-year record high, and in the second article , the Times covered mortgage giant Countrywide's announcement yesterday that "a growing number of customers once considered to be good credit risks were having trouble making their mortgage payments." Hmm, smells like a financial market normalizing to me, after years of over-appreciation in the once red hot California housing market. Our co-founder Mike Davin was quoted in the article on foreclosures. The thing is, is this really any surprise to anybody? Financial markets are cyclical, yet every 10 years, people inevitably get caught up and overconfident when things are on an upswing and despondent when the market comes back down to normal. When applied with a little patience and know-how, real estate as an investment vehicle can be a viable, long-term, and stable strategy despite the circuitous dips and turns that the market will take. Yet witness the haphazard foreclosure "seminars" that crop up every 5-years coinciding with stories of the market's impending demise. Quick, get-rich schemes are as old as the day is long, and these "create wealth" seminars through real estate and foreclosures are almost always quick on promises and extremely lacking in actual substance. They play to people's basest instincts to achieve grand results with minimal effort. There are no easy ways to acquire wealth. Real estate investing is serious business that requires patience and a kind of discipline that you won't just wake up with one morning because you attended a weekend seminar, read some pamphlets on how to snap up foreclosures in a heartbeat, and finished a book. Keep these things in mind when contemplating entering the current REO fray: 1) Once a home hits the foreclosure stage, it's usually too little, too late for the opportunistic home buyer. 2) The market in foreclosure-heavy locations is likely to go down another 10% so why be an investor in these areas? 3) If you want to buy a home for your family, the best bet is to search for bank-owned listings that are currently on the market. They are usually the best-priced homes with the most motivated owners. Buying a home at auction comes with a huge risk including no title insurance, no bank financing, no prior inspection, and liability for hidden IRS liens. 4) If you are selling a home, you better be competitive with the similar bank-owned listings or your house will not sell. If you are planning on selling in six months, why wait when you know more and more homes will be put on the market at rock bottom prices? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Jul 25 2007, 03:05 PM by gking with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: real estate, foreclosures, REOs