Buying a foreclosure home can provide great opportunities for people who want to buy a house at a great price. One company helps would-be homebuyers navigate the pitfalls of buying a bank owned home or other house that has been affected by foreclosure.

San Francisco, CA July 3, 2008 — Foreclosures and the American real estate market’s price declines have continued to dominate news headlines across the country for well over a year, but one company is bucking the bad news trend. Sacramento, CA-based The Home Buying Center.com (www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com) has been helping connect home sellers who want to sell a house quickly with investors for years, and they have expanded their service offering last year to help consumers find and buy foreclosure homes.

“For the first time homebuyer who waited until now to buy a home the deals are everywhere,” said company president, Patrick McGilvray, J.D., CFP®. “It’s important that prospective buyers understand that buying a foreclosure house can be a great opportunity to buy a house at a cheap price, and they must be aware of some of the possible pitfalls.”

The pitfalls McGilvray mentioned can include buying houses in an ‘as-is’ condition with hidden problems that may not have been visible during a casual inspection such as dry rot or problems with a cracked foundation. Buyers, he cautioned, must do significant homework before signing on the dotted line. Additionally, he said that it is crucial for would-be home buyers to be pre-qualified for a mortgage loan.

“That’s why working with a team like ours can be a real advantage,” McGilvray said. “We provide the consumer access to the nation’s largest network of foreclosure and pre-foreclosure homes via thousands of real estate investors and real estate agents who specialize in bank owned homes. We also have the resources needed to help hopeful house buyers get qualified for a mortgage.”

The company was originally founded as a website devoted to connecting people who wanted to sell a house quickly at a discount to a real estate investor, but, because of requests from customers, they started offering a foreclosure location service for buyers in 2007. McGilvray said that their company has been growing rapidly since their inception and that they had recently taken some venture capital money in exchange for equity from an angel investor.

Despite the downturn in America’s housing market, which McGilvray thinks could still take years to fully recover from, he is optimistic about real estate services and the internet’s ability to connect consumers with exactly what they are looking for quickly and easily. When asked where he thought should consumers turn to first to help them find answers to their real estate questions, he answered with a smile, “Other than The Home Buying Center.com? Why Google, of course.”

SACRAMENTO, CA – In the first quarter of 2008 home foreclosures in the United States reached a peak and the pain was felt by all types of borrowers, not just those with the now infamous subprime adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs).

While subprime borrowers led the pack in allowing their homes to go to foreclosure many so-called prime and alt-a borrowers were unable to consecutively make payments on their houses as well. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (www.mbaa.org), .99 percent of home loans in America entered the foreclosure process in the January to March time frame. The number the previous year was .58 percent.

The trade association first began measuring loan delinquency rates in 1979, and this year’s results were the highest on record at 6.35 percent.

On a positive note, the Mortgage Banker’s Association senior researcher, Jay Brinkmann, predicted that most states should see a trailing off of foreclosure activity by years end. But, troubled states like California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, which saw record prices spikes in residential real estate values, may see their foreclosure woes persist well into 2009.

For the homeowner who is trying to sell a house in the current market the challenge can be finding a qualified buyer who is pre-qualified for a mortgage loan. Many buyers have reported that they are simply not able to get funding for a house purchase despite having good credit and down payments available.

Real estate and foreclosure expert Patrick McGilvray, J.D., president of Sacaramento, CA-based The Home Buying Center.com (www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com) said, “For people looking to buy a foreclosure house there are opportunities aplenty. It’s important for these buyers, though, to get pre-qualified for a home loan before they go shopping because sellers, especially lenders with a large inventory of bank owned REO houses don’t want to spend time with people who aren’t ready, willing and able to buy.”

Real estate industry feels heat as home values continue to fall in much of the nationSACRAMENTO, CA – Real estate continues to be a sore spot for the US economy as prices for single family homes were down 7.7% in the first quarter of 2008 compared to a year earlier.

The National Association of Realtors reported the recent numbers and indicated that this was the biggest yearly decline since they began record-keeping in 1982.  Median sales prices were down to $196,300 at the end of March, a 4.8% drop compared to Q4 of 2008.

In Sacramento, California prices fell more than 29% and the median dropped to $258,500.  Prices in Riverside, California dropped more than 27% to $287,100.

An internet real estate company based in Sacramento, www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com, reported an increase in consumers requesting help with selling their houses as well as an increase in buyers who are looking for deals on foreclosure houses.  “Deals on foreclosure houses are one of our specialties, and we’re getting a lot of traffic to our website because of that,” said company president Patrick McGilvray.

The Home Buying Center reported that a lot of their activity is happening in the states hardest hit by the housing crisis that occurred in the wake of the subprime mortgage meltdown.  According to McGilvray the biggest numbers of homeowners seeking help, and buyers seeking deals, are occurring in California, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Michigan.

Foreclosure activity resulted in more than 155,000 homes taken back by lenders since last year, and mortgage payment delinquencies more than doubled during the time as well.

TAMPA BAY, Fla.-OBSNews.com- reports Florida real estate market has been rocked by falling home prices due to crises in subprime mortgage lending, foreclosures, and the meltdowns in credit and home mortgage markets. This perfect storm has caused many real estate agents and real estate investors to quit buying and selling real estate.

Despite the general doom and gloom surrounding real estate in the United States some agents, investors, and buyers are happily buying houses, selling houses, and earning a good living doing so.

One of the keys to success in this market is knowing how to cultivate large numbers of interested home buyers in advance. Roger Salam, CEO of the www.HomelandGroup.com and former #1 speaker and trainer for Tony Robbins, has developed a unique system for creating an unlimited supply of buyers for homes by combining old-fashioned principles of hard work and customer service with the latest tools on the internet such as social networking and Web 2.0 practices.

According to Salam, “Real estate marketing has fundamentally changed, and anybody who wants to cultivate a large rolodex of ready, willing, and able buyers needs specialized training and support systems. At the Homeland Group, we’re so confident in our strategies to help real estate investors and agents attract buyers that we’re offering a 100% money back guarantee on our upcoming training course in Tampa on March 28, 29, and 30.”

Real estate investor Greg Forster at www.fasthouseoffers.com of Tampa Bay agreed, “Roger’s boot camp taught me things about selling houses fast that I had never heard before. His teachings are based on fundamentals, common sense, and outstanding customer service. Since using his system I have been able to sell on average four houses every month for the past four months.”

The next home selling bootcamp that the Homeland Group is hosting will be in the Tampa Bay area this weekend. To take advantage of the special limited time offer and to learn how to attend this program for FREE or obtain a scholarship please visit http://www.rogersalam.com/special to register.

Don’t delay as there only 5 of 50 seats still available. For questions call 727-408-3333. www.RogerSalam.com

SACRAMENTO – The American housing market continues to see climbing foreclosure rates on single family homes with California, Florida, and Nevada showing the highest rates.  According to California-based www.RealtyTrac.com 223,651 homeowners in the United States were late on their mortgage payments in February of this year.  This figure represents an almost 60% increase from the same period last year when 139,922 homeowners were late on payments.

Other states that were hardest hit by foreclosures according to RealtyTrac were Texas, Ohio, and Michigan.  In many states across the US real estate investors are no longer buying houses at the auctions that are usually on the steps of the county courthouse at the end of  foreclosure proceedings.  This situation is caused because of falling home equity levels and as a result banks and mortgage lenders are being forced to take back houses themselves.  Lenders are then forced to try to sell these bank-owned properties, or REO (short for real estate owned), on an already crowded market.

“We buy houses and help homeowners by giving them an investor’s opinion as to the current market value of their house,” said Patrick McGilvray, president of www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com.  He continued, “If [homeowners] have some equity left in the house then an investor in our nationwide network may be able to buy their home for a cash purchase.  If not, our team members counsel our customers as to their best available options which may include working with a real estate agent to get their house sold quickly via a traditional listing agreement or a short sale listing agreement,” said

McGilvray said that many properties are still being bought and sold, and the key to selling a home in this market is pricing it well below comparable homes in the same local market.  Other steps to help homeowners avoid foreclosure include well-publicized programs led by government agencies, lenders, and consumer groups that try to modify existing loan provisions and create new repayment plans.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - “The golden dream by the sea” is how Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has fancifully described California. Yet for thousands who bought homes during the Golden State’s latest housing boom, foreclosures have turned recent months into a nightmare.

Economists disagree whether soaring foreclosures in California suggest the world’s eighth-largest economy is poised to slump or if it is just seeing its share of disarray from the subprime segment of the mortgage lending industry.

Whatever experts call it, Dorothy Hicks, 74, a retired federal employee in Oakland, California, is seeing her American dream of owning a home teetering on the edge of collapse. After refinancing into an adjustable-rate mortgage last year, she faces possible foreclosure on her home of nearly 40 years.

Hicks says she was told the mortgage was a fixed-rate loan, but was soon overwhelmed by soaring payments when its interest rates rose. “By the time you pay (utility) PG&E, the telephone and the mortgage, you don’t have any money,” she said.

Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics in Los Angeles says California’s economic outlook will darken as a growing number of households slash consumer spending to meet rising mortgage payments, especially on adjustable-rate and subprime loans that became popular for those with weak credit.

“We have a lot more of these shady mortgages out here, so that doesn’t bode well,” he said. “We’re due for a very traditional consumer-led downturn.”

RECESSION OR RESILIENCY?

Analysts had expected California’s economy to cool because its housing market has slowed from the torrid pace of recent years. Prices, long far above the national average, are flat or slipping as sales decline.

A report last week by DataQuick Information Systems pointed to additional trouble. The real estate trend tracking service tallied a record 17,408 homes in the state falling to foreclosure in the second quarter.

While a fraction of California’s 8.4 million residential properties, the foreclosures marked a jump of nearly 800 percent from a year earlier, propelled by markets awash in subprime loans.

Countrywide Financial Corp., the largest U.S. mortgage lender, last week slashed its 2007 forecast, suggesting that rising delinquencies and defaults may spread beyond subprime borrowers to borrowers with stronger credit.

“Business is picking up and I think it’s going to continue,” said Patrick McGilvray, president of TheHomeBuyingCenter.com, a Sacramento firm that matches distressed homeowners with investors and home buyers.

Other experts say California’s mortgage troubles will be largely contained to risky borrowers who bought houses more expensive than they could afford, as well as their lenders. But they see no signs of a slowdown in consumer spending or recession.

Howard Roth, chief economist for the state Department of Finance, said the economy of California, the most populous U.S. state, is fundamentally solid. Its current housing troubles pale compared with the beating the housing market suffered in the early 1990s from gutted aerospace payrolls, he said.

The state’s unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in June, compared with nearly 10 percent in late 1992 and early 1993, when Californians desperate to leave the state were parting with their homes at fire-sale prices.

“In the early 1990s we were losing a major industry and losing it for good. Now we’re paying the price for a housing bubble, but housing will come back,” Roth said. “We really haven’t lost jobs yet. That may happen. But in the early 1990s we lost over 500,000 jobs.”