The National Association of Realtors (NAR) recently reported that their data shows a national, median home price decline of 4.37%. This was the decline in the third quarter of 2011 and values declined in 111 out of 150 metropolitan areas tracked. The number of metro areas showing a decline in housing values was little changed from the number showing declines in the second quarter.

Separately Integrated Asset Services (IAS), owner of the IAS360 House Price Index, reported that home prices ROSE 4% during the third quarter. How could this be? You would think that the NAR would have a database of property transactions that is wide and deep. Although the information in the various MLS around the country is often less than accurate, where could IAS get better information, public records? The public records are at least as suspect as the MLS in most jurisdictions.

I'm not saying that the NAR or IAS are wrong. The problem with statistics is that if the data used is skewed, the result is skewed. If the sample from the population of transactions used is skewed to the upside or downside your results are not indicative of the true state of affairs. After all of the recent news bites that have been released about the continuing decline in housing values it seems very odd that IAS would release a report about housing values climbing. To their credit, they said that this is the calm before the storm, and indicated that the shadow inventory of foreclosures have yet to fully impact house values.

Perceptions about housing values are becoming a reality as potential home purchasers continue to put off their home purchase decisions. Although 27% of Americans indicate that they will be buying a home at some point in the future only 2% say that they plan to buy within the next 12 months. The people that don't plan to buy within the next 12 months are concerned about the real estate market and declining values, the economy and jobs. Many also say that they won't be buying any time soon because of the lack of available financing.

Although there are about 6.4 million delinquent mortgage loans right now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are only holding about 180,000 homes. Fannie Mae said that the houses it has been selling have been selling for 56% of the unpaid mortgage balance. That's quite a haircut especially if there was any equity put into the deal at the beginning. Both Fannie and Freddie cannot sell houses faster than the foreclosures are coming in. At their current rate of sale it will take Fannie Mae four years to sell their inventory and Freddie Mac will take 15 years to clear its inventory.

The negative data keeps piling onto the residential real estate market. It seems like every day someone else comes out with a home price index that showing that the market is still falling. Recently, Fiserv reported that home prices fell 5.9% on an annual basis during the second quarter of this year. They said that this continues the double dip in home values that started last year. Fiserv predicts that houses will continue to fall, dropping another 3.6% by June of 2012. Although existing housing has become much less expensive than it was just a few years ago, increased lending standards brought the volume of house sales back to the 1998 level.

At fair assessments LLC. We concentrate on commercial property value reductions. However we do residential property tax appeals for homeowners in the Atlanta Metro area that live in Fulton County to County and Gwinnett County. If you would like assistance with your property tax appeal in 2012, please contact us at www.fair assessments.com and we will do our best with your property tax appeal.

There is increasing concern that the lack of available financing will be a major problem in 2012 for commercial properties whose loans are maturing. The problem appears to be especially acute for hotels as they have about $21.7 billion of mortgage-backed securities on 232 hotels that will need to be refinanced over the next year. Some knowledgeable people in the hotel industry believe that maybe as few as one third of the loans that need to be rolled over will find financing.

There is little money available to finance the construction of new hotels right now. Lenders don't want to get into this space when everyone is anticipating a large number of hotel properties to be foreclosed. Although capitalization rates on hotels as well as other commercial property types have fallen recently, it will take some time to see if we actually get a double top in Rates. Limited service hotels in marginal locations have been hit the hardest in the hotel motel space.

I have worked property tax appeals on hotels for many years. There is room for negotiation on the assessor's values even if capitalization rates are down this year compared to last. County appraisers are often undereducated on allocating a portion of the income stream to personal property as well as deducting for personal property replacement. Business startup costs are another expense item that can be used to account for the specialized personnel that work in a hotel and the technology and training that is needed. If you need professional assistance with your hotel property tax appeal, please contact us.

Zillow, the much less than accurate, automated valuation model that everyone loves to play with reported that the number of US homeowners that owe more than their properties are worth climbed in the third quarter. The share of borrowers that are underwater rose to 28.6% or more than one out of every four mortgaged houses in the United States. Zillow said that the number increased because fewer properties are being foreclosed on by the banks. So there's our long-term solution! Just speed up the foreclosure process. Once the bank takes the house back it ain't underwater anymore!

CoreLogic a real estate research firm recently reported that the Atlanta metropolitan area showed a year-over-year decline in single-family home values of -7.8%. Of the 10 largest metropolitan areas only Chicago and Phoenix had higher year over year single-family home value declines. The Washington DC and New York City metropolitan areas are the only two of the top 10 metropolitan areas that showed a year-over-year increase in value.

If you are a homeowner in the Atlanta, Georgia Metro area and you don't think that your county tax assessor has been realistic about values in your neighborhood, then it's time to be proactive. The property tax appeal process isn't like fighting City Hall. The tax assessor's office expects property owners to appeal their real estate assessments. If you would like help from someone with experience both inside the assessor's office and outside of the assessor's office appealing tax assessments, please contact us for help with your property tax appeal.

Fitch Ratings service recently indicated that increasing numbers of foreclosures will add to the distressed housing inventory and will put further pressure on housing prices over the near-term. Of the huge number of delinquent home loans out there approximately 10% are moving into foreclosure now every month. Fitch went on to predict that housing prices will decline another 10% before they stabilize.

At the same time CoreLogic released data that showed that the year-over-year decline in residential real estate values in September was 4.1%. Of course, that number includes a lot of distressed sales but when you take out the distressed sales there was still a year over year decline in value of 1.1%. Due to the large number of delinquent residential mortgages that have not been processed because of the robo-signing scandal, the number of foreclosure properties coming to market will continue to stay high for months to come.

Separately, Clear Capital, which has their own housing price index reported that their year-over-year October reading was a -2.8% and they indicated that all data indicates a further negative path in home prices through this winter. If your County assessor is sitting on his or her hands and not doing anything with the values in your neighborhood, you should seriously consider a property tax appeal. If you need assistance with a property tax appeal or additional information please contact us.

The American Institute of Architects released a report where they concluded that the major issue which is preventing job growth in this country is a lack of debt financing for commercial real estate projects. I know this sounds kind of self-serving but they did note that one in five stalled projects are a direct result of financing issues and they did it knowledge that financing problems account for a higher share of stalled projects in the education and multifamily sector.

Separately, Trepp, LLC said that of the 11 banks that failed in October 65% of the non-performing loans were commercial real estate loans. The number of bank failures is up from September when there were six failures and August when there were seven failures. They noted that the slowing of the US economy seems to be having a negative impact on the banks as delinquency rates and the volume of troubled commercial loans has increased recently.

Here it Fair Assessments LLC we are saving our clients an average of 21% on their property tax assessments in 2011. If you would like help with your property tax appeal in 2012, please contact us. We are here to assist in will be happy to answer any questions you might have about our service.

Everyone thinks that the residential real estate market is in the dumps and the commercial real estate market is in recovery mode. There have been commercial foreclosures over the last couple of years but most of those commercial mortgage sales came from a few banks and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Now more troubled loans are being worked by other lenders and servicers. Next year around $400 billion of commercial real estate loans mature. That is up from $375 billion this year and $250 billion in 2010 according to Deutsche Bank.

Each month billions of dollars of commercial real estate properties are falling into default. The delinquency rate for commercial mortgage-backed securities has remained high for much of this year and was 9.8% in October, one of the highest percentages ever. Many people think that we're going to see a lot more loans going into default over the next few years.

This is problematic for the property owners that are current on their mortgages as the investors buying distressed commercial loans and foreclosed properties are able to rent them at much lower rates and service the debt. That puts the owners that are still holding on to their old debt financing at a disadvantage. The pressure on rents has the potential of sending commercial property owners that are current into default. Commercial bond investors are suffering an average loan loss of 38% on property sold this year according to Deutsche Bank.

For more information on commercial property values and ammunition for property tax appeals please visit us at www.fair-assessments.com and for assistance with your property tax appeal, please contact us.