Boise real estate owners are trying to keep their homes and in so doing, seek loan modifications, but that is the top fraud complaint in the state right now. Foreclosures were up 89 percent from the previous year, but complaints about modifications leapt from a handful in 2008 to 353 in 2009, according to the attorney general’s office. Loan modification fraud complaints dwarfed every other complaint type this year with Idaho’s Attorney Generals office.

Many of the reports of fraud being reported are outrageous, says Lawrence Wasden, Idaho’s Attorney General. Many homeowners, who are desperate to keep their homes, are charged hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, although no attempt to change their loan is made. The Attorney Generals office rapidly sought out and received three settlements and filed two lawsuits on behalf of citizens and victims. This kind of criminal act leaves nearly all homeowners in the Boise real estate market without any avenue to keep their homes.

In order to help many Boise real estate owners receive the loan modifications they were hoping for, the Attorney Generals office even brought in a counselor as a resource. To help out, free foreclosure handbooks were printed up and handed out.

The Idaho Attorney Generals office recovered just over 7.4 million dollars on behalf of Idaho taxpayers, which amounts to just over $12 per taxpayer dollar contributed by the state, according to Wasden. The attorney general also recovered $5.9 million in civil penalties, fees and costs, also the largest amount ever recovered by the office in that category. The state received $31 million in 2009 from the tobacco master settlement agreement negotiated between the office and tobacco manufacturers in 1998. Idaho has taken in an otherwise unseen $254 million as a result over the years.

While only costing the state of Idaho $833,000 and bringing in a total of $44 million, the consumer affairs operations are a very positive force for citizens in general, but specifically for those who own Boise real estate. The office worked in a number of areas last year. Regardless of the size of the business, the attorney general pursued claims against pharmaceutical giants and small businesses alike. Refusing to be a respecter of monopolies or price fixing criminal groups, Idaho’s Attorney General allowed no slack. Not even price fixing vitamin companies were immune from their pursuit.

Phone solicitors have had to adjust their tactics as well, with over 900,000 new phone numbers being added to the “do not call” list to avoid solicitations. Soon the office will release an important DVD which teaches children how to avoid sexual predators online, called “ProtecTeens”.

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The percentage of Boise home sellers who cut their asking price declined again in February and sellers made slightly smaller reductions in prices, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.

As indicated by industry sources, and revealed in a Reuters report yet to be released, January median home prices did follow the previous downward direction.

The overall trend of median home values shows that January’s price reduction rate was at 19.8%, while February’s was just a little lower coming in at 19.5%, according to sources.

Home sellers reduced prices by a median 6.7% in February, down from 6.8% in January.

The Boise real estate market has posted this trend consistently over each of the past twelve months, showing a boon for buyers. The February home sales numbers did not look too hot either, considering Zillow reports that an 8.7% price drop was shown over 33% of listed homes.

The median list price of homes fell 1.4% in February from January, to $205,000, which is down 6.8% from the median listing price in February 2009, sources said.

The Boise real estate statistics continue to improve with the median day on market dropping from 109 in January to 105 days in February sources reported. The greatest reduction in the median days on market category was in August which posted only a median of 90 days on market.

In February 2009 the median time on the Boise real estate market was 109 days on Zillow.

What this means for many property owners is that the inventory is being absorbed at predictable rates that would allow for price changes accordingly. In other words, if your home has not sold in the first 3 months, approximately, you may need to revisit your sales price and examine the comparable properties on the Boise real estate market. If this is not taken into account you may find yourself in the unfavorable situation of trying to catch up on a declining market and use up all of your equity.

This allows Boise real estate buyers the time to carefully consider exactly what they want and to patiently plan exactly how they are going to get a home that meets all their needs. Being in a “buyer” market is not necessarily a good thing if you are not well educated on market tendencies, and cannot capitalize on the best value when it comes along.

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It looks like the news the last few years has beaten the dead horse of this real estate crunch, and the conditions in the Boise Idaho real estate market is no different. With the latest numbers indicating that there is no real improvement in sight, homeowners in the area are starting to wonder when and if it will happen. The situation has demanded some very fast action from authorities, and they have done what they can with the markets reacting accordingly.

The most active strata in the Boise Idaho real estate market is the entry level home market. Sales usually slow down for winter, so once that is factored in; home sales have clipped right along. The introduction of the federal governments first time home buyer tax credit lifted the market and set appreciation standards no seen in a few years. These tax breaks aimed at increasing home buyers rates of purchase were responsible for the latest rate of appreciation throughout the nation.

The next strata of home prices is the tier 2 homes which are between about two hundred and four hundred thousand dollars, and they do seem to be selling at very slow rates right now. The difficulty in getting financing will ease since we have had appreciation rate that justifies primary mortgage insurance, which will reduce bank reluctance to grant loans. This slice of the market is very slow for new home starts due to the fact that buyers are leaning more toward smaller, more energy efficient floor plans.

The Boise real estate luxury home market is the slowest due to the fact that jumbo loans have started to be reported as defaulting in higher numbers in recent weeks. With higher default rates reporting, PMI for jumbo loans will go up substantially, and this will prohibit many buyers from doing so at this time.

Land in the Boise Idaho real estate market, which includes developments, acreages and building lots, has been experiencing short increase in pace with more buyers procuring reo homes with land. When you look closely at the numbers you will see that lots are moving very slowly which is logical since construction is also low. With a paucity of financing for real estate developments, the rate of sales of development property has been very slow.

Just like every prior year, the Boise housing market slows dramatically during the colder times of the year, but more buyers are busy this year trying to get a home under contract before the April deadline for the tax incentives. The most dangerous influence in the market is an increase of mortgage rates, which may dampen real estate sales and prolong the recovery that all of us are eagerly waiting.

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The U.S. economy grew faster than initially thought in the fourth quarter as businesses drew down inventories at a much slower pace and boosted investment, a government report showed on Friday. As goes the nation, so goes the Boise real estate market, so this news is good to local industry insiders.

In its second reading of fourth-quarter gross domestic product, the Commerce Department said the economy grew at a 5.9% annual rate, rather than the 5.7% pace it estimated last month. It was still the fastest pace since the third quarter of 2003. Posting an impressive 2.2% increase, the third quarter led all to date. If we go back to the 2003 number the Boise real estate market would be on solid footing.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast GDP, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, growing at a 5.7% rate in the October-December period. While the economy rebounded strongly in the second half of 2009 from the worst downturn since the 1930s, data so far suggests the rapid rate of acceleration slowed somewhat in the first quarter of 2010. Even thought consumer spending and the housing markets were down, the fact that businesses increased investment in software and equipment helped add some steadiness to the economy and allowed business to liquidate bloated inventories. Being part of the fabric of the national economy, Boise real estate definitely had similar results.

Stripping out inventories, the economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.9%, rather than the 2.2% pace estimated last month, indicating growth was not being driven by demand. Inventory sales amounts were alarmingly reduced from $33.5 billion to around $16.9 billion in the final quarter. They dropped $139.2 billion in the July-September period. The inventory changes alone were responsible for a 3.88% difference in GDP. This was the biggest percentage contribution since the fourth quarter of 1987. Inventory reductions by construction materials company had a sizable effect of Boise real estate too.

In fact, since 1946 there not been such a dramatic shrinkage in the economy as the 2.4% drop recently. Even consumer spending projections had to be adjusted downward from 2% in January to the actual number of 1.7% increase. Although offset soon afterward, the “cash for clunkers” program drove GDP, by stimulating consumption, up by a respectable 2.8%. The disappointing news came from the consumer spending sector which added only a 1.23% GDP gain, which is low considering it is normally about 70% of GDP. The Boise real estate market has shared in the impact of the national financial crisis.

With spending on commercial real estate heading down quickly, the fact that the growth happened at all was due mostly because of equipment purchases and investment in software necessary for business growth and improvement. With business investment being much higher than the projected 2.9%, at 6.5% actually, improvement is on the way. In just the three months prior, it had slumped by just under 6%. With everyone watching the housing markets, projections of 5.7% were down graded to about 5% in the fourth quarter. In the third quarter it had posted a tremendous 18.9%. Both exports and imports grew much stronger than initially estimated in the fourth quarter, leaving a trade gap that contributed 0.3 percentage point to GDP growth, the data showed. As GDP indicates our national economic states, Boise real estate eagerly awaits is significant turn around.

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