The Norris Group

The current shortage of foreclosed properties for sale that is pushing up prices is an artificial phenomenon, said Bruce Norris, principal of the Riverside-based Norris Group, which provides loans and advice to real estate investors. Don't buy homes on the assumption that prices will continue to rise and you can soon resell a house you buy at a profit, Norris cautions investors. "I don't want them to get faked out into thinking the market is getting permanently better," he said just yesterday.

July 15, 2009 Bruce Norris, president of the Riverside-based Norris Group, which specializes in buying and reselling Inland foreclosed houses, said the median price increase is misleading. Norris said originally the foreclosure inventory was made up of less-expensive homes purchased with subprime loans. Now he is seeing more expensive homes foreclosed on that were owned by higher income people who have lost their jobs.

July 1, 2009 Bruce Norris, president of the Norris Group in Riverside, Calif., sees modern simple assumptions as one potential antidote to foreclosures and plunging home values. He points out that assumptions were a crucial buoy for home sales and prices during the housing bust of the early 1980s. In California, the assumption loan was the predominant method for buying a house then, keeping values steady despite a tenfold increase in foreclosures and 11 percent unemployment, he says. "I think this is one of the pieces of the puzzle that would help today."

June 29, 2009 "People today look at us as the enemy," said Norris, 57, head of Riverside-based Norris Group, which purchases and renovates homes to rent or sell. "That’s a big problem for housing because if we can’t get the financing we need, a lot of these properties are going to sit vacant."

June 24, 2009 California real estate investor Bruce Norris renovated a three-bedroom home in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area in January and found two buyers willing to pay $165,000. An appraiser put the value 15 percent lower. The prospective purchasers walked away and now he’s renting the house instead. Low appraisals that lead to a sale reduce comparable prices in a neighborhood and make it "impossible for another group of people to refinance," Norris said.

June 9, 2009

May 15, 2009 "Id like them to point out the last time the real estate market improved while unemployment was escalating upwards," said Bruce Norris, founder of The Norris Group, a company in Riverside that specializes in real estate investments. "They're making a prediction that something will happen that's never occurred before."

April 30, 2009 California real-estate investor Bruce Norris notes that the cost of owning a property free and clear in Texas can range from double to triple the cost in California. In Texas, a $150,000 home carries an average $5,300 in taxes and insurance, compared to $2,050 in California. (The gap is more pronounced among $1 million homes, where average taxes and insurance reach $32,500 in Texas, compared to $11,500 in California.)

April 28, 2009 "There's no doubt that it's going to decline," Norris said. "There's too much lender inventory mixed in with private sellers, and you have unemployment that is going up, so you have a perfect storm."

April 27, 2009

April 22, 2009 "Whatever damage has been done in California is only going to get worse because there is a glut of homes owned by lenders that aren’t yet on the market," said Bruce Norris, a principal with the Norris Group, a Riverside, California-based real estate investment firm. "These homes are like a shadow inventory that is likely to drag down prices further when they come onto the market."

April 22, 2009

April 10, 2009 "We are still going to have a tremendous amount of foreclosures, price declines, and best opportunities to buy properties at amazing prices," says Bruce Norris of The Norris Group.

Saturday, April 4, 2009 "When you have an adjustable rate and lose your job, … we will have a lot more foreclosures and people leaving the state to find jobs," Norris said.

April 2, 2009

March 28, 2009

March 27, 2009 Bruce Norris walks ABC reporter, Rick Romero, around a few of The Norris Groups properties currently in renovation.

3/24/2009 Bruce Norris walks through several homes currently in redevelopment from The Norris Group team.

March 20, 2008 The area has been one of the hardest hit by the housing- market slump in Northern California. Home prices in Solano County dropped 21 percent in February from a year earlier, according to La Jolla, California-based DataQuick, which tracks the property market. Almost half of the estimated 334,500 home sales in 2008 will be trustee sales, according to the Norris Group, a Riverside-based firm that buys and sells foreclosed properties.

March 18, 2009 Another investor eyeing bulk sales is Bruce Norris, president of The Norris Group, a Riverside investment firm. Norris said he has not yet found great value in bulk sales but expects bigger discounts on bank-owned properties in the near future. Instead, his company snatches foreclosures once they are listed. So far, his company has purchased about 50 foreclosures after making about 1,400 offers. He says banks are routinely selling properties for 75 percent less than the mortgage note. And Norris said there is a huge number of foreclosures not even listed on the market yet, meaning those discounts will get bigger and banks will rush to unload properties as quickly as possible. "Capitulation is here already," he said. "What's coming, there's a new name. It's something we still have to dream up. It's complete terror."