Recently Wells Fargo upgraded the Santa Fe area to a Market Class 1.  The classification earlier in the year was a Market Class 2, and last year for at least part of the year was a Market Class 3.  It is our understanding that they use this rating to quality people for conforming loans and it means that in the foreseeable next 6 months that they expect the values of residential properties to stay the same and to not go down. 

One can extrapolate from this change the idea that perhaps they don’t have a whole lot of homes that they plan to foreclose on and try to sell at a discount to the market.

The four classifications for property are as follows:

Market Class 1 – Stable

Market Class 2 – Soft

Market Class 3 – Distressed

Market Class 4 – Severely Distressed

We will post more about this change once we have data or further explanations from Wells Fargo.  But at the moment it seems like very good news for the Santa Fe real estate market as a whole.