Pep Rally for community & volunteers:

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30^th 6-8 PM

The Robertson Center at Southwestern University in Georgetown

On Tuesday, November 30th, a pep rally will be held for the community and all volunteers. The pep rally will be hosted by Eddie Martin, president of Tilson Homes, Scott Norman, executive director of the Texas Association of Builders and Martha Grissom, spokesperson for Temple-Inland's building products group. They’ll be joined by several members of the production team to talk about the show and how people can help. There will be a special appearance by Milan Vasic, executive producer of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Admission is FREE to the public with a suggested donation of two healthy, non-perishable food items for the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas.

For more information about the “Heart of Texas Build” please visit www.heartoftexasbuild.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Mortgage Bankers Association, Real Estate Center) – The Mortgage Bankers Association's latest mortgage delinquency survey indicate Texas is faring better than the nation in actual foreclosures.

"Texas’ seriously delinquent loans stood at 5.2 percent versus 8.7 percent of loans nationally," said Real Estate Center Research Economist Dr. Jim Gaines.

Loans considered "seriously delinquent" are 90 or more days past due or in the process of foreclosure.

Foreclosure was started on 0.85 percent of all loans in Texas during third quarter 2010, Gaines said. Nationally, that number was 1.34 percent.

The percentage of loans in foreclosure in Texas at the end of the quarter was 1.8 percent, compared with 4.4 percent nationally.

"Texas delinquent loans have picked up, but third quarter 2010 total delinquencies were down nearly 2 percent from the previous year," Gaines said. "Both the United States and Texas are running at around 9.5 percent delinquency on all loans."

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CoreLogic, Dallas Morning News, Real Estate Center) – Texas' five major metros have some of the lowest "shadow" inventories of unsold homes in the United States.

A recent study by CoreLogic Inc. shows Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos has the lowest in the nation at 4.2 months. San Antonio-New Braunfels is next at 4.7, followed by Fort Worth-Arlington at 6.3. Dallas-Plano-Irving has the fifth-lowest inventory at 6.7 months, while Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown is seventh with 7.3 months.

Shadow inventory homes are properties that have been foreclosed on or are in the process of foreclosure but are not currently listed for sale, writes Dallas Morning News real estate writer Steve Brown.

Texas' average shadow home inventory is 5.5 months. The average inventory among the 50 largest U.S. cities included in CoreLogic's study is about 16 months.

For more on this, tune into next week's Real Estate Red Zone podcast. Real Estate Center Research Economist Dr. Jim Gaines will stop by to talk about foreclosures in Texas housing markets.