Look for the Message in Real Estate Market Reports
Depending on your point of view, you can read a real estate market report and draw completely different conclusions than Joe Blow Realty down the street. Consumers find it difficult to understand the market because they don't whose opinion to trust. You can pretty much read a market report any which way you want.
Few real estate agents want to talk about how bad the market might be. They tend to gravitate toward the positive news in a market report and focus on that. For example, I read a Trendgraphix press release last week that my company puts out. The headline was "Pending Sales Rebound." The headline might be designed to make a reader conclude that the market is recovering.
Further on in the press release you learn that, in Sacramento, inventory jumped in June by 8% and sales declined by 3%. In fact, the per-square-foot price dropped 2% to $125.
Because I list a lot of homes all over the county, I am constantly preparing a CMA in dozens of areas for sellers. I see a different picture than most agents because my view is not concentrated on one specific neighborhood. I see active and pending sales prices that are lower than the last 3 months of comparable sales. That means prices are falling. So a 42% increase in pending sales doesn't mean diddly-squat. Pending sales increased in June over May last year, too.
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Look for the Message in Real Estate Market Reports originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 05:00:18.
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About Those Bogus Short Sale Offers
Sellers have a very difficult time understanding why some buyers will write an offer on their short sale without committing to buying that short sale. These buyers expect the seller to accept an offer, work to get short sale approval, and then the buyer will let the seller know whether the buyer intends to go into escrow.
This practice is utter nonsense, not to mention, writing multiple offers without the ability to close on each of those transactions could very well be against the law.
Some agents just don't know any better. I don't advise my buyers to adopt that practice. In fact, when I receive offers on my short sale listings, if a buyer won't put an earnest money deposit into escrow and promise not to write any more offers, I don't consider that buyer to be a buyer. Neither do my sellers. They consider that buyer to be a moron. And the buyer's agent who should know better is a doofus, too.
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About Those Bogus Short Sale Offers originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 05:00:03.
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You Might Qualify for a Short Sale Without a Hardship
A strategic short sale can happen if the bank qualifies the property for a short sale without a hardship from the seller.
For years, banks have been insisting that sellers face some sort of hardship before the bank will grant the short sale. Not so anymore. If that sounds irrational or illogical to you, welcome to the club. Strange as it might sound, some banks are not requiring a seller hardship; however, they do seem to want a story. That story can't be: I hate you, the value of my house has tanked and you owe me . . . read more about Short Sales Without a Hardship.
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You Might Qualify for a Short Sale Without a Hardship originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 05:00:31.
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Financial Reform Isn't Necessarily Straight-Laced
The financial reform bill has its supporters and those who would like to drive icepicks through the hearts of our legislators. I, for one, am totally in love with the idea that a mortgage lender should actually qualify a borrower -- you know, verify the borrower's income, credit rating and employment. Just like the good old days before everything went to hell in a hand basket.
Not everybody agrees with this premise. And there are other parts of that financial bill that tick off people. One of the bigger changes that have mortgage brokers up in arms is the elimination of the YSP. How they ever got away with that practice for so long is beyond me. "Buuutt," mortgage brokers spit, "If borrowers were happy with the rate, what the hey?" Oh, stuff a sock in it.
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Financial Reform Isn't Necessarily Straight-Laced originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 05:00:49.
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Cheap Luxury Homes Are New Hot Ticket
It may very well be true that you can buy a champagne home on a beer budget. Forbes says that cheap luxury homes are one of the best deals out there right now, with the caveat being you have to live in a place with depressed home prices. That doesn't sound like a bad trade-off, to grab a bargain-basement deal on the home of your dreams, though, does it?
I listed a home this spring in El Dorado Hills, California, which originally had sold a few years ago very close to a million dollars, and a new buyer bought it for $430,000. The buyer paid cash. It would take more than 4 years to sell all the million-dollar-plus homes on the market today in El Dorado Hills. Too much inventory and not enough buyers. I'm telling you, if you've ever thought of owning an oceanfront home or an equestrian estate, now might be an excellent time to start looking.
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Cheap Luxury Homes Are New Hot Ticket originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 05:00:27.
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How to Write a Winning Hardship Letter
I've seen a lot of sellers struggle with writing a short sale hardship letter.
Generally speaking, they start out OK by talking about how they got into their present situation, but about one-third of the way through the letter, they seem to change course. They take this unexpected 90-degree turn. It's as though it's all too depressing for them to continue writing in the same vein.
All of a sudden, they're wearing rose-colored glasses and laying out how they plan to turn around their lives and what nice, responsible people they are. They are, in effect, giving the bank every reason to either reject their short sale on the basis that their hardship is only temporary or to smash those dreams by demanding a seller contribution from these pure-as-the-driven-snow and under-water sellers . . . read more about writing a Hardship Letter.
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How to Write a Winning Hardship Letter originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 05:00:48.
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Low Mortgage Rates Are Not Enticing Home Buyers
Basically, the federal home buyer tax credit program is over. Oh, there are still those hapless buyers stuck in some delayed short sales who will still get the credit if they can manage to close by September 30th and signed a contract before April 30th, but there is no stimulus left in the market place. Except for low mortgage rates. The bulk of the business in the mortgage market seems to be for refinances, though, and not for home purchases.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, low mortgage rates aren't making up for the loss of the home buyer tax credit. Homes sales are still down. It quotes the National Association of Realtors as saying the real estate market needs to stand on its two feet, and I agree with that assessment. We can't rely on mortgage rates to generate a new buzz, either. But it doesn't hurt that rates have dipped to all-time low. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate conforming loan dipped below 4.5% last week. That's pretty darn sweet.
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Low Mortgage Rates Are Not Enticing Home Buyers originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 05:00:41.
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IRS Blocks 10% of Home Buyer Tax Credits
It's pretty clear that a large number of home buyers may not understand how the first-time home buyer tax credit works.
A disturbingly high percentage of filers trying to claim the credit might just be crooks. An IRS audit rejected almost 10% of home buyer tax credits due to incorrect or outright fraudulent claims. Some taxpayers are prison inmates, but that's not unusual, I suppose, as mostly crooks are behind bars. Others involved multiple claims for the same house by different people. Yet others tried to claim the credit for homes that were purchased before the program began.
While nobody I know really loves the IRS, at least the government is doing something to prevent further fraud and is trying to not hand over your tax dollars to those who don't deserve it. We have a big enough federal deficit already.
The good news is President Obama extended the home buyer tax credit from an earlier June 30th closing date to September 30, 2010. This applies only to home buyers who were in contract by April 30th.
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IRS Blocks 10% of Home Buyer Tax Credits originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 05:00:28.
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Why You Should Care About Hard Money Loans
Lots of unsuspecting homeowners have no idea that when they refinance mortgage debt, they could be turning what was once considered purchase money into hard money loans.
This is especially true in states such as California. Purchase money loans on a personal residence in California carry no recourse. This means if a homeowner is kicked out of the house because the bank foreclosures, that bank can't hold a California homeowner personally liable for purchase money loans. But hard money loans are different.
Some homeowners refinanced simply to get out a bad loan with a high interest rate and into a lower, fixed-rate mortgage . . . read more about Hard Money Loans.
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Why You Should Care About Hard Money Loans originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 05:00:41.
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Foreclosure Discounts Tracked
The online foreclosure giant, RealtyTrac, has found a way to track the average discount on foreclosures. Nationally, the average discount is 34% for a foreclosure as compared to the prices of sold homes that are not in foreclosure.
RealtyTrac calculates its average discount by comparing the percentage difference between the average sales price of homes not in foreclosure to the average sales price of foreclosure homes. The numbers would be a bit skewed if most of the homes that were not in foreclosure were upper-end homes.
Using this formula, RealtyTrac shows the average discount of foreclosure homes in California, for example, is 44%; New York is 51%. Short sales accounted for almost 12% of all home sales.
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Foreclosure Discounts Tracked originally appeared on About.com Home Buying / Selling on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 05:00:17.
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