Hosting a successful open house

We showed some Placer County homes to our clients yesterday, which included visits to three different open houses. Our clients did not spend more than 1 minute in each open house because of the trash, dirty clothes, beat up cars in the driveway and street and worse yet, the seller/tenants walking around. Yep! You read that correct, the homes were beyond dirty and the seller/tenants were home during the open house. It was a disaster to say the least.

So agents, if you are planning an open house, here are some tips directly from our clients, as well as many other potential buyers who were also at the open houses, albiet briefly. They were making comments and jokes back and forth as they were leaving each home. 

First, clean the home, stage the home and keep the dogs and humans away. Potential buyers want to snoop, they want to talk about the home, they do not want the dogs barking and they do not want the seller/tenant listening to their private conversations about the home. If you are dealing with small kids or stubborn seller/tenants, no worries, send them bowling or send them to lunch for a few hours. Second, be at the open house, or have one of your new agents there. They need to be handing out a CMA, talking about the home, the history of it, any updates, etc. Potential buyers want to know these things and when no one is there to answer their questions, they leave.

Lastly and most importantly, price the home properly. Do your research and do not price the home $25k above the highest and most recent comp just because Placer County is a sellers market right now. Two of the three open homes yesterday were priced well above market value and were absolute junk. Those homes will most likely sit for a few weeks or months, so be mindful of the area and good luck!

    

Credit repair tips

We just had one of our buyers tell us that they needed 60 days to close escrow because their loan officer told them they needed to clean up a small collection on their credit report. This opened up a can of worms for us since their loan officer already told us that they were pre-qualified and homes are selling so fast here in Placer County, that a 60 day escrow is sure to get our offer rejected. So for those of who are buying a home, buying a car or motorcycle, just want to see what your credit looks like, want to clean up a derogatory trade line or just want to maintain your good credit rating, here you go! First, look at the open trade lines on your report for accuracy. The most common credit killers are old utility bills or HOA bills from a previous residence that you did not know about. Contact these agencies and make the payment, but make sure they give you a receipt and that they report the "paid" account to the credit bureaus. Tip; it takes 30-90 days for the repaired account to help improve your scores, so plan any purchases accordingly. If your credit is good but your score is low, then there are two possibilities. First, your credit line to current balance is too high or you just do not have enough credit depth. These are easily remedied by either paying the balance down or attempting to get your credit limit increased. These will typically raise your score and that is an excellent thing to have, as almost everyone is judged by their credit rating! Remember this is free advice so please use caution when working with creditors and good luck!     

Struggling home owners punished again

For the last 12 months, I have been watching a scary trend forming here in Placer County California. The resale and short-sale inventory has started to shrink, the foreclosure signs have started to disappear, we are back to multiple offer situations, purchase prices are going above comparable sales again, appraisal waivers are even coming into play again and interest rates are continuing to decline. This gave me flashbacks to 2005, when there was a buying frenzy that ended in.......well disaster! Guess what, in some parts of the Country, it is happening again. Good news for young buyers and those buyers who were previously priced out of the market, but bad news for the struggling middle class. Here is why. The largest banks and the Upper class jokers running them got $700b bailout, while we got $0. When the jokers running the two largest banks in the Country (Fannie and Freddie) got in trouble they took $ millions in bonuses and then got $140b from the Treasury while again, we got $0. Here is where it gets really good. Now that there is a shortage of homes on the market, Fannie and Freddie are foreclosing on us as fast as possible. They are declining short sales and taking homes back very quietly and quickly so that they can get them back on the market asap. I would be o.k. with that if the Treasury would share the profits with us or allow us to pay $0 in taxes for 2013, but I know that is just a pipe dream. I can confirm all of this via a single property that we watched here in Roseville, Ca. The struggling home owner owed $288k, the owner of the note was Freddie Mac and the comparable sales were between $200k-$240k. Freddie Mac foreclosed on the home for $238k in December and by February 20th was cleaned, painted and back on the market for $295k. That is not a typo. Stay tuned!     

Short Sale and Bankruptcy

We have had some great success recently with our short sales and it appears that the major banks are really making an effort to help those who are struggling. So for those of you who are in debt up to your eyes, struggling with all of your payments and considering a short sale, please consult with your local professional agent first, and not a BK attorney. The reason I say that is because we just found out first hand what happens when a BK attorney gets involved right in the middle of an active short sale. The most important piece of info that I can share with you today, and that most BK attorneys fail to mention, is that when your BK filing gets to the court, effective immediately, you give up control of your entire life; including income, assets, property and anything else you have that you forgot about. The court appointed trustee will audit your life and becomes the ring leader and nothing can be done without their permission. Worse yet, the trustee has unlimited power and can actually take the short sale away from your favorite agent and give it to himself (if he is an agent) and/or his favorite agent. This is totally legal and common in California. The trustee works on commission so be warned, he will find every asset you have, even if you forgot about it or if it has been hidden. Anyway, be careful when making a decision regarding short selling your home and filing bankruptcy at the same time. For those of you in the Sacramento area, we refer all of our clients to local real estate attorney Kristy Hernandez. She is not only smart, honest, ethical and good at what she does, but she actually picks up her phone most days. I rarely do this, but she just helped two of our clients for "free", I want to give out her phone number for anyone who needs help or advice. Kristy Hernandez 916-728-1500, you do not have to mention our name, she will give you the same excellent service regardless!

Buying after a short sale or foreclosure

Our buyers just lost their dream home yesterday because of recent changes in the lending requirements for those with a short sale or foreclosure on their credit. All of us were devestated at the news, so below is a quick guide for those who are interested in buying a home again. For those with a short sale or foreclosure on your credit, you will need to wait 36 months from the actual settlement date, in order to buy. There are very few exceptions to this rule, as we found out yesterday. So for those of who are nearing the 3 year mark, as well as you first time home buyers, below is an informational guide and a mandatory "to avoid" list. First, get together with your local banker or loan officer and have them pull your credit. You will need to repair, pay off or settle any collections, late's or derogatory line items. Those will need to be settled for 30 days before starting a loan. Your credit score will need to be a minimum of 620 but settling debts and paying items off can and will eventually increase your credit score. Second, continue to pay all of your bills on time, while also putting every extra dollar you have, into the bank. USDA and VA have a $0 down loan, otherwise FHA is the next best option, requiring only 3.5% of the purchase price as down payment. Even better, that 3.5% can be borrowed from a family member should you not have it all. This money needs to be in an account and verified by the bank before the close of escrow, it is called seasoning. Last but not least, here is a very quick list of things not to do before you buy a home. It seems very simple I know, but as our clients found out yesterday, these are often overlooked and can be devestating to a purchase. 1. Don't buy with or establish any new credit 2. Don't change jobs 3. Don't buy a new car (seems like a joke, it is NOT) 4. Continue to pay your bills On Time 5. Be patient, short sales can take up to 120 to close. Happy house hunting all!

GreenTree and Golden 1 short sale success

Our first short sale success story with Green Tree (GT) and Golden One! The investor was Fannie Mae, so we were working with three of the five hardest agencies to work with; Freddie Mac and US Bank being the other two. So we lost our first two buyers due to appraisal and BPO conflicts. For those who do not know, GT/Fannie Mae are not real open to price negotiations, especially when their BPO comes back 10% higher than the listing price. We initiated a value dispute, escalated to management and made a lot of phone calls, all for naught as our dispute was denied within a week. It seems they had their minds made up already? Well luckily for us, a third buyer appeared on our doorstep and they were willing to pay the higher price. This pleased GT/Fannie Mae and allowed us to postpone the foreclosure date. Fannie Mae is a GSE and should be obligated to helping US homeowners, but we sadly announce on a regular basis that they are still actively foreclosing on a lot of homes. So we are happy to announce that we have helped another underwater home owner move on and hopefully start over again with a clean slate!

Short Sale success GMAC and Greentree

So as you can see from my last few posts, my team has had some recent short sale success with BofA, GMAC and Wells. Those banks, despite being the largest and the busiest, are actually helping people move on with their lives, by approving massive amounts of short sale requests. We have also had recent success with HSBC, Wachovia and Indymac, while avoiding banks like Greentree and US Bank, because of the scary things we read about them. We have had first hand experience with a US Bank short sale denial and can say that they are just not helping Americans. On the other hand, since we have never worked with Greentree, we are pleasantly surprised to report that we have just achieved short sale success with them and have learned a great deal in the process. For those who do not know, Greentree is a hybrid. They are like a collection agency with a bank charter, so they kinda make and follow their own rules. The key to beating them of course, is persistence and escalation. We started this short sale on Jan 12th at 10am, with the standard faxed authorization. GMAC and Greentree both had negotiators assigned quickly and the BPO's done within 45 days, however, after no response from either bank for over a week, we escalated to management for help. We found out that GMAC doesn't give you access to a manager and Greentree management calls go straight to voicemail, which is always full. Better yet, they are not allowed to respond to emails, so now what? Well my team spent some time doing their usual research to find an executive within each bank who would want to know about these useless delays. Well sure enough, once our emails were read by those executives, we had responses very quickly. Sad that it took an executive to make these files move, but it is a common approach in getting short sales approved. Anyway, both bank negotiators were not happy with us after that and still tried to delay the files a little longer, but we soon had very clean approvals on our desk and all of this within 94 days. Whoo Hoo! So Congrats to Dan and Melissa, they are already working on repairing their credit and moving on with their lives!