(Judgement enforcement) Lenders Now Hampered by Mortgage Insurance Companies

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(Birmingham, AL) The most recent fallout from the mortgage crisis that began last summer is now rearing it’s ugly head in the form of Fannie Mae approved loans that cannot get insured by Mortgage Insurance companies.

Mortgage insurance companies, spurred on by recent recommendations in congress, are tightening their credit standards for providing insurance. Without mortgage insurance, borrowers are forced to provide a down payment equal to 20% of the purchase price of a home – something very few home buyers can afford to do. Just this past week, mortgage insurance companies raised their credit score requirement to 620, effectively cutting out 50% of home buyers from the home buying market. The move came unnanounced and without any notice to lenders or to Fannie Mae.

In fact, lenders are still approving loans that meet Fannie Mae guidelines for purchase in the secondary market, but then find, just before closing, that there is no mortgage insurance available to insure the loan. Without insurance on money loaned that is over 80% of the value of the property, the loan is declined. Buyers that have a “loan approval” from a lender should immediately ask their lender if the lender can get their loan insured. Otherwise, homebuyers could spend hundreds and even thousands in the days leading up to the closing only to find, at the last minute, that loan insurance is not available to them.

This move by the Mortgage Insurance companies will only add fuel to the fire that is the current US Housing market. By effectively eliminating more home buyers from the market, at a time when the housing market needs more buyers, not fewer, the mortgage insurance companies have put another nail in the coffin of the housing market. The resulting effect on the market will be an even bigger drop in home prices. The immediate impact of this new policy will be felt quickly in the market, not over time as has been the case with loan defaults, adjusting loan interest rates, and foreclosures.

Be forewarned: if you are a seller, drop your price now before the market itself forces an even larger price reduction. If you are a home buyer, your credit score must be above 620 or you cannot get a loan.

Open Houses in Birmingham!
Now there’s an easy way to find the open houses in the Birmingham, AL area with just the click of your mouse.

Weichert, Realtors – Access Realty has just launched www.8YellowBalloons.com

Tune in to 8yellowballoons.com every week to see where the open houses are going to happen. You would drive around looking but it’s a lot easier with a map.

You can also custom design your own Open House Home Tour!

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Should You Start Off With A High Sales Price?
Because of the change in real estate market conditions, more sellers are competing for fewer buyers. So once again, it seemed important to challenge a long-standing “myth” of real estate.

“The initial listing price isn’t that important because the price can always be adjusted down later.”

Many homeowners believe this.
It is a myth.
Not true.

If most buyers first viewed your house because of a newspaper ad, a magazine, the internet, brochures, or the sign in your front yard, the initial listing price probably would not make a difference. The house would always be “new” to those seeing it.

But most buyers do NOT come to your house because of various types of advertising. That is the another myth.

Sure, buyers call on an ad, they often LOOK at that house, but not always. Once they talk to an agent, they may discover it isn’t what they need (or want) at all.

However, they ARE talking to an agent. That agent knows the current inventory and will know of other property that DOES fit their needs.

Those are the properties that buyers look at, and THIS is how most buyers end up looking at your house, too. Because of other agents, not because of your ad.

Hardly anyone buys the house in the ad.

As a result, you need to get other agents interested in your property, and this is where your listing agent comes in…and why a good listing agent is extremely important. The listing agent gets buyer’s agents looking at your home.

Those agents have clients who called in on other properties.

Buyer’s agents are not swayed by advertising. They look at the needs of the client, where the client wants to live, location, condition, and other details of the property…
And most importantly….
…price.

If your house is overpriced, agents are going to show similar homes that are priced more attractively. Your listing will get passed over.
Agents pay MOST attention to homes newly on the market. There are fewer NEW listings than current listings. It is easier to keep an eye out for what is NEW, compared to the vast number of current listings.

New listings are on the “hot” sheet circulated in real estate offices. The MLS computer identifies new listings. Your listing agent may hire a service to distribute fliers to all the buyer’s agents. There are office previews and MLS tours to showcase new listings. A lot of attention is focused on what is NEW.

With agent’s looking at newly listed homes so aggressively, a properly priced home gets attention.

An overpriced home gets passed over.

You may be thinking, “But I’m willing to negotiate!”

Buyers aren’t thinking in advance about how much you are willing to negotiate. They are comparing your asking price to other asking prices.

Plus, when your house is new on the market, you may not be willing to negotiate as much as you will later, once you’ve realized your error. Keep in mind that statistics show, quite often, the first offer is the best offer.

So what happens if you overprice in the beginning and get more realistic later?

You don’t have all those important Buyer’s Agents looking at your listing because it is NEW. A price reduction later in the listing cycle often gets overlooked. It is just one of many listings, not one of a few new listings.

As time passes, you could actually become desperate to sell because you’ve accepted a new job or because you have already bought a new home.

That is a recipe for receiving lowball offers, so you could end up selling for less than if you had priced the home correctly in the first place.

Agents know this stuff, but many sellers still mistakenly believe they should “price it high” because they can lower the price later, if necessary.

That is not the best strategy.

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(Buy a short sale house) Are Increasing Foreclosures Swallowing Modest Gains in Mortgage Repairs?

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RISMEDIA, July 30, 2009-As the Treasury Department urges mortgage servicing companies to step up their efforts to stop foreclosures,the latest available figures show that the number of households at risk of foreclosure is seven times the number of loan modifications, and the gap has increased steadily for the past year.
Although loan modifications are up from …

C.A.R. Reports June Home Sales Increased 20.1 Percent; Median Home Price Declined 26.4 Percent

RISMEDIA, July 29, 2009-Home sales increased 20.1% in June in California compared with the same period a year ago, while the median priceof an existing home declined 26.4%, according to a report released by the California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.).
“Many first-time buyers, especially those who were previously priced out of certain areas, are realizing that …

Regional Spotlight: HMFA and DCA Welcome City of Newark to Live Where You Work Homebuyer Program

RISMEDIA, July 30, 2009-Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker and Deputy Mayor for Economic and Housing Development Stefan Pryor joined New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (HMFA) Executive Director Marge Della Vecchia and other Newark dignitaries yesterday to announce that Newark is the newest member of the “Live Where You Work Program.” The city is …

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(Short sale specialist) New Blog Network in Birmingham!

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There is a new blog network in Birmingham, Alabama! The Realtors at Weichert, Realtors – Access Realty have joined together and created the only real estate blogging network in Birmingham.

The blogs are titled simply by their city names such as: Homewood Homes, Hoover Real Estate, etc., making them easy to find.

The blogs contain the latest homes for sale and real estate news about the local communities. I have included links to the citys that are up on my link list to the right. Check them out!

Top 3 Dangers of Overpricing Your Home
by Mike Carraway, Access Realty, Birmingham, AL

A LOT of sellers want to price their home above the market value and they do it for a variety of reasons…

Some say they want to have “negotiating room”. Some say, “we can always come down later”. And others say, “we just want to see what we can get – you know – test the market.”

Theses are all good reasons from a seller’s point of view. They aren’t, however, from a property marketing standpoint. When you put a property on the market, you want to generate the highest traffic and demand in the shortest time possible and all of these so called reasons to overprice just hinder and impede the marketing process.

Danger #1

Pricing a home above the market value usually results in people going elsewhere and buying. They may love your home but if you have a similar product in your market for a lower price, they’ll buy it – not yours. In effect, you have missed your buyer and now you will have to wait and attract another one at a later date.

Danger #2

Traffic and lots of it is what sells a home. Without human bodies walking through your home, it doesn’t matter if it’s the best deal around or the most beautiful in your neighborhood – it still won’t sell. In order to get the most traffic possible in the shortest time, the price must be right from the very beginning. If the home is priced very near what you actually think it will sell for, you will get the most traffic – and offers.

Danger #3

Your home will sit on the market while YOUR buyers go buy other homes. You will have lower traffic due to the higher price and fewer people will be exposed to it. What happens when you finally decide to lower the price? People see the price reduction and it causes a couple of thoughts…

1) I wonder how much further down they will come?
2) I wonder if something is wrong with it?
3) I wonder how long it’s been for sale?

Just these three will cause you more suffering from low offers and constant questions about whether you will carry part of the financing or not. You will soon grow tired of it.

The best way to avoid ALL of these problems, especially in a buyers market as we are in right now, is to price your home AT the market. Not a little over but right at the market value.

Want a secret? Price your home slightly UNDER the market value. You will have people fighting over it and will probably receive multiple offers. When you do – you can actually start a bidding war of sorts over your home and may even realize MORE than the market value.

by Mike Carraway, Broker, Access Realty, Birmingham, AL 800-840-0165

Real Estate Class

Access Realty Fast Start Training
by Mike Carraway

It happens almost daily in this great country of ours. A new real estate agent gets thier license. Then, they set off on a journey to learn how to get customers and how to do business.

Unfortunately for most of them, they try for about 3 to 6 months, don’t get any business, and quit. Why?

Well, look at it this way – if you opened up a new business and had no customers in your first 6 months – what would you do? I know that I would be questioning my own abilities at getting cusomters, wouldn’t you?

Having seen this happen so many times with new agents, I knew that there had to be a way to give new agents the tools and techniques they needed to succeed quickly. Over a 5 year period, I deveoped what I call our proprietary “Fast Start” program.

This program takes someone with zero sales experience, with no knowledge of marketing and teaches them the basics of response generating advertising and marketing. Most real estate agents have no idea why people call on an ad. When the students in Fast Start complete their training, they not only know why, but they can accurately track their ad performance and cost per call. They can also measure conversion rates. All of these things are a must for any business.

The second big part of this program is how to manage those leads that are generated and follow up with them so that they actually become customers or clients. The students are taught to set up a simple follow-up system and several different “action plans”. Combining this foolow-up system with the lead generation is the cornerstone of the Fast Start program.

Most of the students who apply what they learn in the real world ususally have a real estate transaction pending within their first 30 days. That’s how good the program works. Not everyone who goes through the program is successfull. Some students learn the information and then do not apply it. Why? Hard to say. I think one of the biggest reasons is fear of success.

They know that if they are successfull, they’ll have to work. They also know that if they are successfull, most of their problems will go away and they won’t have any excuses any more. Of course, it’s just my opinion.

If you are in the real estate business and actually WANT success – you should take our next Fast Start training class and get on the fast track to success.

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(Set aside judgement) Why Do I Need a List of REO Companies?

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Unfortunately we are in the middle of our worst foreclosure period ever. We know why this has happened, and we know the wide range of effect’s these foreclosure’s have had. Although this period is looked at as a dark time in American history, especially economically speaking, there are still opportunities for those that have there real estate License. And for Appraiser as well. Here is why we need a list of REO companies in order to take advantage of the foreclosure crisis.

Will Government Programs Help Homeowners Reclaim Their Houses After Foreclosure?

The best bet is that, if homeowners lost their property before the government programs were created, nothing in the programs will help them get their houses back after they have been foreclosed. Of course, there are numerous ways to regain a house after foreclosure, but they have nothing to do with the current plans put forth.

Atlanta Foreclosures – Why it is a Reasonable Investment Option

Atlanta Foreclosures bring to you the lowest ever property prices in one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas of America. A city that has no dearth of jobs, is a big transportation hub, has sport franchisers swarming the place and is heavily into business, finance and tourism as well, this investment proves to be like none other – a reasonable, value for money deal.

Home Foreclosure Process

These are the four basic steps to the home foreclosure process. Understanding the process can and will help prospective investors to purchase properties at the best possible price.

Where Can I Obtain Foreclosure Listings For Free?

Today the housing market is flooded with foreclosed properties and everybody is looking to get that incredible deal. However, how does one that is not a professional in the field get their hands on a list of these properties? Moreover, how can you get this list for free? There are a couple of ways; however you must be willing to do the research.

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