Heather Soldonia
By Heather Soldonia
More scary than mummies, black cats, or cobwebs is the looming question: Has the real estate market bottomed out?
We REALTORS® have been asking Congress “Trick or Treat? … Please come up with some creative ways to revive the real estate market. Pretty please?”
When Forbes reported the 10 worst real estate markets of 2009, eight were in California. Currently, the unemployment rates are still above 12 percent in California — and remember that unemployment rates are only determined based on the number of people still receiving unemployment benefits — it doesn’t include in its calculation those who have received the maximum amount of unemployment benefits and now have absolutely no income.
Obviously, we can understand why so many mortgages are still going unpaid. In California, default notices have dropped by 10 percent, but that is specifically because lenders are modifying loans and/or short selling.
That being said, let’s take a quick moment to consider how the unemployment rate effects commercial real estate: Continue reading »
By Dave Robison
A short sale would have you think it’s going to be a quick and short closing. The problem is they all have too much Junk in the Trunk. In a race, their tail end is dragging along the ground, which makes the vehicle go about as slow as my kid in a wagon.
Here are two examples of what is going wrong and what you can do about it.
First case involves Aurora. We submit an offer in to the bank on our listing from a buyer. It goes 60 days or so before we get a negotiator from the bank. In the meantime a couple comes in with an offer for higher than what the current offer is. Aurora approves a sale price and we should be good to go right? Wrong!
The bank will only take the offer they reviewed. You can’t switch it out for a higher offer. If you do, you have to cancel the offer, resubmit another offer and guess what …. wait another 60 days for a negotiator. Too much junk in the trunk! All of these policies in their trunk are making the banks lose even more money.
Second case involves Fannie Mae. Banks appraisal at $230,000. FannieMae wouldn’t accept less than $270,000. Really? That’s right, Fannie Mae won’t take anything less than $270,000 when the purchaser owes $255,000. That is just plain silly that they think a buyer is going to come up with $40,000 more than what it appraises for.
This home got foreclosed on. Today, it is on the market for the same price it could have sold for 8 months ago. They could have cut their losses 8 months ago but now their cut is getting deeper and deeper.
Third case from various lenders. They approve the short sale but want the seller to sign a note for the difference. The sellers are going into bankruptcy. This doesn’t make any sense. If they could make payments for the difference, they would rent it out and make payments for the difference.
I have three deals right now with different banks that the banks want a note and the buyer won’t sign. The buyers attorney said don’t do it. We are doing bankruptcy.
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