Home Loan Focus

Archive for the ‘Real Estate Agents’ Category

Buying property may be the largest financial transaction you ever make, so why not take your time to select an agent who specializes in your area of interest. Ask your friends, neighbors or trusted colleagues who they would recommend. In addition, if you’ve already chosen a geographic area of interest, select an agent who is knowledgeable of the area and can offer insight on amenities as well as provide relative financial data.

Remember, when you are hiring an agent, you are interviewing them. Ask about credentials and designations, continuing education and don’t be afraid to ask questions about their track record and any license infractions. Granted, if you ask something like does Lipovox work, they may just look at you blankly, but it is important to get to know any potential agent. Lastly, make sure that you will have access to your potential agent outside of the office and office hours. It may take a few tries, but you will be glad you did your homework when it is all said and done.

Source: RE/MAX

Let’s get real about our home investments for a second.  There are several trends that you need to not only know but appreciate as you make your home purchasing decisions this years:

1. The Real Estate Market has been inflated
2. Mortgage Lenders have engaged in fraud that increased the real estate market inflation
3. Builders have also served to inflate the market
4. Both the mortgage market and real estate market are in correction now

Here’s what these trends mean for you.  The prices have been high, even too high and that put money in the pockets of builders and mortgage bankers and brokers.  That money came from people just like you.  Now, if you want to give your money away for nothing, then you are wasting your time reading this column.  Feel free to click away now.

The correction is taking place today and on the home shopping front the best place to find homes that have had their prices corrected the most is in the foreclosure market.  These homes have corrected significantly and some may even be value buys.  Why would you pay say 40% more for the same house through normal channels when you can possibly save $80,000 on a home that is in foreclosure.

Here are just a few examples in one of those counties that used to be one of the most inflated markets in the country, southern California.

You can find recent san diego foreclosure listings to review or la jolla foreclosure listings to review. and information from any realtor, but in doing so you essentially have to set up a relationship with that realtor.  That’s fine, but in the world of the internet, if you can do the research before connecting to a realtor so much the better.

Foreclosure listings work differently than normal real estate listings and the rules are different across the country.  Typically, you do not get the same time period to review a home or even have it inspected.  These properties are typically sold ‘as is’.  That means you could end up with a lemon.  You should approach these homes a potential money pits or homes that are only partially constructed.  You may even need to take out a construction loan and fix the place up before you can get real financing.  The point is, do not expect to go in and make a bunch of demands on the seller (the bank).  You are buying the house at what should be bottom basement prices.  This purchase should be all about the price.  If the price isn’t a sweet heart of a deal, then go somewhere else.  DO NOT fall in love with a foreclosure home when you are buying it.

If you can not approach a foreclosure property with this type of discipline, then you will be better off paying the 40% premium and looking for normal real estate listings in San Diego to buy.

Even as I write about home loans and mortgages and real estate, I am involved directly in the process myself.  My family and I are in the middle of a move from Atlanta to the Charlotte area of North Carolina.  I am not moving in a typical process.

The typical person would move and seek to choose the best realtor that they could find from the pool of NC realtors.  Usually, they pick based on either their companies recommendation, their family or friends recommendation and then they choose based on whether or not they get along with the realtor.

The decision to choose a realtor normally takes place within a few days as most people look to move and make a decision rapidly, within a month or two.

My wife and I are not in a hurry.  We have not even listed our Georgia home on the market yet.  We probably will not list it until next spring.  That means that we will not be likely to buy a home to sometime shortly after that.  This gives us a great deal of time to pick and choose from NC real estate agents from many more sources than your typical future home buyer.

Several years ago, when we were living in Florida we had direct experience with a bad realtor.  Someone that did not have our best interests in mind, someone that was engaging in illegal red lining practices, and someone that ultimately was trying to push us into a decision that was not right for us.  We learned to recognize not only a bad realtor but a realtor that was not right for us then.

Just a few short years later, we were pointed to a very similar realtor by our company when we moved to Atlanta.  We rapidly dropped that realtor, and chose a different realtor that was the right person for the job and she did a great job by us.

So now as we move to North Carolina, we need to apply a new lesson.  We need to find a realtor that still meets all of our previous requirements, but we also need a realtor that can find us a smoking hot deal in a market that is holding its own.  The Charlotte real estate market is not dropping like many other areas of the country, but from our perspective, we can not chance that the real estate down turn will not hit here.  We can not afford to buy into a bubble here, so we are going to need a very price aggressive realtor to find that great buy and help us to negotiate it even better.  That is not a typical trait of a realtor coming out of the Real Estate boom of the last 6 years.  Realtors have learned to flip transactions over and over, the bigger the price the better.  But in the advance of a bursting real estate bubble, the successful realtor will adapt and become the champion of the great deal for their buyers. 

This means that realtors will not do well when they represent both sides of the deal.  The best way to get a good home loan starts with getting a great price on a valuable home.