Register Real Estate Advisors

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Hey guys, it’s the 55th edition of White Board Monday! This week is on the Texas Housing Trust Fund. The THTF is a possible way to make a down payment on a new home. Watch the video to find out if you qualify. Enjoy!

Hey guys, it’s White Board Monday. This week’s is on agency relationships. It is important to understand who the different players in a transaction are working for and what to expect from each. Enjoy.

Have you been thinking of buying a home? Excellent, I can help.

Are you waiting to see what happens with home prices? With so many foreclosures and short sales out there still having a negative impact on pricing there may never be a better time to buy.

Are you waiting to see what is going to happen with interest rates? They are staying historically low. Just this morning a lender told me that FHA has a 3.75% interest on a thirty year mortgage. Wow! In my lifetime I have seen the interest rates as high 20%… And now as low as 3.75%

Are you waiting for something to else happen?

Wait no more…

Here is some other news from the FHA, unfortunately, it’s not good.

The Federal Housing Administration will raise mortgage insurance premiums this April in order to repair the health of its emergency fund.

The FHA upfront mortgage insurance premium will increase to 1.75% from 1% of the base home loan amount. This will apply regardless of the term or loan-to-value ratio beginning in April.  In addition, the annual mortgage insurance premium will increase by 10 basis points for loans under the $271,050 limit for single family homes in our area.

On a typical FHA 30 yr, $150,000 loan, these changes will increase the monthly payment around $18/month and add $1125 to the balance of the loan.

Call me, text me, email me, message me… Lets talk about your next home.

Hey there. Welcome to the 50th installment of White Board Monday. This week’s WBM is on Seller’s Disclosures. When you are selling your home, there are some things that need to be disclosed and some that do not. Enjoy!

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White Board Monday this week is on home inspections; what are they, why do you need one, and what to expect. Enjoy!

Thought this might be useful information for investors.

The Federal Housing Administration is extending its “anti-flipping” waiver through the end of 2012, which allows buyers to purchase homes that have already been sold in the last 90 days.

The waiver, which was soon set to expire, is “intended to accelerate the resale of foreclosed properties in neighborhoods struggling to overcome the possible effects of abandonment and blight,” Carol J. Galante, the acting Federal Housing Administration commissioner, said in a statement. “FHA remains a critical source of mortgage financing and stability and we must make every effort to promote recovery in every responsible way we can.”

An anti-flipping rule originally took effect in 2003 to stop a spike in home flipping that was being blamed on driving up home prices during the housing boom. The rule prevented FHA-backed loans from being used to purchase homes that had been owned by a seller for less than 90 days. But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development decided to reconsider the 90-day limit in 2010 after skyrocketing foreclosures and abandoned homes were causing blight in neighborhoods across the country and hampering nearby property values.

The temporary waiver to the anti-flipping rule will allow buyers and investors to quickly resell refurbished homes and not have to wait 90 days to do so. Since the waiver took place in 2010, FHA has insured nearly 42,000 mortgages worth more than $7 billion on homes resold within 90 days of the last purchase, according to HUD.

“It’s certainly an inducement to move real estate and reduce inventories,” says Don Cameron, a real estate investor who owns a franchise of We Buy Ugly Houses in South Florida. “Why wait 90 days before you can close on a home?”

The waiver, however, still prevents predatory flipping, and sellers must justify any increases in value if the sales price of the property is 20 percent more than what the seller had recently purchased it for (such as by providing extra documentation on renovation expenses). Sales also must be in “arms-length, with no identity of interest between the buyer and seller or other parties participating in the sales transaction.”

Source: “Government Extends Waiver of Anti-Flipping Law, Allowing Homes to be Bought and then Sold in 90 Days,” McClatchy-Tribune Regional News (Dec. 29, 2011) and HUD.gov

NAR released its latest pending home sales index figure last week and for the second month in a row the index is up. But more than that, the index has broken 100. This is significant because the only time since the housing boom collapsed that the index has broken 100 is when the home owner tax credit was in effect. The fact that the index has returned to that level a year since the credit has been in effect means the housing market is strengthening completely on its own, without any stimulus.

Teachers, firefighters, policemen, this program is a great tax savings if you qualify. This week’s White Board Monday explores this program and who qualifies for it.

Watch Out! An old axiom states, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. Crooks and scam artists find new ways to separate you from your money or good name. This article by Amy Hoaks brings you up to speed on some of the new moves from the thieves.

You can find the original article HERE.

By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Fraudsters find a way to scam lenders and homeowners out of money no matter how the housing market is faring, but in recent years they’ve shifted their tactics to profit from the market’s downturn.

Today, there’s less identity fraud and misrepresentation of income or employment to obtain a mortgage, mainly because stricter validation criteria when a borrower applies for a loan makes that strategy much less successful, said David Johnson, vice president of fraud and consortium solutions for CoreLogic, a provider of financial, property and consumer information.

But other types of fraud are replacing those scams. Some schemes target distressed homeowners who are looking for a way to save their home from foreclosure. Another tactic: Profiting off of short sales at the expense of the lender.

Foreclosure rescue

Schemes that prey on struggling homeowners heading toward foreclosure are still prevalent, even years into the foreclosure crisis, said Yolanda McGill, senior counsel for the Fair Housing and Fair Lending Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

“It’s a crime of opportunity. A lot of people who are participating in this are probably long-term schemers and this is the cash cow right now,” McGill said. “They’re going to ride the train and milk it for all it’s worth. You have an enormous pool of distressed homeowners.”

Scammers use various pitches. Some say they can prepare your documents for you as you try for a loan modification; others claim to be an attorney or say they are working with an attorney. Often, these offers sound legitimate, echoing some of the same language used by big government programs and lenders to gain a homeowner’s trust.

They offer a service, take the homeowner’s money, then disappear, McGill said.

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Here is a great article from Realtor magazine. I find these myths very accurate. You can read the original article HERE.

Overall, today’s home buyers tend to be fairly knowledgeable about the real estate market, but there are still a few points of confusion in the process, a new survey by Zillow of 1,000 potential home buyers finds.

Here are the five main areas of confusion the survey revealed:

• Appreciation: About 42 percent of home buyers believe home values will appreciate by 7 percent a year. Reality: Historically, home values in a normal market appreciate by 2 to 5 percent in a year.
• Mortgage insurance: 41 percent of buyers think they will have to purchase private mortgage insurance, regardless of the amount of their downpayment. Reality: Buyers only need to purchase PMI if their downpayment is less than 20 percent of the home’s purchase price.
• Appraisals: 56 percent of the buyers said the purpose of the appraisal was to determine if a home was in good condition. Reality: That’s the purpose of a home inspection; an appraisal estimates fair market value.
• Home owner’s insurance: 37 percent of home buyers said that buying home owner’s insurance is optional. Reality: Lenders require homebuyers to purchase homeowner’s insurance.
• Ownership: 47 percent of home buyers said a prospective buyer owns a home after the purchase contract is signed. Reality: The purchase and sales agreement is the beginning of the closing phase, but it can be a long process until they finally take ownership.