What Realtors CAN’T tell you August 30, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in First Time Home Buyers, Interesting Stuff, Real Estate.add a comment
From the Dow Jones MarketWatch, by Amy Hoak:
Steve Roddel was walking through a house in Fort Wayne, Ind., when he wondered aloud whether there were any sex offenders living in the neighborhood.
Fair-housing laws prevent agents from talking about neighborhood demographics, and they often don’t want to discuss other details, such as crime stats. Luckily, the Web picks up where agents leave off.Instead of commenting on her own, the real estate agent showing the home quickly pulled out her cell phone, connected to its Web browser and brought up Family Watchdog, a national sex-offender-registry Web site. Little did she know that she was standing with the site’s founder and CEO. A real estate agent can be a wealth of information about a house. So a homebuyer who asks what crime is like in the neighborhood might be surprised when the agent defers the question, directing a client to the Web or local police instead.“The Realtor will be the one that has the most contact from beginning to end. Because of that accessibility, the consumer feels that they can give them all the information that they need,” said Alex Chaparro, the president of the Chicago Association of Realtors.
But there are some pieces of information that an agent simply can’t speak about due to fair-housing laws, including demographic statistics. And they often prefer to leave some characteristics, such as the quality of the school district or crime stats, answered by other sources.
More House 4 Less: Lower than Market Rate + Money for Closing Costs = Great Program August 30, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in First Time Home Buyers, Interesting Stuff, Local News, Mortgage Stuff, Real Estate.2 comments
Nearly 4,000 turned to the state last year for $767 million in low-interest home loans.
Here’s a mortgage program that’s not in trouble.
Here is an article from the Baltimore Sun about the Maryland ”more house 4 less” CDA loan program, something very near and dear to my heart. “More House 4 Less” or CDA (which stands for Community Development Act), gives first time home buyers in the state of Maryland a fantastic rate on a mortgage, AND they also give you money towards closing costs. Their income limits are very high for this type of program. You can make more than $80,000 in the counties, and almost $100,000 in the city and still qualify. Have kids? You can make even more money and still qualify.
Now, some lenders aren’t so keen on this program. It does have more paperwork and is a more involved process for me, the home buyer, and the realtor. But this is the program that can get you into a house for $1000 or less out of pocket, and with a lower rate than you can get anywhere else!
Want to learn more?? Read on, and email or call me to get going with this program.
Baltimore City Residents, Have Ground Rent? Read this…. August 27, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in Interesting Stuff, Local News, Real Estate.add a comment
In 2007 the Maryland General Assembly voted to create a loan program so that homeowners could buy out their ground rent. The loans are available at 0% interest, but property owners must meet income requirements. Home owner’s income cannot exceed 80% of the statewide median income, which is currently: 1 person – $44,296; 2 persons – $50,624; 3 persons – $56,952; 4 persons – $63,280.
If you are not familiar with it, “ground rent” is what is paid on a “ground lease.” Home owners own their property, but technically, someone else owns the land, though the ground lease owners rights to the land are very restricted. A usually small monthly ground rent is then paid to the ground lease owner. It is most prevalent in Baltimore City, though you can find ground rent in the surrounding counties. While there are ground rents outside of Maryland, they are one of those peculiarities that make Baltimore so unique. There is a great little article as to the history of ground rent on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_rent
Interested in applying for this program? Get an application here: http://mdhousing.org/Website/programs/GRRLP/Index.aspx
2007 Baltimore Area Home Sales by Zip Code August 26, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in Interesting Stuff, Local News, Real Estate.2 comments
Wow! Check out this great interactive tool from the Baltimore Sun. In my post last week, we looked at area sales by sales price, here’s a different & interesting way to analyze sales data. They have compiled data by zipcode for property sales in the first half of 2007 and compared it to sales data from the first half of 2006. Roll over each zip code for specific information for that area.
Baltimore Sun Home Sales Data Tool (this link will pop up in a new window, you may need to hold down the control key to by-pass your pop up blocker)
The Growing Problem with Jumbo Loans August 24, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in Interesting Stuff, Local News, Mortgage News, Real Estate.2 comments
With all the news of foreclosures and the mortgage liquidity crisis, the fast rising rates on jumbo loans has not been big news. That is, unless you are in the market for a jumbo loan.
A jumbo loan is a loan amount higher than $417,000. It is a non-conforming loan, meaning that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the 2 largest mortgage backers will not buy these loans. This has never been an issue in the past. Rates for jumbo loans have always been slightly higher than for lower, conforming loan amounts, but in the past couple of weeks rates for jumbo loans have sky-rocketed. If you are putting a good bit of money down, you might be lucky to get a rate in the upper 7%’s, more than 1% higher than lower loan amounts.
You can see how this rate jump can affect home sales. If you are selling a $700,000 property and it is suddenly $500-$1000 more per month for potential buyers to be able to finance your home, those buyers might just start looking at lower priced properties.
However, this is only going to exacerbate the problem. Higher priced homes are already selling slower than their lower priced counter-parts, causing sellers to sometimes slash the listing price. This then pulls down property values, and if you own a home where now your mortgage is more than what your house is worth, you have much less reason to keep paying your mortgage.
Why is this happening? In my opinion, it is FEAR. If loan defaults have started spreading to prime loans, what happens when it starts to spread to these higher loan amounts. It’s bad for a lender to have someone with a $200,000 mortgage default, and it’s that much worse to have a $1 million dollar loan default. Traditionally, these jumbo loans haven’t had that much of a higher rate because the borrowers getting them have to have great credit, income to support the payment, and lots of assets. But if these high priced properties become devalued, then investors are worried even less riskier borrowers are going to start to default.
According to the Maryland Mortgage Bankers Assocition, the State of Maryland is 9th in the country for jumbo loan originations, with 11% of all loan applications being for jumbo loans. That might not sound like a lot, but if you are one of those people, you want an affordable solution to this dilema.
So what’s the solution? In the short term it is combo-loans! This works very well for people purchasing homes in the $500-650,000 range. You get a first mortgage for the most you can in a conforming loan amount, $417,000, and then get a second mortgage for whatever else you’re financing (note: you generally want to be putting down at least 5% to have this be worthwhile savings-wise). In the long term, no one knows for sure, but if defaults don’t spike in the jumbo loans, then expect to see some easing in the rates.
How To Home Staging August 23, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in Interesting Stuff, Real Estate.1 comment so far
Another interesting You Tube find, Barbara Corcoran gives some tips of how to stage your home.
20 Timeless Money Rules August 23, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in Interesting Stuff.add a comment
In this day and age of seeming uncertainty, I thought this collection of advice from the ages was appropriate.
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/moneymag/0708/gallery.20_rules.moneymag/index.html
Baltimore Area Housing Sales Statistics for July 2007 August 19, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in First Time Home Buyers, Interesting Stuff, Local News, Real Estate.add a comment
Click on the chart for a better view.
These statistics are for resale properties in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Howard, & Harford County, as well as Baltimore City for July 2007 as published by MRIS, the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc. I have taken the data that they have provided and analyzed it to include the percentages above.
What I think is interesting is that 66% of the total homes sold in July were $350,000 or less. Also, in this price range you have the highest percentage of each price range being sold. That is, not only are most of the total number of houses being sold under $350,00o, but of the 8773 houses that were active on the market in July in that price range, a little more than 22% of them sold (1933). If we take a look at all the houses that were over $350,000 they account for 34% of the total sales in July. There are a pretty similar number of houses on the market, at 8962 properties on the market above $350,000, of these, only 11% of these houses sold (988 homes).
What is the conclusion from all this? Houses are moving much faster in the $350k range and lower. I will take a little more in depth look at this tomorrow, and also put together June stats for the Baltimore area to see how that compares.
Trouble Selling? Is your home staged? August 18, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in Interesting Stuff, Real Estate.3 comments
Back in May, the Today Show did a series on home staging. If you aren’t familiar with home staging and have been thinking about selling your house, it’s time to learn, here is the three day series:
See the other 2 segments….after the break
Confused by all the Mortgage News? August 16, 2007
Posted by Patti Shawgo in Local News, Mortgage News, Real Estate.add a comment
If your mailbox looks anything like ours, you are getting between 5-10 mailers a month about refinancing your mortgage. Then you turn on your TV and hear about foreclosures, subprime mortgage companies and even some major lenders going out of business?
What to think about all this?
If you get an offer in the mail, and want to know what it means, feel free to give me a call at 443-802-6864. And remember the adage, if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.
As for the market as a whole, we are definitely in a turbulent time, both in the mortgage market and stock market. Guidelines on certain types of loans have certainly changed. But if you are in the market or planning on being in the market for a mortgage soon, know that the majority of loan guidelines are unchanged.
Most of the changes being made are to make sure that loans are not defaulted on in the future. There are HUNDREDS of loan programs and it’s my job to find the one that is right for your needs!
