How Much House Can I Afford?
Well that depends…. how are you planning on purchasing your home? Do you have cash? Are you planning on getting a loan; if so, have you received a pre-qualification letter from your lender yet? Once you establish the way you will be funding the purchase of your home then we can figure out which steps you will need to complete to accomplish this.
Cash is pretty self explanatory. Lets talk about financing a bit. A serious buyer, in need of a loan to purchase a home will need to contact their lender for a pre-qualification letter. This is most often wanted, to be included in your offer package, when submitting to the banks in a short sale, reo and even Sellers in a regular sale. If you are in need of a lender remember, to make things easier on you, Prudential San Bruno, has a really good Mortage Company relationship that works in house , Guarantee Mortgage 650.589.1000. What else can I say but they are nothing less than awesome!
Actually getting a pre-approval often times can speed the home buying process up. Your lender will need to evaluate your debt to income ratio in order to establish how much house you can actually afford. Read more
What is the Fair Rent?
I worked at our Prudential California Realty kiosk at Tanforan Mall today. Someone asked how much rent I think he should pay. He explained the situation that he just rented an in-law in Daly City 3 months ago. Landlord did not sign a lease with him and asked that he pays only in cash. After 2 months he found out, not from the landlord but from a realtor friend that the the owner has received a Notice of Default or NOD from his lender. That means he had not paying his mortgage for the past few months. The property is now on the market as a short sale, but no ”For Sale” sign is posted. Landlord failed to disclose this to the tenant at the beginning and tenant is very disappointed about this. He now feels that he should not pay the full rent since the owner is not paying his mortgage and also because he was not told about the situation.
What do you think the fair rent is?
Thank you,
Shokoofeh Nowbakht
www.Shokoo.com
Foreclosure Baloney
I don’t get this foreclosure moratorium stuff. I don’t understand why the press and politicians are putting so much into it. I can assure you the banks are not foreclosing on anyone current on their homes. Many of these home they are foreclosing on are vacant and some inhabitable. 
A sad fact I heard recently is many homeowners are losing their homes due to medical bills. That should not be.
Making the banks review additional papers, re-file, and delay the inevitable is only getting revenge and that is not healthy. No good comes out of that.
We should be putting pressure on the banks to modify the loans of homeowners who are good, honest, hard working people. Many of these people for whatever reason can’t make payments at the current payment but can and want to make modified payments. I don’t understand the need for a bank to go to the expense and foreclose on a home with a $500,000 loan and a month later sell the home to someone else for $300,000. The original owners would have been capable and extremely happy to make payments probably on $350,000. The banks would have been $50,000 + expenses better, with less property on the market values would be up protecting their equity in all their portfolio.
I have another idea to deal with this foreclosure cancer. Equity Share. Read more
Is Your Home Under Water? New FHA Refi might help!!!
So many home owners in San Bruno, South San Francisco, Daly City, San Mateo and all over the country owe more than their home is worth (under water). Some have tried to modify their loan, short sale, refinance and have run into a frustrating brick wall.
Well here is a new alternative. FHA has a new loan that will allow refinancing for homes under water. They do have very specific requirement but it is worth a shot. Please read the following article from the Sunday September 5, 2010 S.F. Chronicle written by Kathleen Pender in her Net worth column. Please do not hesitate to contact me for FHA approved lenders. lee@leesellsmore.com or 877-Lee-Sells
Good News! Good Bay Area Real Estate News!!!
A lot of positive bills, thoughts and activities have been happening on the Bay Area Real Estate Front. I have been trying to write this for a while. Each time I sit down to write there is more I have to add to it. That is a good problem. So exciting! Enjoy the Good News.
Home Buyer’s Delight
You can still get the federal Home Buyer Credit of $8000 for the first time buyer or $6500 for the move up buyer. You must be in contract by the end of April and close by the end of June.
For additional information: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=204671,00.html
Because California Home Buyers are special Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law a State credit for home buyers. I personally think this program is great. It helps many people purchase their first home and it puts people to work. A Win-Win!!!
Under the provisions, the bill: Read more
Short Sale vs. Foreclosure – Ethical Considerations
I have recently begun thinking a lot about the ethical considerations of short sales and foreclosures. Please believe me when I say that I am completely empathetic with those people who are losing their homes because they were tricked into going for one of those terrible loans or because they have lost their job. That being said, I question the ethical decision making process in a lot of other cases. Just a couple of examples:
We hear stories all the time about people who bought second, third and fourth homes using those crazy interest only, “pay what you want, when you want to” loans. They all thought that they were going to be land barons, making big bucks on the rentals or buying the property, fixing it up and flipping it for a huge profit.
Now, the homes that they bought in Fresno, Sacramento, Lodi….heck, all over the country… are no longer worth what they paid for them and, because of the economy, they can no longer require the high rents they were getting in the beginning. In many cases, the owners can still afford to make the payments, but now don’t want to because they feel the value is not there, so they simply walk away from the properties. That seems wrong to me. Read more
How Many Offers before I’m a Home Owner?
Recently, it seems like buyers are writing several offers on multiple properties simultaneously before they can ratify one. One of my clients has 3 offers on short sale properties. He asked me yesterday to show him two more properties. There is no certainty that he ratifies any of the offers. Good thing is that he is not giving up and in fact, he is certain that one of these days he will own a house. Is this a numbers game? How many offers do you have to write before you actually ratify one and become a home owner? What has been your experience lately?
Here’s the story of how I became a home owner … I bought my house about 9 years ago. I looked at properties for about a month, found a house and made an offer. I got countered to give my best and highest offer because there were 2 other offers. I came back with my best offer which was $25,000 over asking. Luckily, I wrote the winning offer. The point is that I only wrote ONE offer and I became a home owner.
Shokoofeh Nowbakht http://www.shokoo.com/
A Few Bad Pennies….
About 3 weeks ago, I wrote an offer on a bank owned property in Hayward for a client of mine. I tried contacting the agent representing the seller to let her know that I was sending an offer, but wasn’t able to reach her. So, I emailed the offer and, also, faxed it to make absolutely sure that she received it by the deadline.
Over the course of the next 3 weeks, I tried diligently to reach this agent. I tried both calling and emailing. Sometimes when I called, I would get her voice mail. Other times, I got her husband who was listed as the co-lister, but knew nothing about the property. He indicated that he had “taken the phone away from her, because if she kept taking calls, she would never get anything done.” Read more
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