Selling 3 Times Is Not The Charm

Oh my gosh, it fell out of escrow a second time! Back on the market for the third time? As if once wasn’t enough?

That’s the reality you’re hearing from a lot of sellers as this market cools off and the buyer’s lenders scrutinize the property values on the homes they are trying to buy with a giant magnifying glass.

Why three times, you ask? Take a look at this very real scenario . . .

A seller lists his home for sale higher than his agent recommends. The first time around the buyer and seller agreed upon a price. Of course it was more than the buyer wanted to pay and less than the seller wanted to accept, but a deal no less.

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Protect Yourself. Protect Your Identity.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOUR MORTGAGE ORIGINATOR PULLS YOUR CREDIT REPORT?

1. Your mortgage originator pulls your credit report from the credit bureaus to obtain your credit score and process your loan application.

2. The credit bureaus may place your personal information on a prescreened list (also called a trigger list).

3. Within hours the credit bureaus may sell the list to hundreds of companies. Your mortgage originator does not authorize the sale of your personal information and cannot stop it. Only you have the ability to stop this practice.

4. Within hours you begin to receive phone solicitations for mortgage products from numbers and companies you don’t recognize.

5. Within days you begin to receive mail solicitations for mortgage products.

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR

1. The “bait-and-switch” scheme. This scheme is run by companies who get business by luring consumers in with low rates and then switching the loan product.

2. Solicitations (phone and mail) that appear to be from your current mortgage company. Always confirm who you are speaking with.

3. Solicitations asking for pin numbers, passwords, your mother’s maiden name and/or your social security number.

4. If you believe you have been the target of one of these deceitful practices or some other abuse of the system, please report the incident to the Federal Trade Commission at 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357); TTY: 1-866-653-4261.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. Opt-Out of prescreened offers.

2. Register with the Do-Not-Call Registry, www.donotcall.gov.

3. Contact the Federal Trade Commission.

4. Contact Congress.

5. Stop other forms of direct marketing by visiting the Direct Mail Association’s Web site at: www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html.

Worried? Want To Do More To Protect Your Information?

Voice your concerns by calling your Congressional Representative at 202-224-3121.

FAQs

WHAT IS A PRESCREENED OFFER OF CREDIT OR INSURANCE?

A firm offer of credit or insurance is defined as any offer of credit or insurance to a consumer that will be honored if the consumer is determined, based on the consumer’s credit report, to meet the specific criteria used to select the consumer for the offer, subject to certain confirmation requirements.

WHAT IS OPT-OUT?

Opting-Out refers to the process of removing your name from lists supplied by the Consumer Credit Reporting Companies, Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion (“Credit Bureaus”), to be used for firm (pre-approved /prescreened) offers of credit or insurance. Your rights as a consumer under the Fair Credit Reporting Act include the right to “Opt-Out” for 5 years or permanently.

HOW TO OPT-OUT

You can opt-out by visiting www.optoutprescreen.com or through the toll-free telephone number, 888-567-8688. When you call or visit the website, you’ll be asked to provide personal information, including your home telephone number, name, Social Security number, and date of birth. The information you provide is confidential and will be used only to process your request to opt out.

DOES EXERCISING MY RIGHT TO OPT-OUT AFFECT MY ABILITY TO APPLY FOR CREDIT OR INSURANCE?

No, removing your name from these lists does not affect your ability to apply for or obtain credit or insurance.

DOES OPTING-OUT IMPROVE MY CREDIT SCORE?

No, since inquiries for firm offers for credit or insurance are not used in calculating credit scores, Opting-Out does not improve your credit score. Similarly, inquiries for firm offers for credit or insurance do not reduce your credit score.

HOW DO I CONTACT THE FTC?

Federal Trade Commission

Consumer Response Center

Room 130600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20580

www.ftc.gov/credit/

Four Questions a FSBO Should Ask A Buyer

Decided to try selling For Sale By Owner (FSBO)? It looks like you and I will be in the same business during that process . . . The business of selling homes.

Let me share these four important questions that you should ask any buyer before you let them in to see your For Sale by Owner house.

1. Are you Pre-Qualified?

2. How much are you Pre-Qualified for?

3. Who Pre-Qualified you?

4. May I contact the person that pre-qualified you?

If they are not willing to answer these questions, then they are not serious buyers and there is no need to waste your time showing them your home that they most likely can’t even afford. There may be reasons why they are contacting a For Sale by Owner. A real estate professional might have pre-qualified them and found out any number of reasons why not to work with that buyer. (Poor credit, not motivated, unrealistic…)

I’m sure you already have a busy life and going For Sale By Owner is a pretty awesome, time consuming responsibility. There’s no need to make it more difficult than it has to be.

Let me know if I can help.

Getting Safely Out Of ARMs Way

Here’s another great way to protect yourself from the current meltdown in the housing market. If you own a home and have an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) set to adjust higher you need to:

• Know your credit score.
• Know the contents of your credit report.
• Clean up your credit report and remove inaccuracies to maximize your credit score.

With the recent changes to the housing market the lenders have made changes to underwriting guidelines. Underwriting guidelines are based on your credit. When underwriting guidelines get more stringent it is the people with the better credit that continue to qualify for good home loans.

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Are We On The Rebound?

While the housing market continues to decline, there is a broad consensus among economists that a rebound will occur in 2008.

According to the ECONOMIC FOCUS, Volume 11, Issue 24 for the week of June 22nd, inorder for a rebound in 2008 the housing market must first bottom out. So, simple logic dictates that if we are a few months away from the rebound then we must be even fewer months away from the bottom.

“I still think we’re not at the bottom in terms of housing construction,” says Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. “Sales have to bottom out first. …We haven’t seen that yet. And then construction starts will probably bottom out nine months after that.”

If this holds true, a decline in new home construction should indicate that we are months closer to a bottoming out moving us closer to a recovery. Further, if there is a nine month lag in construction starts and if the industry will start its recovery in 2008 then simple math would place the bottom sometime prior to 2nd Quarter 08.

• May’s numbers were mixed, but in line with expectations, and reflected weakness in the South and West, offsetting construction gains in the Northeast and Midwest. The positive message is that numbers are mixed and not down across the board.
• Construction of single-family homes dropped 3.3 percent in May while apartment construction rose by 3.1 percent, another mixed signal. Historically, a hot housing market draws buyers from the rental rolls and causes a decline in apartment starts. This reversal indicates market corrections at the beginning of the manufacturing process, and as new home inventories shrink, demand will build in the coming months.
• Finally, interest rates remain flat. The Fed has held their rates steady for nearly a year with no indication of sharp rises in the near future. The last thing the Fed wants to do is take the remaining breath out of housing with higher mortgage rates.

Perhaps the soothsayers are correct and we are nearing the bottom and a recovery in the housing market is near.

Value Range Marketing – How it Works

The summer season is the time when more homeowners list their property for sale and more homebuyers purchase than any other time in the year. As these homeowners prepare their home to sell in the coming months, one question will rise above the rest: where should our home be priced?
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That’s where value range marketing comes in! Instead of listing the home at a fixed price, the seller allows the buyers to see the range that they would be willing to sell into. This would allow people to see the home who might normally miss it because it would otherwise be out of their price range. For example: A value range property that is priced between $500,000-$550,000 will show up in a search of a buyer who searches between $475,000-$520,000. If a the seller prices their home at a fixed price at $535,000, the property would not come up in the buyers search. As more buyers view and preview the value range properties, the added attention will generate more exposure to that property in comparison to comparable fixed priced listings.
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It is likely you have seen a home using the value range price strategy. The technique calls for a property to be sold using a low and a high price, while the seller entertains offers between the range. The process encourages open negotiations with a seller who will come down in price and a buyer who will go up. In order to create the range, instead of including your appliances and other extras with the sale you can sell them elsewhere which would enable you to lower the overall price of the property.
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The additional exposure has the potential to generate more offers and since competing buyers legally cannot know the price of competing offers, the presence of an offer, even a low one, may act as the catalyst in achieving a price above the prevailing rate. The Seller benefits by generating offers he may not have received due to the limitations of fixed pricing.