West Chester & Liberty Twp OH Real Estate: Home Buyers Have The Edge!

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Home Buyers Have The Edge!

According to Lawrence Yun, chief economist from the National Association of Realtors, “Home buyers over the past year got a great deal and buyers for the balance of this year have an edge over sellers.  Affordability could reach a generational high in the second half of this year because of rock bottom interest rates, helped partly by the Fed’s very accommodative monetary policy.”

Donald Trump says:  “I can’t guarantee it, but I’m pretty sure this is right now a great time to go out and buy a house. And if you do, in 10 years you’re going to look back and say, ‘You know, I‘m glad I listened to that interview with Donald Trump’.”

And John Paulson says:  “If you don’t own a home, buy one. If you own one home, buy another one. And if you own two homes, buy a third and lend your relatives the money to buy one.” – John Paulson 9/27/2010

For more reasons why now is a prime time to buy a home, contact me and I’ll send you a free eBook titled  “7 Reasons Why Now Is A Great Time To Buy A Home”

Start Your Search For Your New West Chester or Liberty Township Ohio Home Right Here!

Buying A Short Sale Property: A Mortgage Lender’s Perspective

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Today, we introduce guest blogger Dave Scully with Evolve Bank & Trust. Dave has over 20 years as a mortgage professional in the West Chester, Liberty Township, Mason and Greater Cincinnati marketplace.

Buying A Short Sale Property by Dave Scully, Guest Blogger on RealEstate-Ink.com

Buying A Short Sale ListingEvery buyer in the market wants to get the best deal. You may want to begin your search for a new home with properties that are on a “short sale”. First, let’s define what a short sale is. A short sale is when the sales price of the home is less than the amount the previous owners currently owe on their mortgage. In a short sale the borrowers are likely in the foreclosure process. Therefore the Bank must approve and sale and that is who your Realtor will be negotiating with.

Search For Bank Owned And Short Sale Properties For Sale Here

When buying a short sale you must be prepared for a longer negotiating process and closing process. As I said earlier you are dealing with the bank who must approve the sale of the property. The banks have so many short sales and foreclosures on their books that they do not react as quickly to an offer on the property. Also, the bank will allow you to do a whole house inspection, however they will require the sale of the home to be on an as is basis. I encourage every buyer to get a whole house inspection. However, on a short sale most banks will not make ANY repairs to the property.

Once your loan is approved and you are cleared to close we can typically close you within a day. However, on a short sale the bank will want to see the closing statement and review it for up to 72 hours prior to close.

They key to a successful and timely closing on a short sale is knowing what to expect and when to expect it. Personally I refer to short sales as “Long Sales” as they take a little bit longer to close due to the owner being the bank. I recommend you expect to close a short sale in 45 days instead of the 30 days that we can close a loan.

 Have a home that you need to sell in short sale?  Visit www.LowryTeam.com

West Chester Ohio Real Estate: The Dangers Of Overpricing Your Home

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Why overpricing your home can be very costly.

You will lose the excitement that a new on the market listing generates:  Real estate agents are working with buyers who have seen the homes currently on the market for sale and are waiting for new homes to be listed for sale.  Meaning, the most activity(showings) will take place in the first thirty days that your home is on the market.  Your home will receive it’s highest offer during this time.  After the initial period of being on the market, the only people that will look at your home will be new buyers coming into the real estate market that are looking for homes.

You can lose the most qualified prospects:  Prospective home buyers won’t just “make an offer” because  they probably won’t ever see your home.  They will view the homes for sale that are priced within their price range, knowing that they cannot afford anything that is priced in the higher price ranges.

Overpricing helps sell other, more properly priced homes first:  Your home may be used to demonstrate the good value of other properties.  Your objective should be to enter the real estate market  in a position that will attract  prospective buyers, not drive them away.  A classic example of this is a buyer looking at a number of homes in a row and the feedback received from the showing of your home was that your home was too small compared to the other homes.  This means that the other homes priced similar to yours were larger and a better value.

Your home will become stale on the market: Prospective buyers will wonder why your home has been on the market so long, or if  something is wrong with your home, even after you lower the price.  You may even have to settle for less than the market value.  A home takes on a reputation surprisingly fast, so don’t wear out your welcome on the market.

You will lose a strong negotiating position when your home is on the market for a long time, both financially and mentally:  Prospective buyers will not “feel a sense of urgency” to make an offer on an overpriced property, and you may feel compelled to accept less when you finally do get an offer.  Getting an offer on your home in the first thirty days on the market allows you to negotiate from a position of strength, getting an offer on day one hundred and forty on the market… not so much.

If you do get an offer, the contract may “fall thru” because of appraisal issues:  The contract sale price must be justified to the lender through the process of the home being appraised.  The buyer’s lender hires a third party (the licensed appraiser) to determine the market value of the home at the time of sale.  If the appraisal does not “come in” at or above the contract sale price, the sale cannot proceed without an adjustment being made.  The list price and sale price of your home, when listed for sale, must be justified with market sales data.

LowryTeam.com: Interest Rates Update For West Chester & Liberty Township, Ohio

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LowryTeam.com Mortgage Interest Rate Update

Have mortgage interest rates hit their lows?  Will they continue to move higher?  These are good questions.  The truth of the matter is nobody knows for sure.  Mortgage interest rates have moved higher in the last 5-6 weeks.

It does feel like we have seen the lowest levels and that interest rates will continue to edge a little higher as we move through the spring real estate market and into summer.  How much does it matter?  It matters quite a bit if you care about your monthly home mortgage payment .  

Waiting a few months to buy a home in West Chester, Beckett Ridge or Liberty Township, Ohio may very well cost you a great deal of money in the long run.  Buying real estate today will get you a terrific fixed rate mortgage!

You can start your search for a new home in West Chester, Beckett Ridge or Liberty Township, Ohio right here using our real estate search engine – LowryTeam.com.

Wondering what your home is worth in today’s real estate market?  Request a market analysis here!

LowryTeam.com: Monthly Real Estate Trends Report – December 2010

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LowryTeam.com: Monthly Real Estate Trends Report – December 2010

Hot off the presses is our LowryTeam.com Monthly Real Estate Trends Report for December 2010.  This report, published monthly, provides a look back at the last six months worth of real estate data for West Chester, Beckett Ridge and Liberty Township, Ohio.  It is a local trends report and makes no attempt to draw overall conclusions or make predictions for the larger real estate market.  In fact we believe that anyone that makes an attempt to predict future, national real estate market conditions or draws conclusions on recent historical data nationally is just out of touch with reality.  There is no such thing as a national weather forecast and there is no such thing as a real estate one either.  ALL real estate is local!

The source of this data is the Greater Cincinnati Multiple Listing Service. By seeking out and understanding the trends in our market place we are better able to forecast the upcoming market conditions and counsel our clients on pricing strategies to get their home sold for the highest possible price. Any thoughts and insight into what may occur in the future are solely our opinions and forecasts.

Unit sales for the last six months (June – November) is first:

Unit sales in West Chester and Liberty Township have seen a steady decline in the last six months.  The spring market saw a fairly strong sales environment which was supported by the government’s home buyer tax credits.  These tax credits expired on April 30th, 2010 and you can see on the graph, that homes sales (closed units) peaked in the two months after, as these tax credit sales closed , 30-60 days later.

With no intervention or subsidy of the housing markets by the government you can see that home sales have made their way much lower in the following months.

To put these levels of home sales in proper perspective we compare them to the same time periods of the last two years.  In the fall of last year (2009) we were under the influence of the original first time homebuyer tax credit which definitely had a positive impact on home sales at the time.  In the fall of 2008 we were in the midst of the financial crisis with the all of the bank failures, etc. which caused a very significant slow down at the time in home sales.  So when you compare the last three year’s home sales for this time period of June – November you can see that our current level of home sales are at a level that is even below the levels seen during the financial crisis.

This is a pretty amazing statistic when you consider that we are operating in an environment of both extremely low interest rates and home prices.  One factor that may provide an uptick of some sort in home sales in the near term is rising interest rates.  Rates have definitely risen off of their lowest levels and history tells us that when rates go up, they tend to go up fast.  Some homebuyers may be fearful of missing out on these really low rates and will jump into the market to get a home under contract while the below 5.00% interest rates are still available.  This could result in a small upward trend for home sales in the next few months over the current levels.

Average sale price for the last six months (June – November) is next:

You can see the movement of the average sale price for West Chester and Liberty Township, Ohio real estate sales in 2010.  If you watch the trend line you can see a gradual decline for 2010.  Average sale price gets quite a bit of attention in the media with reports that quote “home prices fell” or “home prices rose” in this particular quarter or month or whatever.  The average sale price is nothing more than what it’s called – an average price of all of the homes sold in a particular time frame. 

Homes are not worth more now than they were at the beginning of the year.  Any increase or decrease in the average sale price is reflective of the activity of that time frame.  A perfect example of this is the month of August which according to the graph shows a huge increase in the average sale price over the month of July.  A look inside the numbers explains… In July 17 of the total 82 closed sales that month were under $140,000 in sale price, in August there were only 6 of a total 78 closed sales in that same price range.  Less sales in the lower price ranges will cause the average sale price to be higher.  In addition, in July there were just 4 closed sales over $400,000 compared to 9 closed sales in August over $400,000.  So, was the average sale price higher because homes were worth more?  No, there was just a very different mix of homes that sold.

List to sale price ratio: 

The List to Sale Price ratio is calculated by dividing the final sale price into the list price to find the percentage of the list price that a given home sells for.  The West Chester and Liberty Township Ohio List to Sale Price Ratio is 95.68% for the six month period of June – November 2010.  As you can see the monthly List to Sale Price Ratio has seen some big swings up and down in the last year.  The swings up and down are an indicator of the lack of stability in the West Chester and Liberty Township real estate market right now.  The highlighted center area of the graph shows what appears to be the middle ground right now for the market.  The last two months have been below this range, indicating that homeowners are accepting lower offers when compared to their list prices than had been the case in previous months. 

The one factor that remains true, through all of the market’s ups and downs is that homes that sell quickly sell for a much higher percentage of their list price.  In the most recent six months, homes that sold in the first thirty days that they were on the market sold for 97.09% of list price.  As you can see, this is a much higher final sales price compared to the overall market average.

Summary:

The West Chester, Beckett Ridge and Liberty Township real estate market remains challenging, yet full of opportunity. Clearly thevalue of homes in the area has fallen over the past couple of years and frankly, in certain price ranges, the values are likely to fall farther.  The primary threats to the 2011 real estate market and any potential recovery are continued high unemployment and the potential loss of the mortgage interest tax deduction.  Interest rates have now risen off of their lows, but still remain at very attractive levels below 5.00% which provide a great environment for buying a new home.

Your comments and questions are always welcome!
 
Wondering what your home is worth in today’s real estate market?  Request a market analysis here!

 

West Chester & Liberty Township OH Real Estate: Avoid Foreclosure – You Have Options!

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Today, nearly 1 out of every 6 homeowners in America is behind on mortgage payments. The last thing a homeowner wants to face is the possibility of foreclosure, but troubles with finances can happen suddenly and without warning, leaving a homeowner desperate. But foreclosure can be avoided, credit can be saved, and financial futures can be salvaged. First, identify the options.

There are a number of alternatives homeowners can consider. An experienced professional can steer you in the proper direction, so you can find your financial solution quickly and handle any mortgage and loan issues with care. Here are just a few suggestions how one can avoid foreclosure:

Modification – A mortgage modification involves the reduction of one of the following: the interest rate on the loan, the principal balance of the loan the term of the loan or all or any of the above. This typically results in a lower payment to the homeowner and a more affordable mortgage. With the modification plan, delinquent interest, taxes, and /or insurance payments are added to your unpaid balance on your mortgage. Homeowners who qualify for this program may be able to extend repayment of their past due bills over the remaining term of the loan.

Government Loans & Assistance Programs – Homeowners who can make the monthly payments on the mortgage may qualify for special government loans that create a second lien on their property for the unpaid amount. This money is then made payable to the US Government.

Pre-Foreclosure Sale – Foreclosure can wreak havoc on your credit rating. If you are in danger of losing your home and are unable to make payments, you have the option of selling before any marks can be made against your credit.

 Short-Sale – While this may be the best solution for some, it is important to understand that there are 3 “must-have” criteria to qualify:

1.    Financial Hardship – a verifiable issue that has or will cause you to miss payments or have financial difficulties

2.    Monthly Shortfall – When your total Monthly Income minus your Total Monthly Expense = Negative amount

3.    Insolvency – You must not have the means to pay down your mortgage.

You do not however have to be completely broke–this is a common misconception, the lender will want to see that over time you will not be able to pay your mortgage obligation. Having money in the bank for living expenses is common and will not disqualify you.

Temporary Forbearance

Another less common way to avoid a home foreclosure is to get a temporary forbearance on your mortgage, which means that you repay the back amount that you owe on your loan over a certain amount of time. This is good if you can afford to make your monthly payments, but had a crisis which forced you to miss a payment. When you choose to do a temporary forbearance to avoid a home foreclosure, you should know that your payments will usually increase slightly, but you will be able to get back on track with your lender and resume making your regular payments when you have repaid the back amount.

Different homeowners will qualify for different options to avoid foreclosure. Seeking the advice of a professional is a good step in preserving your property and your credit rating.

In my over-12-years in the real estate industry, I have witnessed many clients and friends lose their homes through foreclosure. That is why I specifically designed a department of this company to help other people avoid the foreclosure nightmares that I’ve witnessed. We know that good people sometimes have a few bad breaks.

No matter what, the worst option is to…
Do Nothing – Absolutely the worst.

Take action Now!

Call or email us, we can help.

Wondering what your home is worth in today’s real estate market? Request a market analysis here!

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