Grand Rapids Real Estate Home: August 2006

I ran across many realtor websites in my travels on the internet you may check those out at:

http://www.grandrapidsrealestatehome.com/links.aspx

http://www.grhomepage.com/links.aspx

Building a Home

Grand Rapids Homes for sale

This is a fantastic option for many people. If market conditions are right, and you have the money to do it, there is nothing better than having everything “brand new”. There are some things to consider when building:

How can I be sure I sell my home in time to move into my new home?

This can be a very difficult problem. Often, it is not considered in people's budgets to be able to afford two mortgage payments, and almost always the principle on the first house is to be used as a down-payment on the new house.

As a Realtor, there are things we can do to help the selling process. Right away, a comparative market analysis will be conducted on the home that is going to be sold. At that point an evaluation should be made to determine the asking price for a home. It usually is a balance between more money- more time, or less money, less time. A Realtor can strategically price your home so that it will usually sell within the desired time-frame.

If I don't sell my home in time, what options are available to me?

There are all sorts of flexible financing options available through many different lending institutions such as interest only loans and blanket loans that will make paying for two homes easier financially than carrying the burden of two conventional mortgages. Consult your lending professional regarding specific details about financing options.

Online Marketing

Grand Rapids Homes for sale

How come my Realtor isn't doing anything?

This is something that you usually hear from someone that has a house listed through a real estate broker, but nothing is being apparently done to market their home.

The times, they are a-changing.

It used to be, before the Internet, the flow of information about homes for sale came directly from newspaper ads, showings, and open houses. While these are still prominent today, they are not used exclusively. In today's world of virtual tours and Internet advertising and marketing, these traditional methods have taken a back seat. Today's younger, more computer-savvy generation now looks to the Internet first before looking in the paper or calling a Realtor.

This isn't always seen by the seller. By way of the Internet, you can actually have much buying interest in your home without even knowing it. So before you ask the question above, find out what kind of marketing your Realtor is doing for you online.

Preparing Your Home for Selling

Grand Rapids homes for sale

When preparing you home for selling, sellers often make the mistake of investing too much money into fix-it-up projects that don't add comparable value to the selling price.

There are many different things you can do to your home inexpensively in order to increase the selling value of your home. Some quick ideas to make your home look more expensive on a small budget.

Clean- don't litter your house with clutter and junk. If you have things piled up everywhere it gives the appearance that there is less space than there really is. You want your home to seem as open and “airy” as possible.

Paint- a gallon of paint is relatively inexpensive and can make your house look brand new in one afternoon. This is particularly true if you have children and there are many wholes in the walls that need to be repaired. A little Spackle can fix minor holes, nicks, and dings and conveys a sense that “this house has been well taken care of”
Remove all pets, and or pet odor from the house. For example, if you have a hamster cage, keep it cleaned. The same goes for litter boxes. Some people are allergic to animals and having pet odor all over the house might possibly hinder a sale.

Getting Your Home Ready to Sell pt2

Make Your Home "Anonymous"

Grand Rapids Info

If there is a new home sales tract near your home, go visit. It doesn't matter what size the homes are. What you will find are some wonderfully (but sparsely) furnished homes that anyone could live in -- with the emphasis on "anyone." They are anonymous. There may be a baseball glove in the boy's room, but no family photos on the walls.

There may be "personality" - but no person.

The reason you want to make your home "anonymous" is because you want buyers to view it as their potential home. When a potential homebuyer sees your family photos hanging on the wall, it puts your own brand on the home and momentarily shatters their illusions about living in the house themselves.

Put away family photos, sports trophies, collectible items, knick-knacks, and souvenirs. Put them in a box. Rent a storage area for a few months and put the box in the storage unit.

Do not just put the box in the attic, basement, garage or a closet. Part of preparing a house for sale is to remove "clutter," and that is the next step in preparing your house for sale.

Getting Your Home Ready to Sell

Grand Rapids Homes for Sale

disconnect yourself.

When talking with a Real Estate professional, you will notice when they talk to you about buying, they will refer to your purchase as a "home". Yet, if you are the one selling, they will refer to it as a "house". The reason for this is obvious. A home has a distict emotional attachment to the word, while a house is simply just the physical structure.

The key to getting your home ready to sell is think of your home as a marketable commodity, such as your car. Your goal is to get others to see their potential 'home' in your 'house'. If you don't do this, you can sometimes create a situation where it will take you longer to sell your property.

Common Buyer Mistakes

Grand Rapids Real Estate

1. Bidding Blind

What price should you offer when you bid on a home? Is the seller’s asking price too high, or does it represent a great deal. If you fail to research the market in order to understand what comparable homes are selling for, making your offer would be like bidding blind. Without this knowledge of market value, you could easily bid too much, or fail to make a competitive offer at all on an excellent value.

2. Buying the Wrong Home

What are you looking for in a home? A simple enough question, but the answer can be quite complex. More often than not, buyers have been swept up in the emotion and excitement of the buying process only to find themselves the owner of a home that is either too big or too small. Maybe they’re stuck with a longer than desired commute to work, or a dozen more fix-ups than they really want to deal with now that the excitement has died down. Take the time upfront to clearly define your wants and needs. Put it in writing and then use it as a yard stick with which to measure every home you look at.

3. Unclear Title

Make sure very early on in the negotiation that you will own your new home free and clear by having a title search completed. The last thing you want to discover when you’re in the back stretch of a transaction is that there are encumbrances on the property such as tax liens, undisclosed owners, easements, leases or the like.

4. Inaccurate Survey

As part of your offer to purchase, make sure you request an updated property survey which clearly marks your boundaries. If the survey is not current, you may find that there are structural changes that are not shown (e.g. additions to the house, a new swimming pool, a neighbor’s new fence which is extending a boundary line, etc.). Be very clear on these issues.

5. Undisclosed Fix-ups

Don’t expect every seller to own up to every physical detail that will need to be attended to. Both you and the seller are out to maximize your investment. Ensure that you conduct a thorough inspection of the home early in the process. Consider hiring an independent inspector to objectively view the home inside and out, and make the final contract contingent upon this inspector’s report. This inspector should be able to give you a report of any item that needs to be fixed with associated, approximate cost.

6. Not Getting Mortgage Pre-approval

Pre-approval is fast, easy and free. When you have a pre-approved mortgage, you can shop for your home with a greater sense of freedom and security, knowing that the money will be there when you find the home of your dreams.

7. Contract Misses

If a seller fails to comply to the letter of the contract by neglecting to attend to some repair issues, or changing the spirit of the agreement in some way, this could delay the final closing and settlement. Agree ahead of time on a dollar amount for an escrow fund to cover items that the seller fails to follow through on. Prepare a list of agreed issues, walk through them, and check them off one by one.

8. Hidden Costs

Make sure you identify and uncover all costs - large and small - far enough ahead of time. When a transaction closes, you will sometimes find fees for this or that sneaking through after the “sub”-total fees such as loan disbursement charges, underwriting fees etc. Understand these in advance by having your lender project total charges for you in writing.

9. Rushing the Closing

Take your time during this critical part of the process, and insist on seeing all paperwork the day before you sign. Make sure this documentation perfectly reflects your understanding of the transaction, and that nothing has been added or subtracted. Is the interest rate right? Is everything covered? If you rush this process on the day of closing, you may run into a last minute snag that you can’t fix without compromising the terms of the deal, the financing, or even the sale itself.

Why Choose a Realtor?

Grand Rapids Home Page - Brandon Fowler

With all of the information available at people's fingertips via the
Internet, why would someone choose a Realtor when they could sell their
own home and forgo paying the commission?

1. Marketing: One of the advantages of using a Realtor is that you don't
have to worry about marketing your home. Every listing with a Realtor is
listed in the MLS directory. This information is shared with other
Realtors who may or may not be working with active buyers. The MLS is a
wonderful tool that Brokers use to share their listing information with
others who are looking for a home.
2. Time: When selling your home by owner, you have to invest quite a bit
of time into paperwork, research, and other things that can be done
quicker and more effectively with a real estate professional. You can
greatly reduce the probability of mistakes in the paperwork by having a
Realtor take care of that necessity.
3. Market Valuation: A Realtor will do a market price evaluation to
determine what is the best price to sell your home at. This involves
researching similar homes in the area and examining for what prices they
sold with adjustments to the differences in the real property. Quite often
a home sold with a Realtor will sell for an average of 16% higher than one
sold by owner.

Second Quarter State Existing-Home Sales Soften

http://www.realtor.org/

WASHINGTON (August 15, 2006) – Existing-home sales, including single-family and condo, were down in the second quarter in contrast with a record set in the same period in 2005. Despite the overall decline, 20 states showed increases in sales activity from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

The quarterly report on total state existing-home sales shows that the seasonally adjusted annual rate* was 6.69 million units in the second quarter, down 7.0 percent from the record 7.19 million-unit level in the second quarter of 2005.

The biggest increase was in Alaska, where existing-home sales rose 48.6 percent from the second quarter of 2005. In Arkansas the second-quarter resale pace rose 17.9 percent from a year earlier, while Texas experienced the third strongest gain, up 11.3 percent. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia experienced declines. Complete data for two states was not available.

David Lereah, NAR’s chief economist, said two sets of market conditions are apparent in the report. “When you look at states with high housing costs or that have experienced a prolonged period of rapid price gains, you typically see slower home sales,” he said. “By contrast, states with moderately priced areas that have experienced healthy job creation are seeing sales gains – the economic backdrop remains favorable for the housing market, which is helping home sales to level out.”

According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate on a 30-year conventional fixed-rate mortgage was 6.60 percent in the second quarter, up from 6.24 percent in the first quarter; it was 5.72 percent in the second quarter of 2005.

NAR President Thomas M. Stevens from Vienna, Va., said interest rates have been trending down in recent weeks. “This is good news for buyers who have been on the sidelines; now there is a window of opportunity in the market,” said Stevens, senior vice president of NRT Inc. “In most of the country, buyers can take their time to make an informed decision. We advise buyers to consult a professional in negotiating the buying process, and to cautiously review mortgage options – especially on non-traditional loan products.”

Last week, Freddie Mac, reported that the 30-year conventional fixed-rate mortgage was down to 6.55 percent.

Regionally, the South reported an existing-home sales pace of 2.60 million units in the second quarter, down 4.2 percent from a year ago. After Arkansas and Texas, the next strongest increase in the South was in North Carolina, up 11.0 percent from the second quarter of 2005, while resales in South Carolina rose 9.0 percent; six other Southern states also posted sales gains.

In the Midwest, existing-home sales declined 4.7 percent to a 1.54 million-unit annual sales level from the second quarter of 2005. The strongest increase in the region was in Indiana, up 4.8 percent from a year earlier, followed by Iowa, up 3.8 percent, and Missouri, with an increase of 0.8 percent.

The Northeast saw an existing-home sales pace of 1.15 million units in the second quarter, which was 5.2 percent below a year earlier. Sales activity in Vermont rose 9.1 percent from the second quarter of 2005, while Maine increased 1.5 percent.

In the West, the existing-home sales level of 1.41 million units was 14.7 percent lower than the second quarter of 2005. After Alaska, the best performance the region was in New Mexico where existing-home sales rose 6.2 percent from a year earlier; Wyoming sales increased 5.7 percent while Montana rose 5.2 percent.

The National Association of Realtors®, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing more than 1.3 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
# # #
* The seasonally adjusted annual rate for a particular quarter represents what the total number of actual sales for a year would be if the relative sales pace for that quarter was maintained for four consecutive quarters. Total home sales include single family, townhomes, condominiums and co-operative housing. NAR began tracking the state sales series in 1981.

Seasonally adjusted rates are used in reporting quarterly data to factor out seasonal variations in resale activity. For example, sales volume normally is higher in the summer and relatively light in winter, primarily because of differences in the weather and household buying patterns.

Tables of state resale rates, percent changes and some historic data are available at the site below under Research – click on Housing Statistics, then scroll down the center to State Existing-Home Sales.

How to negotiate your closing costs

By Holden Lewis • Bankrate.com

Shop around before choosing a mortgage lender, but don't stop there. When you receive your good faith estimate of closing costs, or GFE, the negotiation hasn't ended.

The lender or mortgage broker is required to give you a GFE within three working days of accepting your loan application. The GFE comes in the form of an itemized list of estimated closing costs for everything from the lender's fees to the appraisal charge to the title insurance premium to a partial month's interest payment.

The lender or broker charges some fees, and third parties charge others. The first step is to find out which are loan origination fees and which are third-party fees. Don't guess. Ask the lender or broker.

The big money question
"Say, 'Please explain to me what those fees are,'" says Jessica Cecere, director of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Simple advice, but a lot of loan applicants don't follow it.

On the GFE, fees are categorized by numerical codes ranging from the 800s to the 1300s. Most of the negotiable lender-charged fees are in the 800s: application, origination, commitment, loan discount, broker, tax-related service and underwriting fees.

Third-party fees
Fees charged by third parties are trickier to negotiate. A few third-party fees pop up in the 800s section of the GFE: those for the appraisal, credit report and inspection. The lender is supposed to pass along these charges without marking them up. Theoretically, they are negotiable and you can ask the lender to seek good deals on these three items and pass along the savings. In practice, you probably won't get a break on those services because the lender has contracted for them at a set price.

You can realize some of your biggest savings by negotiating the items in the 1100s section of the GFE: title insurance, title search, title exam, attorney's fees and settlement fees. Most borrowers use a title company recommended by the real estate agent or lender. But you don't have to. You can shop for title insurance and settlement services, just as you shopped for the house and for the loan.

Be prepared for resistance. Some lenders have business affiliations with title companies, and they'll pressure you to keep the title work in-house.

Title insurance, settlement services
Where you shop for these title insurance and settlement services depends on where you live, because different places have different ways of closing real estate and mortgage transactions. In parts of the Northeast, closings are conducted in lawyers' offices. In some places, including Southern California, closings take place at escrow or mortgage companies. In much of the country, the closing takes place in the office of the agency that sells title insurance.

Government regulation can limit your negotiating room. In Texas, the state sets one overall fee for title insurance, title search and settlement services, so title agencies compete on service and not price. Regulations aren't as restrictive in most other states and you could save hundreds of dollars in settlement services by shopping around.

"I think it's a matter of what the traffic will bear," says Bob Moulton, president of American Mortgage, a brokerage on Long Island, N.Y. He gives this tip: If you're refinancing your mortgage, and you've lived in the house less than 10 years, ask to get title insurance at a less-expensive "reissue rate."

And don't forget to shop for hazard insurance -- item No. 903 on the GFE. Compare offers for homeowners insurance policies, either on your own or with the help of an insurance agent. Make sure the insurance company and settlement agent communicate with each other. You're not going to get that mortgage without proof that you have a homeowner's policy. That requirement is not negotiable.

Welcome to Grand Rapids Real Estate Home

Hello. This is my first post to the Grand Rapids Real Estate Home blog. Please be patient as we get things set up on this. When it is done, it will provide current, and relavent information regarding homes for sale in the Grand Rapids Michigan area.

My hope is to also include my listings on here to provide an added exposure for my clients and provide another vehicle to ride through the avenue of online marketing.

There will be a directory of links that will provide valuable information to both home buyers and sellers in the Grand Rapids area. One of those links will include a site that you can search the entire MLS listing database.

Please feel free to stop by again when this site is more content rich.

Grand Rapids Real Estate Home

Monday, August 28, 2006

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Common Buyer Mistakes

1. Bidding Blind

2. Buying the Wrong Home

3. Unclear Title

4. Inaccurate Survey

5. Undisclosed Fix-ups

6. Not Getting Mortgage Pre-approval

7. Contract Misses

8. Hidden Costs

9. Rushing the Closing

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Monday, August 14, 2006

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