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Archive for 'Viewpoint'
.600 Is A Pretty Good Batting Average…Unless You’re Talking About Short Sales
March 14th, 2011 categories: Buying, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Viewpoint
A few days ago, our state association, the California Assn. of Realtors, released the results of a recent survey which claims that only three out of every five attempted short sales in the state actually went through.
A .600 batting average may be great if you’re Barry Bonds, but it’s not so great if you’re talking about the percentage of short sales that were successfully completed.
The report lays blame with the banks for dragging out the process for months and months on end. And to be sure, with some banks, that’s definitely an accurate statement. But others, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo have made great strides in streamlining the process over the past 12 months.
In fact, on all of the short sales I’ve negotiated with Bank of America since last summer, I’ve gotten responses in about 30 days or less. That’s a far, far cry from what was happening a year ago — when their norm was a good 6-8 month wait (if you were lucky).
I don’t dispute CAR’s findings, but based on my own personal experience with representing short sale clients here in Benicia, Vallejo and elsewhere in Solano and Contra Costa counties, I think it’s fair to point out that while many banks are definitely the root of the problem, some of the blame for that 40% failure rate lies with sellers or their agents.
Now, I certainly haven’t had a 100% success rate and anyone who tells you they have isn’t telling the truth.
But by the same token, I’m sure I’m well above the 60% figure that CAR’s survey suggests.
What’s more, I’m sure colleagues of mine who know what it takes to successfully negotiate a short sale would say the same thing.
In my experience, if an agent is only successful on 3 out of every 5 short sales, they’re either not doing something right, are plagued by sellers who aren’t really committed to the short sale process or are in the midst of a run of incredibly bad luck.
Most of the time, the handwriting’s on the wall for all to see, with plenty of tell-tale signs that this particular short sale has little chance of going through.
Here are some signs you may be in for a bumpy short sale road: Read the rest of this entry »
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BofA Proves Its Short Sale Mantra Isn’t All Talk
March 8th, 2011 categories: Foreclosures / Short Sales, The Economy, Viewpoint
A year ago, if you’d asked me who were the worst banks to negotiate a short sale with, I would have quickly put Bank of America near the top of that list.
Back then, BofA was notorious for dragging out short sales for months on end, for asking for the same documentation over and over again, and for switching negotiators in mid-stream and starting from scratch. Each time you called, you got a different story. It all depended on who answered the phone.
There was no consistency and certainly no commitment to expediting the short sale process. It was as if the powers that be at BofA just wanted to make the homeowner’s life a little more miserable by dangling the possibility of doing a short sale in front of them before ultimately making a settlement demand so unreasonable that the owner would finally just walk away out of frustration.
A year ago, I wondered whether the acronoym BofA really stood for “Bank of Anxiety,” for that’s the state of mind most short sellers found themselves in for months and month on end.
Fast forward to the present
Well, as they say, that was then and this is now. Read the rest of this entry »
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Obama’s Mortgage Reform Plan: A Bitter Pill
February 19th, 2011 categories: Loans / Financing, The Economy, Viewpoint
Many years ago, another agent in my office shared a great little saying with me.
It was one that really cut to the chase with a seller who wanted to hold out 
for a better offer when the one they had in front of them was clearly the best they were ever going to get.
She would say: I know it’s a bitter pill to swallow…but do you want that pill now or do you want it later?
And that little saying of hers resonated with me the moment I heard about the White House’s proposed mortgage reform plan, which was announced just over a week ago.
I wrote about that plan a few days ago. In a nutshell, the Obama administration has proposed sweeping mortgage policy changes that would:
- Require higher down payments
- Drop the maximum loan amounts for conventional loans in many areas
- Raise loan fees to borrowers
- Do away with mortgage giants Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae
Making all these changes would definitely be a very bitter pill for the mortgage and housing markets to swallow right now. But if we really want to make sure we don’t have a repeat of the recent mortgage meltdown, there’s no doubt some changes have to take place.
Mortgage Reform Is Needed…But Now or Later?
We have to make sure the riskiest borrowers really have the means to own a home before letting them slip through the cracks and Read the rest of this entry »
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Haven’t We Learned Anything?
April 20th, 2010 categories: Loans / Financing, The Economy, Viewpoint
I just got the following email in my spam folder, from a mortgage lender out of Southern California:
Even though we’re not even close to getting out of our nation’s worst financial mess since the Great Depression, we’re already beginning to see a smattering of snake oil salesman peddling loans that look and feel just like their subprime cousins that started this whole economic tailspin.
I guess I was naive to think that those flim-flam men and women who pushed people into homes they clearly couldn’t afford had left our industry for good.
No, it looks like they’ve just been laying low for the last few years. Read the rest of this entry »
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Fraud & Deceit — It’s Just Business As Normal For Some Short Sale Lenders
January 26th, 2010 categories: Foreclosures / Short Sales, Loans / Financing, Viewpoint
Thankfully, Someone’s Finally Blowing The Whistle
We’ve all heard the banks moan and complain about how they were duped into making bad loans to unscrupulous borrowers in the subprime era.
Or how homes were appraised at values clearly tens of thousands more than the property was really worth.
Well, these banks certainly had a right to be angry.
But now, it seems, the shoe’s on the other foot.
For, these same banks who have positioned themselves as the innocent victims in the mortgage meltdown are now aggressively and openly trying to defraud each other with short sale side-deals in a manner that essentially holds the down-and-out homeowner — who’s trying to make the best of a bad situation — hostage.
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Have The Banks Created An Artificial Market?
August 20th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, The Economy, Vacaville, Vallejo, Viewpoint
This is the second and final part of this post. To read Part 1, click here.
In yesterday’s article, I talked about our expectations earlier this spring that hundreds of new bank-owned properties would come on the market shortly after the foreclosure moratoriums were lifted in early spring.
To date, those expectations haven’t come to fruition, which is bewildering, especially when most bank-owned homes continue to attract multiple-offers — sometimes with as many as 30+ offers on one house.
So the obvious question: have the banks really foreclosed on as many homes as we all suspect or have they Read the rest of this entry »
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Are We In An Artificial Boom Market?
August 19th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Buying, Fairfield-Gr Valley, Foreclosures / Short Sales, Selling, Solano, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo, Viewpoint
With Hundreds Of REOs Being Held Off The Market, Is The Current Market Boom Just A Temporary Thing?
For months now, the local real estate market here in Solano County as well as throughout the entire Bay Area has been getting stronger and hotter.
But nowhere has it been stronger than in places like Vallejo, Fairfield and Suisun, which rank among THE most affordable cities in the entire Bay Area.
It’s a classic supply and demand situation.
On the supply side, if you follow my Weekly Real Estate Report, you know that the inventory has plummeted by about 75% throughout these cities since the first of the year.
And on the demand side, as prices became incredibly affordable, homes in these areas became instantly attractive to an eager Read the rest of this entry »
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Did Benicia Act Too Soon When It Closed Mills Elementary School?
January 24th, 2009 categories: Benicia, Viewpoint
It’s been several years since Benicia Unified School District closed Mills Elementary, the oldest of its five elementary schools and the only one located downtown.
Back then, it seemed like the sensible thing to do. The population base was maturing and as a by-product of that, school enrollment, particularly at the elementary school level was declining. The district couldn’t justify keeping five schools open when four offered plenty of capacity for Benicia’s youth population.
But now that property values have declined — back to about 2002 or 2003’s levels here in Benicia, we’re again seeing more and more first-time and young-family home buyers.
That’s a stark contrast to what occurred during the earlier part of this decade, when rapidly rising home prices essentially slammed the door shut on most first-time buyers. 
With even a modest single family home priced well into the $500,000’s as recently as 2006, most homebuyers who were in their early adult lives were effectively priced out of Benicia housing market.
Today, though, with some single family homes priced as low as the $300,000’s, doors which had previously been closed to many young families wanting to live in Benicia have opened again — and in a big way, thanks too to record-low mortgage rates.
A perfect case in point is our daughter’s young family. Still in their 20’s, they moved back to Benicia and rented a townhome in 2005. At the time, the prospects of she and her husband ever being able to buy a home in Benicia were daunting. They were just starting out in their respective fields and watched as home prices continued to climb — on just about a weekly basis. Read the rest of this entry »
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I Got My Country Back Today!
January 20th, 2009 categories: Viewpoint
I’m not usually one to write politically slanted articles, but today’s post really has nothing to do with politics. Rather, it has to do with reclaiming something I lost eight long years ago. I hope you’ll take it in the positive, uplifting spirit that’s intended.
For eight L-O-N-G years, I was a man without a country. Today I got my country back.
Oh I’ve always been a resident of the U.S. and never stopped believing in it. 
Throughout the last eight years, I followed and believed in the laws, principles and rights upon which our great nation was founded. But even though I believed and supported my country, the people who ran it didn’t believe in me. Or at least that’s how it felt.
Even though I always remained a part of my country, sadly, from 2001-2008, my country didn’t really seem to want to be a part of me. Until today.
They believed in doing things the way they wanted to do it. They believed in ignoring the wishes of the people they were chosen to serve. They believed a quick wink or a sarcastic smile was the way you got things done. Read the rest of this entry »
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