Category Archives: Buyers

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As Home Prices Rebound, Lenders Rush to Unload REOs

The recovery in home prices this year is prompting banks to sell off their REO inventory at a brisker pace. Sales of bank-owned homes made up 10 percent of residential sales in November, the third consecutive month for increases in REO sales, RealtyTrac reports.

“Lenders are taking advantage of this environment to unload more of their bank-owned inventory and in-foreclosure inventory at the foreclosure auction,” says RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist. “But as the backlog of distressed inventory available dries up in many of the markets with the most efficient foreclosure processes — namely California, Arizona, and Nevada, with Georgia not far behind — overall sales volume is declining and will continue to do so until more nondistressed sellers enter the market.”

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Boomerang Buyers Expected to Boost Recovery in the New Year

Housing foreclosure authorities LoanSafe.org and YouWalkAway.com have created a new website to help people re-enter the housing market after having been through a previous foreclosure. The website is called AfterForeclosure.com and helps those most affected by the housing crisis take charge of their financial future and own their own home again.

Based on a poll of their combined members, LoanSafe.org and AfterForeclosure.com are confident that these potential buyers will make 2014 the year of the “boomerang” buyer.

Changes in lending guidelines and population shifts make these buyers essential to the recovery of the housing market. Jon Maddux, co-founder of AfterForeclosure.com says: “Alienating this large and growing pool of potential buyers does not bode well for the market in an environment where natural housing advancement has been largely disrupted.”

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New Mortgage Rules Won’t Knock Out Many Borrowers

For Sale and Sold

Are you in the market for a house and worrying about whether it will be harder to get a mortgage after Jan. 10, when new federal rules kick in? Don’t fret. For most people the rules won’t make much difference. If the new rules do prevent you from landing a mortgage loan, it could be a sign that you aren’t financially ready for homeownership.

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5 Reasons It’s Better to Own Than Rent

Checklist

There are plenty of valid reasons to own instead of rent, especially in the current low rate environment. Let’s take a look at why homeownership simply makes more sense than renting, especially over a long-term basis.

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4 Home Buying Ducks to Get in a Row for 2014

Home Tour

When it comes to putting your ducks in a row for buying a home, a few things are key. First, start early. Whenever you think you should get started doing the actual prep steps, work backwards about 3 or 6 months before that on the calendar and start then.

Secondly, be bold. Many buyers-to-be hesitate to get into the not-so-adorable territory of credit and savings, out of a fear that they’ll learn something that will kill their dreams. The bolder you are about going into scary territory, the faster you’ll learn the truth of what work lies ahead of you – and the more time you’ll have to do what it’ll take to overcome any challenges. Also, just the knowing will make anything scary less so. Here are four ducks you’ll want to start getting lined up and comfortable with now if you hope to buy a home in 2014.

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Housing Predictions: How 2014 Will Be Different

Neighborhood

What should you expect for next year’s housing market? Trulia’s Chief Economist, Jed Kolko, dipped into the data to find out. Check out his predictions for the 5 ways that the 2014 housing market will be different from 2013, as well as the top 10 cities to watch as we enter the new year.

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Picking a Home Over the Phone

More home buyers use a mobile device, such as a smartphone, as a primary information-gathering tool. More than half of all page views of listings nationwide now occur through a mobile device, as opposed to a desktop computer, according to an analysis by Realtor.com. Of mobile searches, more than twice as many listings are viewed via iPad and iPhone than via Android devices. Searches with iPhones are nearly three times as high as Android searches.

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Predictions for the New Year

The coming year is expected to be a little kinder to home buyers. While affordability will continue to be a problem in hot markets like New York and San Francisco, buyers in general may find they have more homes to choose from and more lenders vying for their business.

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Skyrocketing rents hit ‘crisis’ levels

Since the housing crisis began in 2008, approximately 4.6 million homes were lost to foreclosure, according to CoreLogic. The vast majority of those homeowners became renters. Even as housing recovered, credit tightened, pushing even more potential buyers out of homeownership and into rentals, both apartments and single-family rental homes.

There are now 43 million renter households, or 35 percent of all U.S. households, the highest rate in over a decade for all age groups, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies; 4 million more renters today than there were in 2007. For those aged 25 to 54, rental rates are the highest since the center began record keeping in the early 1970s.

As a result, rental vacancies have fallen dramatically, and rents have skyrocketed.

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Why today’s home buyer needs a real estate agent more than ever

Home Tour

Last summer a Realtor got an email from a local real estate attorney who wanted to buy a house. He’d just gotten engaged and wanted to save some money by representing himself.

This attorney wanted to do all the work an agent would do to find and buy his first home, and get paid a commission for his work. She explained to him that the commission is payable to the listing agent who agrees to pay a portion of it to the Realtor representing a buyer.

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