General Real Estate: May 2009 Archives

Last makeup week. Let's hope I don't let this get behind again!

Newly Written Articles

You Want an Agency That Can Pay ENOUGH Attention to YOU: Just because they sell a lot of properties doesn't mean they do a good job of it. More and more, that is the complete opposite of the way things really are.

Restricted Sale Property: Very Difficult to Find A Loan If your property has restrictions upon who you can sell it to (as low income housing, college housing endowments and other properties often have) then lenders will usually not be willing to loan against the property.

Buying Real Estate Isn't Simple. You've got hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. People are going to try to cheat. Complex issues requiring professional knowledge really do pop up. If it were easy, anyone could do it without problems. Clearly, with the number of people having problems right now, that is not the case.

Student Loans and Real Estate Loans: Default, Repayment vs. Nonpayment and Consolidation Effects student loans have on your ability to afford real estate loans - even when you're not in repayment status.

Debunking the "Record Wave of Foreclosures Coming" Myth This is just manipulating data to make things look worse than they are.

The Measurement Unit For Desirability Is Dollars A good buyer's agent can make a difference, but if you want a property with something extra, you can expect to pay more for it than you would for a property without that extra.

I'm Competing Against Multiple Offers. How Do I Proceed?

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate the once a month roundup of worthy articles submitted for consideration

Updated Articles

Why the Real Estate Buyers Agent's Commission is Paid by the Seller

What Can You Recover From the Title Company When They Miss an Easement?

Efforts to Rehabilitate the Negative Amortization Loan

Can Someone Be Added to an Existing Mortgage?

Buying Investment Property - An Example of the Issues

Practical Examples - Refinance or Prepayment Penalty?

Power of Attorney for Real Estate Transactions

The Seller Always Knows More About the Property Than the Buyer

Full Circle: Back to More Traditional Lending Standards

The "We'll Keep You In Your Property" Scam

Investors Aren't The Only Ones Who Can Fix Ugly Properties

What if Your Partner Refuses to Pay Their Share of a Loan or Mortgage (or Won't Pay on Time)?

Cash Back From The Seller to the Buyer in Real Estate Sales The only reason people want to do this is to commit FRAUD

Don't Rely On Reputation - There Are No Silver Bullets

I've been letting this slide for several weeks due to one thing or another, during which time I've done a few important new articles and republished quite a few important older ones. Therefore, I'm going to limit the review to three weeks and do so more catch up next time.

Newly Written Articles

Shopping For The Best Loan In The New Lending Environment discusses the differences that the new appraisal standards and lender's preferential treatment of their own captive loan officers have made in shopping for a loan.

State of the La Mesa and East County Real Estate Market April 2009

105% Refinancing With No PMI (Maybe) discusses the new loan programs from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac intended to keep them from losing money they don't have to.

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate once per month I link to the good stuff submitted from other sites.

Updated Articles

Variable or Range Pricing of Real Estate discusses what variable pricing does, and what it does not do.

There's Nothing Sacred About Asking Price in Real Estate - Variable Range or Regular talks about the fact that just because you put a certain asking price on a property doesn't mean people will offer that.

Down Payment At Purchase or Wait Until Later To Pay The Mortgage Down?

Good Intentions and Over-Extended Homeowners discusses how well-intentioned efforts to help people can end up hurting far more people far worse than if we had simply let events run their course.

Loans with Stealth "Cash Out": Loan originators using your money to make it appear that the costs are lower than they are.

Refinancing Out of A Negative Amortization Loan (Or Any Other) Before The Penalty Expires talks about the math of whether such a thing is in your best interest or not.

100% Financing or Low Down Payment or Low Equity: PMI May Be The Only Option Splitting your loan amount into two pieces is generally more desirable than a single loan when you have less than 20% equity. Unfortunately, it's very hard to get second mortgages in such circumstances currently.

Listing Agents Claiming There Are Multiple Offers and other background noise.

What Do Buyer's Agents Do? a basic primer on reasons why you want a buyer's agent - preferably before you start looking.

When Your Offer is Rejected What now?

Should Lenders Be Permitted to Sell Real Estate? A philosophical piece. It's not the tollbooth I'm selling; it's the expertise.

Realtor and Loan Officer Responsibility: Can the Client Afford The Property? If they can't, don't sell it to them. Find something else they can afford.

Will Agents List My Property if I Owe More Than It's Worth? The answer is "yes"

Recording Errors and Title Insurance

Inducements to Use A Builder's Lender for a Purchase Sometimes it actually makes sense, if they offer something others won't.

Saving Money by Refinancing Your Mortgage Make certain you are actually saving money

Low Equity (or Worse!) Relocations in a Buyer's Market How to bring this off and leave yourself in the best situation possible.


I've been letting my weekly article review slide for several weeks due to one thing or another, during which time I've done a few important new articles and republished quite a few very important older ones. Therefore, I'm going to limit the review to three weeks and do so more catch up next time.

Newly Written Articles

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate Once a month, I collect, talk about and link to consumer real estate articles.

Rental Fraud, Landlord Fraud, and Prospective Tenant Scams I don't have much to do with rental real estate, but this is a common fraud going around right now.

How Agents Should Respond To An Appraisal Below Purchase Price This is very important now with HVCC in effect.

Who Has A Legitimate Interest In A Real Estate Transaction? is a philosophy of real estate article, drawing a distinction between who has an interest worth the protection of others, and who's just working for a paycheck and therefore can walk away if they don't think they're getting a benefit.

Updated Articles

The Tradeoff between Rate and Cost in Real Estate Loans This is probably the aspect of mortgages least understood by consumers. You must understand this in order to understand mortgages.

Buyer's Markets

Loan Providers Offering to Pay For The Appraisal is a reprint of an older article, and with HVCC in effect, not as important as previously. Note that there is a difference between offering to pay, and being required to pay.

Why Renting Really Is For Suckers (And What To Do About It) is an important article - understanding the difference a couple of years more renting is likely to make to your financial future.

The Good Faith Deposit for Real Estate talks about the earnest money a buyer puts into escrow.

Developers and Incentive Money to Use Their Lender talks about ways to manipulate this system for your advantage

Competing Offers From The Same Agent For The Same Property

Disasters and the Mortgage talks about some of the hard truths of loan contracts.

What if Your Partner Refuses to Pay Their Share of a Loan or Mortgage (or Won't Pay on Time)? Once you are in this situation, you may be forced to choose between bad alternatives. The time to protect yourself is before it happens.

Option ARM and Pick a Pay - Negative Amortization Loans These have been regulated out of existence, and for good reason. But they might come back, so you need to be aware of the problems with them.

Discovering You've Got A Bad Loan - Don't Panic! Making the best of a sub-prime situation

Listing Agents and Pre-Approvals or Pre-Qualifications Pre-Qualification and Pre-Approval are bad jokes foisted on the public by listing agents who don't understand loans but are trying to play CYA in case the transaction falls apart.

Negative Amortization Loans - More Unfortunate Details More problems with this horrible loan.

Negative Amortization Loan Issues on Investment Property There really were potentially useful niches for this loan. But it was horribly abused.

Option ARMs and Cash Flow debunking one of the standard agent and loan officer rationalizations for putting people into this awful loan.

Should Negative Amortization Loans Be Banned? I didn't think so. I thought the way to fight misapplication of these loans was to insist on full and complete disclosure - something that other loans can benefit from as well.

Loan Qualification Standards - Debt to Income Ratio The more important of the two key measures for loan qualification, for the consumer as well as the lender. This measures "Can you afford to pay it back?" and most of the reason for the meltdown was in playing games intended to frustrate this key measure of loan qualification.

Loan Qualification Standards - Loan to Value Ratio talks about the less important of the two key loan qualification metrics.

 



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