Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Short-Sale Process Expected to Speed Up



The short-sale process is expected to get shorter starting June 15. New guidelines issued under the Federal Housing Finance Agency will require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give home buyers of short sales notice of their final decision within 60 days. The new guidelines also will require the mortgage giants to respond to initial short-sale requests within 30 days of receiving an offer from a potential buyer.
The speedier process is expected to be a boost to the housing market, Michael McHugh, president of the Empire State Mortgage Bankers Association, told the New York Times. Home buyers and sellers often have to wait months before they receive a decision from a lender on an offer for a short sale. Some deals fall apart just from the long wait alone. 
Short sales have been increasing in recent months, as many lenders find them more appealing than foreclosures, which can be much more costly and take longer to remove from their books. 
Short sales now outpace foreclosure sales in many parts of the country. Short sales represent more than 14 percent of existing-home sales, according to CoreLogic housing data from March, the most recent month available. 
McHugh says that a faster short-sale process may be particularly helpful in speeding the recovery in judicial states, where foreclosures must go through the courts before they are approved. For example, in New York, judicial foreclosures can take a year or longer to be approved. Now short sales may be viewed by defaulting home owners as more of an option in avoiding foreclosure. 
“There should be a significant improvement in the turnaround,” McHugh said regarding housing markets with judicial foreclosure processes.
Source: “Speeding Up Short Sales,” The New York Times (May 24, 2012)

How do Real Estate Agents Rank in Honesty/Ethics in Professions

Real estate professionals rank higher than lawyers, business executives, and advertising practitioners when it comes to the public’s perceptions of honesty and ethics, according to a recent Gallup poll. 
In fact, real estate professionals received their highest rating yet in the poll, since Gallup began measuring Americans’ perceptions of honesty and ethics of 21 professions since 1976. 
In the survey, 20 percent of respondents gave real estate professionals a “very high to high” rating on honesty and ethics. Fifty-seven percent of the Americans surveyed rated them as “average” when it comes to honesty and ethics. 
Meanwhile, the profession that scored the lowest of the 21 professions ranked were members of Congress, in which only 7 percent of respondents rated them “very high to high” when it comes to ethics and honesty -- the lowest on record. 
The professions that scored the highest in honesty and ethics belonged to the medical profession, with nurses, pharmacists, and doctors -- who were all at the top of the list.  
Source: “Housing Prices Show Signs of Stability,” The Wall Street Journal (May 29, 2012)

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

10 Romantic Date Night Ideas You Can Do At Home...

Lair of Love

By Amy Elisa Keith

Instead of the standard candlelit dinner and Barry White tunes, lifestyle expert Abby Larson of Style Me Pretty reveals her top ten outside-the-box ideas for an intimate night at home. The best part? They're all budget-friendly. Swoon, swoon.

Play Time


"Sometimes, all you need to turn up the romance dial is a little bit of fun," says Larson. "Good, old-fashioned Twister fun." Larson spotted this idea on You+Me where a duo turned their backyard into their very own game. When his hand is on red and your leg is on green, there's sure to be some romance in between.
                                                                           

Floor for Two


Dining at the dinner table can feel overly stiff and formal. Get closer to your significant other by moving your feast to the floor. "With a bunch of cozy throws and some super-comfy pillows, suddenly, dining à la casa seems special," says Larson, "and kind of sexy." Try serving up fingers foods or smaller bites that you can each feed one another.

Checking In


"Transform your own bedroom into a hotel. Crisp new sheets with a fabulous thread count will instantly up the sexy factor," says Larson. Bring candlesticks from the dining room and set a bottle of sparkling wine with fresh strawberries on a silver tray. "Stuff all those boring bedroom items under the bed for the night, and let your imagination run wild."

Guessing Game


Rev up the excitement and suspense by presenting your significant other with a sealed envelope filled with hints about your upcoming date night. "I saw this idea on Find the Joy in the Journey and was smitten," says Larson. "In the envelope, include tickets to a great movie you've been dying to see, a gift certificate to your favorite restaurant, a confirmation to a hotel getaway, or a favorite DVD and a recipe for a delicious meal at home."

Great Outdoors


Take your party of two to the backyard for movie night. "Rent a screen and a projector from your local library. Then add in some beautiful throws and plush pillows," says Larson. Cuddle up and enjoy some nontraditional movie fare: gourmet popcorn and bubbly. 

Room Service



For a twist on the traditional B&B experience, enjoy a gourmet meal in the warmth of your own sheets. "Turn the bedroom into a fancy bed and breakfast with yummy treats scored the day before at your local bakery," says Larson. "Serve them on your finest china, and cozy up to the deliciousness." 

Sweet Talk 


"There is something sexy about mixing sugary goodness together in the kitchen," says the founder of Style Me Pretty. "Think Ghost but with butter instead of clay." Add a little chocolate to the equation, and you have the perfect recipe for love to start your evening.

Pitching In


Get on trend with glamping, or glamorous camping, which is all the rage, according to Larson. Whether indoors or out, pitch a beautiful tent to create the ultimate lair of love. "Fill it with pretty string lights, your favorite bites, and soft fabrics, and pretend that you're anywhere else but at home," suggests Larson.













Tuesday, May 8, 2012

4 insider tips for getting multiple offers


BY TARA-NICHOLLE NELSON, TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2012.
Inman News®

The market is heating up. No, really.

Coast to coast, a much higher percentage of listings are (a) selling, period (b) selling, fast and (c) selling at or above the asking price than they have during any spring in recent memory.

Yet and still, today's buyers hold in recent memory the real estate mountaintop and the depths of the recession; some have been waiting out the market for years, hoping for a deal, but unwilling to buy into a declining market. Others actually lost homes to foreclosure at the beginning of the housing recession and are on the comeback trail. And competition from short sale and foreclosure listings is still abundant.

Long story short, the days when every home on the market got multiple offers are still a thing of the past. By and large, the listings I see receiving multiple offers and selling for over asking on today's market have the following ingredients (a recipe sellers can replicate if they'd like to set the stage to receive multiple offers, too):

1. Pristine and staged. The homes that I've seen get multiple offers in my own market recently are immaculately clean -- not a whiff of anything within noseshot, so to speak -- and dressed to the nines. Their photos look like something out of a home decor catalog or design magazine -- like no one lives there, even if someone does. Their owners have often spent months in advance cleaning, decluttering, organizing, primping and otherwise sprucing their homes for sale with the intention of blowing the competition out of the water.

I won't purport to capture the art of staging in a sentence, but prepacking is a good visual to hold in mind as you prepare your home. (And anecdotally, I will say that it strikes me that a large proportion of multiple-offer homes have actually been professionally staged. I'd urge a seller who wants multiple offers to explore whether there's some level of staging service or even staging advice that is worth the investment, before dismissing it as too expensive out of hand.)

2. Low prices. The homes that get multiple offers are not priced at the top of their markets. In fact, I know that many of their listing agents and owners specifically aimed to list these homes slightly below what they believed to be the true fair market value of the property at the time they listed it. Why? What seems like it might be risky is actually a time-proven strategy for cranking up the number of buyers who come view the property.

When buyers see a beautiful home listing online for less than they'd expect for the area, they show up in droves, eager to get a great home for a great value. And the math from there is simple -- it takes more showings to drive more offers.

Once these value hunters are at the place and fall in love with it, they often become willing to offer more than the asking price if they need to, to secure it in the face of competing offers, knowing that it was priced well to start with.

3. Ample exposure to the market. Part of the effect of a low list price is that it creates an auction atmosphere, the environment that churns up bidding wars. The other half of the auction equation is ensuring that the home has ample exposure to the market, both in terms of time for buyers to come see and fall in love with the place and in terms of marketing the property aggressively to reach as many prospective buyer/bidders as possible.

Ample exposure can be achieved in several ways. Professional photography. An aggressive online marketing campaign -- most experienced local listing agents will happily brief prospective seller clients on what they do in this vein. One ample exposure method I've seen become a standard practice in my area is to create and publish an offer timeline. In my town, it's now almost universal for listing agents to list the home a day or two prior to the broker's open house, hold it open for brokers once, hold two general Sunday open houses and then take offers the Tuesday following the second Sunday open house.

By publishing this timeline as part of the listing, buyers are assured that they will have time to see the place and get their ducks in a row in order to compete for it. And sellers are assured that they will not forgo the great offer that might come tomorrow by virtue of taking a good one that comes in the day after they put the home on the market.

Now, sometimes, aggressive buyers force a seller's hand, making an offer immediately upon seeing the property, despite a preset offer timeline. In those cases, the listing agent can call up all the other agents who have expressed an interest in the place and offer them the opportunity to get in the game. For this reason, and for any other important updates or changes that might come along, it's essential that buyers and their brokers let the listing agent know if they plan to make an offer, even early in the published offer timeline.

4. Showable on demand. Hard-to-show homes just don't sell, when there's lots of competition. When buyers' brokers put their home tours together, if a particular listing requires too much notice (i.e., 48 hours) or too many calls and callbacks for appointment-setting, they're very likely just to turn to one of the other dozens of homes that's easy to show. Anything that diminishes the chances your home will be shown diminishes the chances your home will receive multiple offers.

To get multiple offers on today's market, in fact, a seller's home must be showable on demand. If you require an appointment, you should keep advance notice requirements as low as possible -- an hour or less is ideal. Even better is to be accommodating and let brokers show your home at their leisure -- ideally, stepping out or running to the market when they come by. Allowing your broker to put a lockbox on the place and let it be shown at all times while you're at work or out and about on the weekends will require that you keep the place in tiptop shape, 24/7, but it will also be well worth it.