Wine Cellars to Swimming Pools

1. People who look for a home during the Holidays are more serious buyers.

2. Serious buyers have fewer houses to choose from during the Holidays and less competition means more money for you!

3. Since the supply of listing will dramatically increase in January, there will be less demand for your particular home! Less demand means less money for you!

4. Houses show better when decorated for the Holidays!

5. Buyers are more emotional during the Holidays, so they are more likely to pay your price!

6. Buyers have more time to look for a home during the Holidays than they do during a working week!

7. Some people must buy before the end of the year for tax reasons!

8. January is traditionally the month for employees to begin new jobs. Since transferees cannot wait until Spring to buy, you must be on the market now to capture that market!

9. You can still be on the market, but you have the option to restrict showings during the six or seven days during the Holidays!

10.You can sell now for more money and we will provide for a delayed closing or extended occupancy until early next year!

11.By selling now, you may have an opportunity to be a non-contingent buyer during the Spring, when many more houses are on the market for less money! This will allow you to sell high and buy low!

When going to home inspections with my clients, the home inspectors see and comment on certain items over and over and over again.   All homes have some repair or maintenance items regardless of how well maintained they are.

Maintaining a home is part of home ownership.   Just like if you don™t brush your teeth, you will have a huge dentist bill down the road, if you don™t stain your deck every year, you™ll have a huge deck repair bill to look forward to.  

So would you like to know the top 10 Secrets from home inspectors on how to easily and cheaply avoid huge expenses down the road?    

The #1 Secret is such an important one that we™ll talk about just this one today.  

Diverting Water Away From The House

Connecting tubes or hoses to the bottom of gutters to get the water further away from you home is a great temporary fix. You can also spend more and put in underground drainage.

Why is this so important?   If water gets under your house it can cause huge $$$ issues:

a.       Foundation settlement

b.       Cracks in the foundation

c.         Rusts pipes and ductingd.

Environmental hazards like mold  So would you say that a foundation issue is a little cost, or a big cost?   It can be a devastating cost that will prevent a home from selling and seriously devalue the home™s worth.     Divert water away from your home and you will avoid huge problems down the road.

Stay tuned for Secret #2 to Easily & Cheaply Avoid Huge Home Repair Expenses!

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When it comes to deciding where to live, work, or go to school, how much do sports factor in your decision?  

This morning I was reading my copy of Phil Steele™s 2011 College Football Preview magazine.   The last several years has been pretty dismal for my UCLA Bruins, but I love football in general.   Phil has local QB Andrew Luck of Stanford as his #1 draft eligible QB.   This reminded me of the other day when I was listening to 95.7 The Game and the commentator was talking about how we in the Bay Area talk a lot about the 49ers and the Raiders, yet we have some amazing College football including Cal and especially Stanford with 2010 Heisman Finalist Andrew Luck that we should be talking more about.   We are so fortunate to have a really great selection of sports here in the Bay Area!   And I would be remiss here if I didn™t also mention our 2010 World Champion, San Francisco Giants.  

So I was thinking, when it comes to deciding where to live, work, or go to school, what part do sports play as a factor in your decision?  

When I was selecting a college I wanted to go to a top school.   Academics, yes of course, but I wanted to go to a large school with a national presence that had a football team that I could cheer on for the rest of my life.   UCLA was the perfect school for me.   Once I decided, that was the only school I even applied for.   And those were some great years for UCLA football!

Cade McNown was our QB and we beat USC every year I went to UCLA, which is always a glorious thing!   We also won the NCAA Championship for Basketball, Women™s Water Polo, and a few other sports.  LA is an interesting sports market.  The popular Pro teams are the Lakers and the Dodgers, but when it comes to football it is all about College football.   You are either a Bruin fan or a Trojan fan.   It™s a huge rivalry with the campuses only about 20 minutes apart, they™ve played each other every year since 1936.  

When the real estate prices here in the Bay Area were getting so high and pricing people out of the market, one of my friends decided to follow her boyfriend and move out of state.   Her boyfriend did a good amount of research on the location he chose to move to.   His criteria included the job market, cost of living, availability of affordable housing, and was there a major sports team in the area.  

What part did sports play a factor in your decision about where to live, work, or go to school?

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A home is an extension of us.    We get a little piece of land on this great big planet that we get to pick out and make it our own.    When you were younger, did you ever dream about your future home?   What would your own personal space look like?

Did you have a large dining room with tall ceilings and a dramatic chandelier where you entertained great dinner parties?  Or did you dream of a warm breakfast nook with the sun streaming in while you sip on your morning coffee?   Did you ever dream of moving to be near the ocean or near the mountains?   Did you dream of having a wine cellar or maybe a park-like back yard?  

Every home is unique to its owner.   It™s our retreat from a busy day.   It™s the place where kids take their first steps.   Home is where cherished moments of our lives happen.   Memories are situated by where you were at the time, and many of those memories take us to the home we grew up in¦ sitting around the kitchen table, or climbing our favorite tree.  

Have you ever taken a detour from your day to drive through your old neighborhood, or the home you grew up in?   The home we grew up in, the neighborhood we grew up in, the people we grew up with, are all a part of our history, our story.   It helped create who we are.

Often times we talk about making the financial decision to buy a home.   A CPA may tell us that one way to reduce our taxes is to buy a home.   One of the advantages of buying a home is being able to list our mortgage interest on our taxes.   Did you know that our neighbors to the north, Canada, do not have that same advantage of the tax write off?   Yet their home ownership rate is right in alignment with ours.   That means that the same percentage of the population owns a home in Canada as we do here in the United States.

Yes, owning a home does fit into our financial picture, but there™s more to it than that.   Owning a home is part of who we are, part of our family, part of our lives, part of our experiences, part of our memories.   It™s part of our past, and part of our future.  

What™s important about a home, for you?

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

   I  want to tell you about my client, Jill Pulver.   Jill is an amazing woman with a beautiful family “ her husband Mark and five of the most adorable well-behaved children I have ever met!   Jill had her dream job as a stay at home mom, homeschooling her children.   After a couple of moves into homes that they were renting, Jill looked around and decided that the thing she wanted most was to have a home where her kids could have pets and run and play and grow in a happy place that was their very own.

But how would she make that happen?   She thought, this is AMERICA, the land of opportunity!   With a degree in nutrition, Jill was naturally drawn to healthy products and had been using some products introduced to her by a hair stylist, Debra.   One day Debra said to her, œyou could sell these products!   Three years later not only did Jill sell those products, she built a team and they shared those products with so many people who also loved the products.   Jill did so well that she earned a white Mercedes from her company for her accomplishments.   And three months ago Jill called me and asked me to help her find her dream home!   Today she and her family live in that dream home!

Your lender decides what you can borrow but you decide what you can afford.

Lenders are careful, but they make qualification decisions based on averages and formulas. They won™t understand the nuances of your lifestyle and spending patterns quite as well as you do. So, leave a little room for the unexpected “ for all the new opportunities your home will give you to spend money, from furnishings, to landscaping, to repairs.

Historically, banks use a ratio called 28/36 to decide how much borrowers could borrow. An approved housing payment couldn™t be more than 28 percent of the buyer™s gross monthly income, and his or her total debt load, including car payments, student loans, and credit card payments, couldn™t be more than 36 percent.

As home prices have risen, some lenders have responded by stretching these ratios to as high as 50 percent. No matter how expensive your market though, we urge you to think carefully before stretching your budget quite so much.

Deciding how much you can afford should involve some careful attention to how your financial profile will change in the upcoming years. In the long run, your own peace of mind and security will matter most.

“Helping people become homeowners is a wonderful job. We help people achieve their real estate goals and help to strengthen families and our community. This is a win-win occupation, and we are so lucky to be in this kind of business.” To sell a property, contact The Collmer Team at 925-366-3823 on Twitter @MaileRealEstate or on Facebook.

Some of the other risks faced by buyers of short-sale properties include:

• Potential for rejection. Lenders want to minimize their losses as much as possible. If you make an offer tremendously lower than the fair market value of the home, chances are that your offer will be rejected and you™ll have wasted months. Or the lender could make a counteroffer, which will lengthen the process.
• Bad terms. Even when a lender approves a short sale, it could require that the sellers sign a promissory note to repay the deficient amount of the loan, which may not be acceptable to some financially desperate sellers. In that case, the sellers may refuse to go through with the short sale. Lenders also can change any of the terms of the contract that you™ve already negotiated, which may not be agreeable to you.
• No repairs or repair credits. You will most likely be asked to take the property œas is. Lenders are already taking a loss on the property and may not agree to requests for repair credits.

The risks of a short sale are considerable. But if you have the time, patience, and iron will to see it through, a short sale can be a win-win for you and the sellers.

Note: This article provides general information only. Information is not provided as advice for a specific matter. Laws vary from state to state. For advice on a specific matter, consult your attorney or CPA.

Be sure to also read our post on “How Do You Know if You’re a Good Candidate for a Short-Sale Purchase?” & “What are the Risks for Buyers of Short-Sale Properties?”.

Ronni and Maile Collmer are a mother-daughter real estate team that cares about you, and where you live!   Ronni and Maile have been working together in real estate for as long as Maile can remember. In fact, we have a picture of Maile, as a toddler, standing next to her mom™s œFor Sale sign in Hawaii, where Ronni first worked as a Realtor.   Ronni’s served as the President of the Contra Costa Chapter of the Women™s Council of Realtors in 1997 and as the State Governor of WCR in 1999. Maile has served as the Vice President-Membership of the Women™s Council of Realtors for two years and is on the National Marketing Committee. “Helping people become homeowners is a wonderful job. We help people achieve their real estate goals and help to strengthen families and our community. This is a win-win occupation, and we are so lucky to be in this kind of business.” To sell a property, contact The Collmer Team at 925-366-3823 on Twitter @MaileRealEstate or on Facebook.

Reprinted from REALTOR ® magazine (REALTOR.org/realtormag) with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS ®. Copyright 2008-2010. All rights reserved.

If you’re serious about purchasing a short-sale property, it’s important for you to have expert assistance.

Here are some people you want to work with:

• Experienced real estate attorney. Only about two out of five short sales are approved by lenders. But a good real estate attorney who’s knowledgeable about the short-sale process will increase your chances getting an approved contract. Also, if you want any provisions or very specialized language written into the purchase contract, a real estate attorney is essential throughout the negotiation.

• A qualified real estate professional.* You may have a close friend or relative in real estate, but if that person doesn™t know anything about short sales, working with him or her may hurt your chances of a successful closing. Interview a few practitioners and ask them how many buyers they’ve represented in a short sale and, of those, how many have successfully closed.

  A qualified real estate professional will be able to show you short-sale homes, help negotiate the purchase when you find the property you want to buy, and smooth communications with the lender. (All MLSs permit, and some now require, special notations to indicate that a listing is a short sale. There also are certain phrases you can watch for, such as œlender approval required.)

• Title officer. It™s a good idea to have a title officer do an initial title search on a short-sale property to see all the liens attached to the property. If there are multiple lien holders (e.g., second or third mortgage or lines of credit, real estate tax lien, mechanic™s lien, homeowners association lien, etc.), it’s much tougher to get that short sale contract to the closing table. Any of the lien holders could put a kink in the process even after you™ve waited for months for lender approval. If you don™t know a title officer, your real estate attorney or real estate professional should be able to recommend a few.

Be sure to also read our post on “How Do You Know if You’re a Good Candidate for a Short-Sale Purchase?” & “What are the Risks for Buyers of Short-Sale Properties?”.

* Not all real estate practitioners are REALTORS ®. A REALTOR ® is a member of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS ® and is bound by NAR™s strict code of ethics.

Note: This article provides general information only. Information is not provided as advice for a specific matter. Laws vary from state to state. For advice on a specific matter, consult your attorney or CPA.

Ronni and Maile Collmer are a mother-daughter real estate team that cares about you, and where you live!   Ronni and Maile have been working together in real estate for as long as Maile can remember. In fact, we have a picture of Maile, as a toddler, standing next to her mom™s œFor Sale sign in Hawaii, where Ronni first worked as a Realtor.   Ronni’s served as the President of the Contra Costa Chapter of the Women™s Council of Realtors in 1997 and as the State Governor of WCR in 1999. Maile has served as the Vice President-Membership of the Women™s Council of Realtors for two years and is on the National Marketing Committee. “Helping people become homeowners is a wonderful job. We help people achieve their real estate goals and help to strengthen families and our community. This is a win-win occupation, and we are so lucky to be in this kind of business.” To sell a property, contact The Collmer Team at 925-366-3823 on Twitter @MaileRealEstate or on Facebook.

Reprinted from REALTOR ® magazine (REALTOR.org/realtormag) with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS ®. Copyright 2008-2010. All rights reserved.

Making an Offer on a Short Sale? What You Need to Know

Are you looking to buy a new home? Are you thinking that now’s a great time to find bargains? Before you make an offer, it pays to know a little about the seller’s situation.

If a home is being sold for below what the current seller owes on the property”and the seller does not have other funds to make up the difference at closing”the sale is considered a short sale. Many more home owners are finding themselves in this situation due to a number of factors, including job losses, aggressive borrowing against their home in the days of easy credit, and declining home values in a slower real estate market.

A short sale is different from a foreclosure, which is when the seller’s lender has taken title of the home and is selling it directly. Homeowners often try to accomplish a short sale in order to avoid foreclosure. But a short sale holds many potential pitfalls for buyers. Know the risks before you pursue a short-sale purchase.

You’re a good candidate for a short-sale purchase if:

• You’re very patient. Even after you come to agreement with the seller to buy a short-sale property, the seller™s lender (or lenders, if there is more than one mortgage) has to approve the sale before you can close. When there is only one mortgage, short-sale experts say lender approval typically takes about two months. If there is more than one mortgage with different lenders, it can take four months or longer for the lenders to approve the sale.
• Your financing is in order. Lenders like cash offers. But even if you can™t pay all cash for a short-sale property, it™s important to show you are well qualified and your financing is set. If you’re preapproved, have a large down payment, and can close at any time, your offer will be viewed more favorably than that of a buyer whose financing is less secure.
• You don™t have any contingencies. If you have a home to sell before you can close on the purchase of the short-sale property”or you need to be in your new home by a certain time”a short sale may not be for you. Lenders like no-contingency offers and flexible closing terms.

Be sure to also read our upcoming posts on “Which Experts Can Help You With a Short-Sale Purchase?” & “What are the Risks for Buyers of Short-Sale Properties?”.

Note: This article provides general information only. Information is not provided as advice for a specific matter. Laws vary from state to state. For advice on a specific matter, consult your attorney or CPA.

Ronni and Maile Collmer are a mother-daughter real estate team that cares about you, and where you live!   Ronni and Maile have been working together in real estate for as long as Maile can remember. In fact, we have a picture of Maile, as a toddler, standing next to her mom™s œFor Sale sign in Hawaii, where Ronni first worked as a Realtor.   Ronni’s served as the President of the Contra Costa Chapter of the Women™s Council of Realtors in 1997 and as the State Governor of WCR in 1999. Maile has served as the Vice President-Membership of the Women™s Council of Realtors for two years and is on the National Marketing Committee. “Helping people become homeowners is a wonderful job. We help people achieve their real estate goals and help to strengthen families and our community. This is a win-win occupation, and we are so lucky to be in this kind of business.” To sell a property, contact The Collmer Team at 925-366-3823 on Twitter @MaileRealEstate or on Facebook.

Reprinted from REALTOR ® magazine (REALTOR.org/realtormag) with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS ®. Copyright 2008-2010. All rights reserved.