How hard is it to take a decent quality photo of your listings? How do you justify a seller paying you 5-6% for your professional marketing expertiese and you can't even take the time to take a halfway decent photo of their house.
Attention fellow lazy real estate agents: Please stop posting blurry, low resolution photos of listings on the MLS, you are doing a diservice to your clients and only degrading public perception of our trade.
With the recent natural disasters in Haiti, Chile and Japan I know many Californians have been asking themselves if they are properly prepared for an earthquake of similar magnitude. I think many people realize they are not adequately coverd but either aren't sure what they should do, don't know if they can afford to insure themselves against the risk or don't know if the cost of the insurance makes financial sense. The website below has some great information to help people answer questions regarding whether or not earthquake insurance is right for you.
Essentially the Mortgage industry would come to a grinding halt which means the Real Estate industry would stop too.
http://www.realtor.org/government_affairs/gapublic/potential_shutdown
This will kill jobs in RE & Mortgage Industry, this doesn't just mean RE & Loan Officers this means all of the operational support, underwriters, managers, processors, also all of the services these businesses use i.e.- accountants, human resources people, maintenance, not to mention all of the industries that are connected to residential real estate: construction, furniture stores, material suppliers, landscapers, contractors of all trades, I have no idea what # of jobs we are talking about but there is 0 doubt that we are talking 7 figure job loss at the end of the day when the impact of these deciscions is analyzed across the country. I don't understand why…
low housing prices are not neccesarily a bad thing...
stop the ridiculous government interference that allows some of the worse perpetrators of mortgage fraud to live in their house forever without paying (taxpayers end up paying their bills in the long run)
Accountability is important, we need foreclosures and to have them re-sold at true market prices to new buyers who will start paying property taxes, insurance and spending money on all the other items and services that people need to maintain their home, this will help the economy.
HUD is doing this because apparently their insurance reserve is low, FHA volume only picked up since the Mortgage Industry imploded. Since that time values have crashed and many first time homebuyers who use FHA financing have rates so low that they are literally owning for less than they can rent for, why would they default? Are defaults really that high with FHA now? What is draining the HUD insurance reserves so quickly?
According to an article published 2/8/2011 in National Mortgage Professional Magazine, a recent Coldwell Banker survey of 300 consumers who had just purchased their home found that 87 percent said that finding a "Move-In" ready home was important.
In addition to looking for "Move-In" ready homes there were several additional interesting trends among first time home buyers in 2010:
67 percent said the market afforded them the opportunity to buy a home sooner than expected
Half said they found a home in a more desirable neighborhood than expected
61 percent were able to get the home at a better price than expected
40 percent got more space than expected
43 percent locked in a lower interest rate than expected
Standard and Poors Rating Services are predicting it will take 49 months to clear out all the bank owned "Shadow Inventory" held by U.S. financial institutions at the end of the 4th Quarter of 2010. This is only 1 of the important factors that has to take place for home values to begin to rise, we also need unemployment levels to decrease and general consumer confidence to improve. If you are thinking of waiting to sell for prices to "come back" to what you think your property is worth based on 2005-2007 market peaks I advise preparing yourself for a significant waiting period.
Federal Housing Administration has extended the time they will allow sellers who have owned for less than 90 days to re-sale a property. I'm assuming the same restrictions as before will exist (i.e. 20% max appreciation, full home inspection by lender, 2 appraisals etc., etc.) If you are interested in finding out more info on this topic please call me at 310 874-1278
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-harney-20110116,0,6473194.story
This is good news for Real Estate Investors, First-Time Homebuyers and the Real Estate market in general. Which basically means this is good news for the overall economy.
