You’re meeting with a prospective Realtor about selling your home. You’ve decided to go with him or her.

Now the agent is filling out the listing agreement. A key consideration is -  How long should the agreement be for?

Hint – many agents will want to “lock you up” and make the agreement 6 months or longer. Is this wise? The short answer is no. When we work with seller clients, we stress 60 or maybe 90 days. Why?

Because you’re not really sure if your Realtor can or will perform! If you’re happy with your relationship, you can always extend the listing agreement, but only if you’re getting the results you want and need. If you’ve signed a long term agreement and the relationship isn’t working out, you’re stuck and very unhappy.

So my advice is to keep it short. It also motivates your agent to sell your property!

Come see 9 bank owned homes in the North Oxnard area in 90 minutes! Call Leslie at 659-2000 for more info!

Here is the June newsletter. See pictures of our speed dating of bank foreclosed homes in Camarillo. We also put on a home buying workshop at the end of May covering important aspects of the loan, closing costs and the purchase offer.

Two big events coming up for the month of June  – a home buying workshop on the 26th and a speed dating caravan on Saturday, the 28th for homes in the St. John’s area of Oxnard.

Read about Don’s 2 speaking engagements in the community.

A 90 minute, fast paced, informative and fun workshop covering stuff you wanted to know and were afraid to ask! Call Leslie at 659-2000 for more info!

This comparison is of the price per square foot for homes that closed escrow in the three cities of Camarillo, Oxnard, and Ventura for the month of May. For single family homes, the trend is mostly downward depending on the size of the home. The larger homes in Camarillo showed an increase in $/Sq.Ft. Condominiums in Oxnard also showed an increase in $/Sq.Ft. while Camarillo and Ventura were downward.

The May pending numbers are in for Camarillo, Ventura and Oxnard. Camarillo continues on about the same as in May 2007 but Oxnard continues to be white hot in homes that are in escrow! Ventura is seeing a fair spike in activity.

The National Association of Realtors came out with this statement today:

“PENDING HOME SALES UP 6.3 PERCENT IN APRIL
The number of pending sales contracts for existing homes rose 6.3 percent in April, according to the latest Pending Homes Sales Index from NAR. The Index rose to 88.2 in April, up from 83 in March.

’Pending sales contracts have picked up notably in areas undergoing significant price drops,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist “Bargain hunters have entered the market en masse, especially in areas that have experienced double-digit price declines, but it’s unclear if they are investors or owner-occupants.’”

At the beginning of this year there was great hand wringing over the sub-prime mess and the havoc it was (and still is) creating. Pundits have called our current financial crisis the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. There was great demand for Congress to “do something”, thus Congress kicked into gear (for example, limits were temporarily raised on FHA loans to make them available to high priced places like California).

But some ideas being floated around Congress are generating intense philosophical debate, namely the concept of “moral hazard”. Moral hazard is an insurance term, used to describe how people possibly may behave under certain circumstances. Read the rest of this article »

The morning was sunny and clear and about a dozen folks attended a First Time Homebuyer Workshop on May 31st. It was held in our office on County Square Drive in Ventura. Don and Leslie taught the workshop and covered the numerous aspects of the money involved in getting a loan, credit scores, qualifying yourself for a loan, common types of loans for entry level buyers, short pays and REOs, the Residential Purchase Agreement (RPA), and escrow. To wrap up our time, two past clients shared their “in the trenches” real life experiences and thoughts as they were buying their first homes.

In June, we’ll be having another homebuyer workshop and also another REO “speed dating” caravan of foreclosed homes – this time in the North Oxnard area around St. John’s Hospital. Stay tuned…