On Monday night, the City Council spent most of the evening considering various housing related issues. Culminating almost 3 years of stakeholder involvement (homeless advocates, landlords, city staff, etc), the Community Development Director presented the City Council its report.

Much of the discussion concerns “bootlegged” dwelling units (converted garages, un-permited room additions, etc), but what concerns a lot of Realtors is a proposal for an official, notarized inspection of all home sales in the City, provided to the City, conducted by a local certified home inspector (the “Local Resale Inspection Report Program”). See page 9 in the report. There would be fees involved for this report to the City.

In my personal opinion, this is completely unwarranted and unjustified. There is no reason the City needs to become so intimately involved in this intrusive manner of “big brother”. There will now be hundreds of dollars of extra cost for a home inspector to go to City hall to review the permit file, then act as an appraiser and measure the square footage of the home, determine number of rooms, etc, then have his report notarized before turning it into the City.

Unbelievable! How can this creeping bureaucracy continue? Have these people lost their common sense? I say – enough already!!

The HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives) program became official on April 5, 2010. The HAFA program stream lines the short sale process by preapproving the short sale prior to the homeowner putting their home on the market. There are other great benefits – see our short intro video on HAFA.

But the guidelines didn’t include Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgages. Finally, those guidelines were just released… Read the rest of this article »

I recently received a phone call from a seller wanting to know if she should disclose a particular piece of information regarding some neighborhood activity.

The answer?? Yes!

If you know it – disclose it. Complete transparency benefits the buyer and you as the seller.

We all want to hear stuff what makes us feel good (or at least not bad), but when you think about selling your home or other property you need wise counsel.  What do I mean? Read the rest of this article »

Real estate goes in cycles.  During the heyday of exponential price increases a few years ago, sellers called the shots. It wasn’t unusual to have more offers than what you really wanted. We stopped taking offers on listings once we had ten! Read the rest of this article »

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!

What IS a short pay?

A short pay simply means you owe more on your home or property than what it’s worth. Many people who purchased a home in the past several years (with little or no down payment) now find themselves “upside down” in their homes, and maybe the financing on that purchase money loan (or loans) has (or will) reset to substantially higher payments. Read the rest of this article »