C21AGVoices

If you aren’t going through a foreclosure yourself, then you might feel like the mortgage crisis doesn’t have a whole lot to do with you. But, there are some interesting changes to lending practices that can impact you when you’re looking to purchase or sell a property. Today I got the latest scoop on what’s going on in the mortgage industry and how it will impact you as a buyer or seller in the current market.

1 – Your Credit Score matters, not only to your mortgage company, but to your mortgage insurance company. If your credit is score is too low, the mortgage insurance company will not want to insure the loan, even if your mortgage company is willing to lend it to you. In addition, your score can have an impact on both your closing costs and your monthly payments. So one of the best things you can do in preparing to buy a home, is to work on improving your credit score.

2 – Offer a Fair Price for your home. Lenders are being stringent on appraisal values, because they now recognize that if they lend more than a property is worth, and then need to foreclose, they will never recoup the full loan amount. When you make an offer, make sure your real estate agent shows you accurate comparable sales that are near the property and in similar condition. If your offer price is higher than the appraisal, the seller may not want to reduce their price, which leaves you without a mortgage and without the house.

3 – Allow Enough Time to get to settlement. A variety of issues can arise from the time of the appraisal to the time of the mortgage commitment. Often, the appraisal is not ordered until after the inspection issues have been resolved, leaving only a short time for the loan process. A settlement date set for 5 weeks from the date of the signed agreement should be sufficient.

As a seller, what’s important to the buyer’s mortgage is important to you. If the buyer is unable to obtain the mortgage, then you are still left with the property. This means keeping your price and time frame realistic with today’s market. You will also want your real estate agent to ensure that the buyer is working with a reputable lender, that their financial information appears to support their ability to purchase the property at the agreed price, and that an actual mortgage commitment is obtained by the date agreed upon.

A knowledgeable real estate professional should be able to help you navigate the pitfalls of the current mortgage climate to ensure a successful real estate transaction.

Every homeowner’s basic toolkit should include caulk, a sealing agent for sinks, bathtubs, windows and other places where seams exist.

And now, with the mass-market availability of Caulk Singles, that toolkit can be made a bit smaller.

Caulk Singles are a one-time-use caulk package, squeezable from the bottom-up and billed as easier-to-control and clean-up than the familiar caulking gun and tube.

But, at a cost of $2.50 per package, it’s also considerably more expensive than “the old packaging”. By comparison, a tube of traditional caulk costs about $6.00 per package and holds close to 8 times as much material as its single-use cousin.

Caulk Singles are marketed by GE and available for sales at Lowe’s Ace Hardware and True Value. Free samples are available with sign-up at https://www.caulksingles.com.

The phrase “Consumer Price Index” can be intimidating and unclear to Americans. It’s an economic term, after all, and not a part of everyday American language.

It even has its own abbreviation to add to the confusion — CPI.

So, when a layperson hears that “CPI is rising”, it’s not always clear what it means. The tendency, therefore, is to ignore the news.

This is one reason CPI is commonly substituted with the more down-home expression of “Cost of Living”.

In contrast to the term “CPI”, the phrase “Cost of Living” is a lot more clear. When people hear that the Cost of Living is rising, instinctively, they get it. And now they can see how it works in numbers, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Inflation Calculator at the government Web site helps a person compare household income to the changing Cost of Living between any two years since 1913. For example, a U.S. household earning $48,201 in 2007 would have to increase that income to $50,868 just to keep up with “life”.

CPI touched a 17-year high in June, jumping 5.000 percent year-over-year. Without a 5.000 percent increase an income, a household falls behind.

Oh the good old days, being brand new and being told, “Welcome, this is now your office, you can come in anytime you want and use the facilities, call me if you need anything!” Isn’t that amazing that I knew what you were told on your official 1st day? Well, that’s because it was not long ago that I was given that exact phrase too!

At that point, just after being introduced to everyone who happened to be in the office at that time, you get that Deer in headlights feeling, that OMG what do I do now? Well, what I can tell you based on my experience is this; Get to know the staff as best you can. Get to know the phone as best you can. Once you feel comfortable with someone who is very experienced, ask them to mentor you. This is Most Important, as this will help lay your foundation and we all know how important the foundation of a well built home is, right?

Now that you’ve started on your foundation, go get your confidence. You can help grow your confidence by repetition or practice. You can do this by getting really close with the phone and cold calling people. I did this every day from 6-8 pm, after the last person’s floor time ended, I took over. I very quickly exercised the demons and became very confident in myself. This becomes priceless. This cannot be taught, you must go and get it for yourself. Over time, you will learn from your Mentor, you may even challenge them on certain issues, but you must always remember what they are to you and what they’ve done for you.

Over time you must learn dialogue and systems (see my blog about Sharpening Your Axe). When you combine your new found confidence with systems & dialogue and you’ve consumed the knowledge from your Mentor, you should become a very productive and successful Century 21 Advantage Gold Agent!

Photo Courtesy of creativecommons.org Ric E Ette

In a world where each gallon of gas costs over $4, people are interested in buying properties in convenient locations. They want to be able to take trains or buses or other forms of public transportation, and wonder of wonders, they want to be able to walk places.

Technology being what it is, someone created a website called WalkScorewhere they can actually find out how an area ranks in its “walkability”.  Their argument is unassailable.

Picture a walkable neighborhood. You lose weight each time you walk to the grocery store. You stumble home from last call without waiting for a cab. You spend less money on your car—or you don’t own a car. When you shop, you support your local economy. You talk to your neighbors.

 Recently, WalkScore decided to rank 2,508 neighborhoods in the top 40 cities in the United States. And there,  at #5 was Philadelphia ! Philadelphia ranks at 74 for walkability, which is defined as “Very Walkable: It’s possible to get by without owning a car. ”  Imagine a place where you can go to the store, the library, school, or recreation without owning a car!

Of course there are some areas where a car just makes sense, but many of the areas of the city are so easily walkable that a family can certainly get by with one car. Imagine what that savings would mean. Having that car payment available to use for your mortgage payment, or saving a tank of gas a week , perhaps as much as $300 per month to help with your housing expense,

Its sure nice to be at the top of this list. Makes me want to go out and walk over to buy a newspaper

Since you’re reading this you know we’re committed to being on-line.
We Blog, we twitter (follow me @billLublin or this blog @c21agvoices), we maintain the “normal” websites for people to look for properties, we publish our listings to century21.com, and we syndicate our listings to over a dozen other websites. And we have to be on REALTOR.COM

I was never a big fan of REALTOR.COM, but you sort of have to be there to make sellers happy. We monitor the sources of inquiries, and people don’t visit us as frequently from there as the do from c21ag.com or c21ag.net, or century21.com or any of the dozen other sites we post our listings to. And, since its the single most expensive internet site we participate in, I imagine you can understand why I felt the way I felt about the program. Most people in our industry who are tech savvy aren’t big fans of REALTOR.COM, but as part of a local Century 21 Broker Council Initiative, we decided to participate by increasing our presence on the site by showcasing our listings.

Surprise, surprise, consumers started responding through REALTOR.COM more frequently as soon as our listing became showcase listings. Possibly the addition of our company logo on the search pages makes it easier for them to click through to our company site. Maybe the additional pictures on each listing is more attractive to them. Or perhaps they like all of the neighborhood information they can find on the site about schools , crime, age of inhabitants, etc.

Whatever the reason, our showcased listings have been embraced by potential purchasers, which obviously is of benefit to our sellers, who want their properties to be seen by the widest possible audience. With the National Association of REALTORS latest Internet Survey showing that 90% of the buyers looking for property are searching the Internet, begin showcased seems to be the right way to be on REALTOR.COM

Photo courtesy of Creativecommons.org

More ideas here and here

The small things we do add up quickly, saving energy means saving money.

In this two-and-a-half minute video from Expert Village, nurseryman Scott Reil tells us:

1. Why weeding is important
2. How to weed with efficiency at home
3. How to use mulch as a weed-retardant

There are two basic ways to weed a garden, according to our video host — you can use your hands or you can use your garden tools. Both are effective, but the latter can be a real time-saver.

Full House Century 21 Australia

We all talk about the International Associates of the CENTURY 21 System. And at our International Convention each year, we get to meet agents from all over the world. France, China, Japan, Mexico, England, and Australia to name a few.

I thought you might enjoy seeing this little commercial from Australian Television which shows that life down under seems real home like when you see the familiar Century 21 brand helping consumers down under like they do down the street.

Another day, another piece of inflationary data.

June’s Consumer Price Index showed a 5 percent year-over-year increase in what is now the largest annual Cost of Living increase for Americans in 17 years.

This is bad news for active home buyers because rising costs are considered inflationary and inflation causes mortgage rates to increase.

Predictably, mortgage rates jumped Wednesday morning after the CPI data was released and they continued to move higher throughout the day.

For most home loans, mortgage rates finished the day up by 0.125 percent.

Applying Wednesday’s mortgage rate movement to the true cost of owning a home, the eighth-percent increase added $96 per $100,000 mortgaged per year.

(Image courtesy: The New York Times)