Ryan

Your site is coming along well! I’m going to have to start taking a few pages from your playbook. Thanks again for the plug.

Ryan

I live in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario and the luxury condo market is starting to take off with a bunch of new developments. It seems like a lot of the buyers are investors/speculators, and as a result, many of the units are turned into rentals right away.

The developer is the one that puts in the initial rules, and it isn’t in their best interest to put in a rental cap (since they’d scare away the investors). So, by the time some of these developments are done, there are already a fair number of renters. Can’t say that this has been a problem in the higher end condos, but it is interesting anyway.

I’ve just bought into a new development myself, and I plan to keep a blog about the experience at http://kdubcondo.blogspot.com

The FHA insurance pricing model overhaul is, I believe, long overdue. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the simplicity of the model, and the existing model proved QUITE attractive to my clients with low credit scores. My read on the new model is it isn’t too extreme, higher upfront mortgage insurance (which most clients finance anyway), and a VERY slightly higher monthly cost for lower FICO scores. Not too bad, really.

On the mortgage side, we got flipped on our heads in early March when the Mortgage Insurance companies threw us a paradigm shift in their guidelines, I believe this next week ushers another minor shift as well in credit risk assesment with the rollout of Fannie Mae’s DU 7.0

And, I loathe the catch phrases and glossiness sometimes found within the real estate industry. I speak from the heart, I put my pants on one leg at a time just like anybody else, and I enjoy sharing my experiences and education that have come with my career choice in real estate and mortgages (actually, it is a calling, ‘a career choice’ is really an understatement).

You’ll never hear me say “now is a great time to buy”. It is only a great time to buy if it is right for your personal situation, regardless of the market. Same goes for selling. Reality is, it is only a great time to make a buy or sell decision a few times during anyone’s lifetime… and it is quite an honor to be able to help a client make wise and prudent decisions throughout the process.

Thanks,

Aaron

FHA wondeful thing that it is is changing their pricing model on May 31st. It may be a bit more expensive for some clients in the future.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-re-harney18-2008may18,0,4051644.story

Still, pendings doesn’t give the most accurate read possible, because there will always be a “flub” rate of homes that go to pending, but come back on the market because buyer’s financing falls through, buyer changes their mind, etc. Regardless, the #months supply will, over time, help tell us how the current market is performing relative to other time periods. I’m not so interested in the absolute number for # months supply, rather, how the number compares to previous time periods.

Thanks,

Aaron