2 Agent Misunderstandings That Can Ruin Your Transaction
Two of the more common mistakes I see on real estate contracts is
The short answer is, neither of these is allowed by lenders. |
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Allowances / Holdbacks / Credits
The idea is, you’ll buy my house from me, at closing I’ll let the escrow keep $xxxx dollars from me for you to use on repairs to the house.
Just this morning I ran a search on the Spokane MLS for the word “allowance” and found 37 listings offering escrow allowances:
- Buyer to receive $10k roofing allowance w/acceptable offer at closing.
- $4,000 exterior paint allowance to buyer at closing.
- Up to $5,000 driveway allowance, paid at funding.
- With acceptable offer seller will offer $10,000 credit on HUD as a repair allowance to the buyers.
Seems fine and dandy, until you try and get your loan funded. The loan underwriter will shoot this down faster and harder than Dick Cheney taking aim on a quail hunt.
What we are NOT talking about is having the seller contribute cash toward the buyer’s loan closing costs. This is a perfectly legitimate and accepted practice from the lender’s eyes. What we are talking about is the seller leaving a credit, (Read more » » » »)
I Love FHA, and so do my clients
I love FHA. I love everything about it.
If I could I’d send FHA a little love note and flowers and take FHA out on a date. We’d go to the new Churchhill’s steakhouse in town, then head for a nice stroll along Riverfront Park. I hope my wife doesn’t mind, I’ve invited FHA to move in with us.
FHA-insured mortgages have been the saving grace in an otherwise bloodied lending landscape. My clients have benefited immensely from FHA-insured mortgages. Just this week a client of mine, about to close on a house using an FHA mortgage, wrote to me and said “Thankyou for all the small but significant things you do for us besides the big things… helping us with our investment planning (two homes)…”
See if this scenario works for you…
The Scenario:
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 Bedroom of current home - GORGEOUS, and soon to be a rental |
Spokane Real Estate Market Update May 2008 (part 2)
Part 2 of the Spokane Real Estate Market Update for May 2008… here are a few useful charts and graphs I put together based on the data I pull and analyze from the Spokane Association of Realtors(r).
Again, what we see is
- The usual spring-time uptick in Spokane home sales
- A VERY soft winter in terms of volume of homes sold and seller’s negotiating power
- Volatile month-over-month median sales prices
The Spokanesman Review also mentioned a large drop in high-endSpokane homes sales.
Click on each graph icon below to open the full graph in a new window.
Thanks,
Aaron
Spokane Real Estate Market Update May 2008
Our Spokane real estate market is kicked into high gear
Not as high a gear as the last few years, but the market is certainly holding it’s own. Spring is here and so are the buyers. The market ramped-up mid-February when the snow melted and buyers thawed out, leading to a big March and April closing period.
This is the first statistics report, so, nothing to compare it to from the last few months, we can only look at the raw numbers and MLS statistics.
When we look at the MLS statistics, what are we really looking at?
Everything. Every property type. Every city within the MLS. Which is why I don’t like using the MLS stats. Generally, when we discuss the Spokane real estate market, I want to know about single-family homes in and around Spokane, not in Colville, Spangle, etc. Not condos. Not 120 acre parcels. Nothing wrong with these communities or property types, but I want to know about, analyze and discuss Spokane houses.
So, let’s look at Spokane houses, as of May 10th, 2008:
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