Real Estate

Austin Real Estate Agent Warns That $8000 Tax Credit is Set to Expire.

Austin real estate broker and author Kenn Renner reminds first time homebuyers that the $8000 federal tax credit will expire November 30th, 2009. In February 2009, President Obama signed into law the American Recover and Reinvestment Act of 2009. One of the key components of the act was the $8000 First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit. Basically, a gift from the federal government to be allocated to qualified first time homebuyers. The act has been received favorably by consumers, real estate professionals, and homebuilders. The National Association of Realtors recently reported that 53% of todays homebuyers are first timers. Experts give credit, in part, to the $8000 tax credit. Low interest rates and low prices have also played a big part in the home buying activity.

Buying a first home at the right time is always a good move, comments Kenn Renner, real estate expert with Keller Williams Realty. Homebuyers just need to realize that the tax gift is going away and that now is the time to take action, he added.

Just as the cash for clunkers program recently expired, the first time homebuyers tax credit is set to expire. The deadline is Monday, November 30th. This day is the Monday after the Thanksgiving Day Holidays. Title companies, escrow companies, and mortgage companies have been alerting the real estate community and their clientele to not wait until the last minute to close on a home as they will be overwhelmed with home buyers trying to beat the deadline.

I have heard some title companies mention they will need purchase contracts in by late October to ensure they have plenty of time to meet the deadline, Kenn explains. There is no grace period there is talk that the government may continue the program, but right now we cannot assume any date except the current deadline that is stated in the law.

In Austin, as in other cities, this has created a flurry of activity, even creating a sellers market in many markets in the first time homebuyer price range. Well priced properties in good areas under $200,000 are flying off the shelf, mentions Kenn. At this point, I have been encouraging home renters to consider purchasing the home they are currently renting. This has been a good strategy for all involved. Often times, the landlords are ready to sell and the buyers can get the $8000 credit and not have to move its a win-win!

Down payment assistance programs are being offered by many government agencies including county and state bond programs. Many programs are now available to first timers that combine the $8000 tax credit along with zero down and those with lower credit scores. This is a perfect opportunity to buy your first home with the help of government assistance.

Duration : 0:2:29

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In part 4 of 8, find out “The Solution” to the Puzzle. You’ll learn the first step to solving the square footage puzzle. Created for brokers and agents.

Duration : 0:1:41

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In part 4 (of of the Solving the Square Footage Puzzle series, discover the first step in the solution. You’ll learn the first key step to solving the puzzle and providing your clients (and yourself) with a new level of liability protection. Created for brokers and agents.

Duration : 0:2:8

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Home Loan Modifications Negotiated by Licensed Attorneys. Real Estate & Mortgage Laws and Guidelines are Complex. Beware of the Banks Loss Mitigation Department. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 7 (Excerpt)

Attorney negotiated loan modification process Going thru the Legal Door

We have Dan Havey with us talking about loan modifications. This segment we want to talk about the specifics of the actual mechanics of, how does it actually work for the homeowner? Let me just start it off and if you would then explain the back end of how it works. Our job is to determine where you’re at now, be very specific about where you’re at with your mortgage now, what the rate is, what it’s done, those specifics. How much you make? We have to help the lender with one thing which is to establish a hardship which is crucial to this. You can’t be making half $1 million a year paying $5000 a month in a mortgage, they are not just going to lower your interest rate because you want it. There actually has to be some sort of change, financial change, hardship.

We determined that and then there is a significant amount of paperwork involved, Velocity Financial takes care of that for you. We fill out the paperwork along with your help, review all of the documentation, we then recommend be right loan modification, whether it be an interest rate reduction, or extending the term of your loan, waiving some of the balance that you owe which is very very rare. To make sure that once we’re done with this whole process you can sustain and live in that house and be happy forever.

So the process itself really is not that much different than what people went through when they got their loan in the first place. That is correct and it’s kind of funny, this has to be exactly the reverse. There is paperwork that we need to collect on your mortgages, we check the value of the property to see where you’re at and in most cases youre underwater with the value. We dont do an appraisal though, there is no credit analysis, we do review your finances, and these sorts of things but essentially it’s just like doing a loan. What we’re trying to determine is exactly what is sustainable for you.

So what we do at the modification hotline at Velocity Financial is to put together the entire package, just like we do for a loan package because we basically send this to a underwriter, theyre not known as an underwriter they’re known as a loan modification coordinator but at modification hotline we are the first set of eyes. We work with you directly, getting all the paperwork in, getting it put together because we know exactly what has to be in that file, how it has to be stacked, how it has to be presented, before it goes to the loan modification coordinator who works for the attorney.

Then once it is at the attorneys office with their modification coordinator, they take a look at it, they make sure that everything is in there, they make sure that it is a doable modification. This all happens before it is ever presented to an attorney.

There are a whole lot of steps and there is a lot of paperwork. The process like you said is very similar to a loan with the exception that there are no costs of the title company and all that other stuff. Those dont exist, we dont charge an upfront fee, and we do collect a retainer for the attorney. At some point during our process we make our recommendations and we turn it in. Then the attorney does their due diligence and thats where I really want you to explain what happens, what are these attorneys looking for?

Well this is where it completely goes off track, versus what a homeowner would do if they were doing their own modification, because they would do everything we just talked about, they would fill out the paperwork, get together tax returns, pay stubs, whatever the lender wanted and they would present all of it to the lender. Now they probably wouldn’t know exactly how to stack some of the paperwork, and how to calculate some of the things that we know how to calculate, but they would put all that they work together.

Where the difference comes in is once it gets to the attorney because the attorney ultimately wants to get you a loan modification but they can’t just call up the bank and say hey I want loan modification, because he is going to get the same result you did. So what he has to do is he has to go through the file, and he has to look for things like, I am going to use a bunch of acronyms here, he’s looking for things like TILA, RESPA, HOEPA, HUD violations, all these different guidelines that the lender was required to meet while giving you the loan.

Duration : 0:6:47

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First Time Home Buyers use FHA Mortgage and Seller Paid Closing Costs to Buy Real Estate Now. Best Market Conditions for Foreclosures and Short Sales in Decades. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 1 (Excerpt)

Seller paid closing costs the best deal going

Today were going to be talking about mortgage strategies, buying real estate, all the different things that you need to know from here on out through 2009, lots and lots of opportunities. We brought back once again one of the best financial planners in the entire country Mr. Brett Fallon.

We also have in the studio today a very good friend of mine Mr. Dan Havey. Dan has been in the real estate and mortgage industry for over 20 years, in fact he got me into the industry, he was instrumental, in fact the major hand behind putting together of the loan modification hotline.

Velocity Financial is a financial services firm, were primarily focused on doing mortgages for residential purchasing and refinances. One of the things that we have seen is that the purchasing market has picked up quite a bit and looks in my eyes like we very well may have hit the bottom on prices.

You can buy a 3000 square foot house for $150,000 these days, and one thing that we’ve recently found is most of the sellers are willing to pay closing costs on behalf of the buyer. Its a known fact that it’s a cold sellers market and sellers are happy to have an offer, whether it be a low offer or not.

Now I have a couple examples I want to share, it’s important to point out that I am not a realtor, I dont want to be a realtor, those people that take the time to get a license to be realtors they know what they’re doing and they do it very well, however you being the person that is going to buy a home, you need to protect every penny that you can. The example I have written down, and Brett feel free to chime in at any time if I should happen to miss something here.

I’ve put together a scenario of purchasing a $300,000 house, now if you buy a $300,000 house and you have to put 3% down as in my example that works out to be about $9000. Let’s just say that the closing costs associated with purchasing that house plus the prepaid interest, setting up an escrow account, paying a year’s worth of homeowners insurance, there is also property taxes that must be paid, home owners dues, all these different things, those can add up. They don’t need to be 3% they can be less, they can be more. This example is just making it simple so that you can understand it.

If you buy a house for $300,000 you put 3% down and 3% for closing costs, your out-of-pocket for this example is going to be about $17,500. Now if you were going to buy that home and have all of that prepaid escrow and closing costs deferred to the seller and actually paid $309,000 so that you actually roll the closing costs into the cost of the home, and only came out-of-pocket 3% you would be out-of-pocket about $8900. So the savings there is $9000. Your mortgage payment will go up, however with a payback of about 160 months. So in other words if you take the money out of your account today youre going to lose that and have a lower payment…

Duration : 0:6:0

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Amidst the Real Estate & Mortgage Meltdown; Foreclosure Fraud & Scams; Real Estates Future is Great. First Time Home Buyers, FHA Loans & Seller Paid Closing Costs. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 6 (Excerpt)

World wide recession caused by the mortgage melt-down. Is inflation far behind?

What their ratings were based on was simply that nobody thought real estate would go down again. They were just going to keep going up forever, doesn’t really matter if you call it AAA or BBB. Isnt going to matter if the note never gets called.

We certainly saw that for years in the mortgage industry. We would refinances somebody and a couple of years later they would call us up again and say hey my house went up $100,000 in value and I bought a car and a boat and my kids need to go to school and give me another hundred grand out of my property, and it just kept going up forever and ever and ever and as long as that was happening everything was just fine. But then as we know everything just stopped.

There’s only so much leverage that could exist out there and that is why the stop started if you will. Because as that leverage continued to balloon; how much more leverage can a Wall Street firm or a bank take on to buy up more mortgage backed securities? Oh I know well carve out these tranches and well sell them off overseas. So that is where it ballooned, how wide reaching and impactful has it been?

Well we see it now it’s a global recession. It’s not a US recession for that reason. And that is starting to clean itself up, not only by the Fed aggressively here at home, by working with other developed nations around the world with their equivalents of the Fed in those countries they are doing the same thing. They are acting aggressively and that’s great for the short-term but that is like putting a band-aid on a carotid artery that has been severed, it doesn’t work. That is okay for today and tomorrow, long term there are bigger issues, bigger issues translate into inflation. Where I am going with this is the fact that right now with money being cheaper than it has been at any other time in the history of the United States.

That’s your motivation, if you’re looking for a loan, if you are looking to refinance a loan, if youre looking for a loan modification, whatever your circumstances are, this is your opportunity. I am of the opinion that five years from now we’ll look back on this time period and say, my gosh look at all the mistakes the Fed made.

One of the things I want to go back to is something you said earlier about how all these mortgage derivatives were broken up and put back together. And most of them certainly many of them got bought by hedge funds. A lot of them got bought up by foreign governments and whatever around the world. One of the things about where that’s coming in is it’s causing a massive structural problem, especially in the mortgage industry when it comes to the servicing aspect and a loan modification aspect.

These hedge funds are now coming along, and they are suing the servicers because the servicers are doing what they had a right to do under the contract that they signed with the hedge fund in the first place which was to modify these loans. While the hedge funds are saying if you’re going to modify the loan we want all the money and the servicers or the bank or whatever is saying, no were not going to so now they are getting into a big fight and I have a feeling were going to see a lot of lawsuits, which is only going to hurt the American homeowner, because unfortunately it’s only going to delay a loan modification process.

But it’s also one more reason why you want to have an attorney on your side negotiating with the servicers, negotiating with the bank, maybe even negotiating with the hedge fund for all we know. But negotiating with somebody on your behalf, somebody with the legal power, negotiating for you so if they need to go after the bank for lack of standing, because maybe that’s what it takes to get their attention, go after them and prove they have a lack of standing and say, oh great now that I have your attention let’s do something to help the home owner.

Duration : 0:6:17

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Cyrus updates his clients about the extension of the first time homebuyer tax credit. The completion of the most recent Federal Reserve meeting. Direction of home loan rates, and how you can take advantage of the low rates and the best housing affordability in years.

Duration : 0:4:33

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$8000 Tax Credit for First Time Home Buyers with Low Down Payment. Lender Finance Program with Low Payment and Fixed Interest Rate on FHA Mortgage and Government Assistance. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 8 (Excerpt)

Analyzing tax returns for self employed and small business owners; Use a Mortgage Planning Expert

Credit scores now are a major factor with interest rates. You see the liars up on the internet with interest rates being at 4.625% and all this kind of hocus pocus, its not true. You are never going to qualify for that rate today. They are going to lie to you, once you sign and see the fine print you are going to realize that it is a ridiculous idea to pay that amount of money in fees.

Credit scores have to be significantly higher than they used to, but again I have to tell you, its my opinions that a 70% no doc loan with someone who has a 720 or higher credit score I believe is a good loan. I personally believe that at some point it will be brought back.

I am not arguing with that, with a good FICO score I can agree with a 20% down for a stated income loan. People are encouraged through our tax system to write off all of their expenses and so often we have small business people who really are making money but because they take advantage of our tax system they are not able to get a loan. They cant qualify based upon their income.

In a lot of cases yes, but once again I definitely want to point his out just because someone is self employed and owns a small business and they do write everything off, that does not mean that they will not qualify. They may have been told now that they have to go stated income because of tax returns, but most people, the small business owner, the consumer doesnt know how to analyze his taxes, whether or not he is going to qualify for financing thats not his area.

Most CPAs dont even know how to analyze taxes to extrapolate enough income back out where we can use it as income, so just because a person is self employed does not mean that they cant qualify for financing and honestly nothing could be further from the truth. Plenty of people self employed, small business owners will qualify using their tax returns.

I think that anyone right now who doesnt own a home should be giving you a call getting pre-qualified. If nothing else give you a call and see what you can do. So you say, I wrote off a bunch of stuff last year and I am not going to be able to buy a house well maybe you can. But get in there, have a professional, have someone who knows what to do, whos been in the business for 15 years, have them take a look at it and decide whether or not you can really get that loan.

One of the things with my mortgage education; I am a certified mortgage planner. I am a certified mortgage analyst and a certified mortgage planning specialist. The significant part of that training and those certificates is in analyzing complex tax returns and we analyze complicated tax returns for professional athletes, for professional musicians, all the time. There is income always, it is just a matter of knowing how to get all of it out there. So I think we have kind of hit that.

So yes if you dont own a home today and you have been told NO, you need to find out if the person who told you no is qualified to tell you no, #1, and #2, less than 15% of the lenders in Arizona are qualified to do FHA loans. Those are the loans we are talking about, $100 down to buy a HUD-home, less than 3.5% down to buy a house with the best interest rates that we have seen in my career, its crazy not to look at your options.

If a lender does tell you no, it would be like going to a doctor and he says you have to have your arm amputated because you have a pimple on it. I think you are going to go get a second opinion, maybe even a third. To make sure you dont have to have it cut off. And that is exactly what we have here, if you go to a lender and he says, Well you are going to have to put down 20% you know he is not an FHA lender. So run out of there and call Michael at Velocity Financial and get yourself pre qualified.

Dan Havey, you have a great website, its called http://discountdreamhome.com and why dont you talk real quick about that. Its real simple, if you are looking to buy a foreclosed home, and as we discussed earlier they are many times the best homes to buy right now, they are vacant, they obviously have a highly motivated seller. You dont have to deal with all the troubles you would have to deal with from a regular or as we refer to them, an organic seller, because a lot of these people are upside down.

Duration : 0:7:49

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Amidst the Real Estate & Mortgage Meltdown; Foreclosure Fraud & Scams; Real Estates Future is Great. First Time Home Buyers, FHA Loans & Seller Paid Closing Costs. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 1 (Excerpt)

Forget the doom and gloom, First Time Home Buyers can buy with FHA

Thanks to my very great friend Brett Fallon for taking the time to be here in studio today. Brett is one of America’s finest financial advisors. And of course the infamous Dan Havey. Now we all love Dan Havey because he was instrumental in getting me into the mortgage industry about 14 years ago. Most importantly, Dan was instrumental in helping us put together the loan modification hotline and he is the author of Real Estates Future.

So today we have a few things we want discussed in regard to the economy, what’s happened, were wrapping up the year. You may have heard about this in the media, of course the media’s job is to scare you. Well our job is to tell you the truth. So Brett you have some data and some information that you wanted to share

Some of the things you hear in the media, you cant escape, its pretty much doom and gloom, sky is falling, this is the next Great Depression. It’s over for all of us and we should all just pack up and go. That kind of stuff is pervasive out there and creates fear and a lot of anxiety amongst people who are either investors, people who are looking to buy a house, looking to refinance a mortgage.

People dont realize there are certain tools that exist that we will talk about during the course of the show today. They should understand that some of the things that we discussed prior to today’s broadcasts were interest rates. Interest rates are at historic lows. Money is cheaper right now than it has ever been. We know the Fed recently reduced the Fed Funds Rate and that is the rate that banks are lending money to one another at.

Right now that rate is zero. Historically, that’s never happened in the United States before. The Fed’s idea is to help to unfreeze this credit market and we keep hearing all this talk about how credit markets are still frozen, that the global recession is deepening, there is evidence to the contrary of that. Some of the moves that the FED is making are working. We’re starting to see, and you and I were talking recently about some clients that were helping in terms of refinancing existing mortgages. Well, if the credit markets are frozen how come we got those loans complete?

Well, that’s a good point, and you got a call I think it was last Monday or maybe the Monday before, someone called you and asked if there was any money to refinance. What can I do? Well the reality of it is there is plenty of money out there for refinances, in some cases there’s issues with property values. That’s why there are different options for those types of people

Well from a buyer’s perspective, todays property valuation is a good thing, if I’m a buyer. Thats a good point too. People are interested in buying and the huge opportunity today. This is an unprecedented opportunity in my opinion, both in terms of the dollar and the real estate market. And for those who understand those dynamics and are willing to entertain the deal, they will be handsomely rewarded. There is no doubt about it.

And as we spoke on the last show, home prices in November for Maricopa County show that the median home price is down as low as $160,000 already. And it reminds me a lot about when I got into the industry, way back in 1989 and the type of financing we had then was FHA and Fannie Mae. And were back to that again now. We’ve got sanity back into the market and home prices have come down. But right now, it’s a perfect time, especially for first-time homebuyers or a move up buyer who can buy under the Fannie Mae limit of $417,000. If you can get into that range, and as we spoke before that 78% of the homes in Maricopa County that sold last month sold for under $250,000. I think that right now is the time just to get out there and find a house to move your family and children into with an FHA loan.

Michael, you don’t have to have exactly perfect credit do you? You can have a couple of dings if need be, right? You’re exactly right, each case has its own merits, every FHA loan is underwritten individually. There are many cases where collections are okay, there needs to be a explanation. You dont have to have the 720 plus credit scores like you do for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get the best rates…

Duration : 0:6:10

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First Time Home Buyers use FHA Mortgage and Seller Paid Closing Costs to Buy Real Estate Now. Best Market Conditions for Foreclosures and Short Sales in Decades. Go To http://RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com

Part 2 (Excerpt)

How having the Seller pay your closing costs can quadruple your money

On the other hand if you roll that into the loan it’s going to take you 160 months to break even on that. 160 months which is a little over 13 years, that is the antithesis of the Velocity of Money that we talk about on the show every week, so I am not convinced that its the right deal for the masses, but something that should be considered is what is the opportunity cost of taking the money out of Account X and the type of account you taking it out of has some impact too. If it’s from a brokerage account then you experience the market loss in that account and youre selling at these low price levels, I think the markets are going to turn and the opportunity costs over 160 months, youre talking about a substantial amount of money. And the additional mortgage payment is insignificant.

Obviously no one is going to allow you to pay more than the house is worth, that’s not what were suggesting. What were suggesting is merely to look at instead of simply making a lower offer than you would normally make, I’m suggesting that you consider the closing costs and what the real closing costs are in this example.

Assuming that the house is already attractively priced, one of the things that this buyer in this example should consider instead of making a lowball offer on a house that’s already priced rather attractively in this marketplace, it might make sense to consider exactly what you’re describing now. And that would be take that money or that difference and ask the seller to include those costs as part of the deal to sell the house, versus why lowball offer the house when you already know the house is the right price.

That’s exactly right and one of the other points here is in a lot of cases the closing costs dont need to be quite that high. So there is the opportunity for the home buyer to buy down, for instance, use 1% of the loan amount to buy the interest rate down. I did a calculation here today, the cost of funds changes all the time, in fact we had four price changes today. Four mortgage rate changes today, just in one day. This doesn’t apply in every scenario, but that’s why you use a certified mortgage planner, that’s why they use a FHA certified mortgage firm to do the loan to make sure that it’s the right thing to do but here’s the example of today. 1%, paying 1 point to buy the interest rate down will lower your mortgage payment, on this example of a $300,000 house, would lower your mortgage payment by $118 a month.

It’s not simple it’s not just like going to your local bank and having them give you a quote on the rate, there is so much more to it these days. I think that one of the things you’re pointing out right now is the fact that this type of negotiating exists and should be considered when making this purchase. And I know that you have already espoused that youre not a realtor in that sense, but your realtor should be talking to you about these options. If they are not, you may want to consider finding one who knows about that stuff.

They absolutely do and I’m not suggesting to anyone that they go out and find another realtor because yours is not working out for you. The reality of it is if your realtor doesn’t believe in the concept it may only be that they just don’t understand the concept. Have them give us a call, we can explain it to them. And I have simple illustrations we can share with them, how we would structure it financially, and they can, the realtor can set the price. That’s what their job is, but what our job is to make sure that you use every penny available to you to the best of your ability.

I have a question for you Brett, if you took $9000 and didnt take it out of your savings, 401K, or whatever, what will it turn into with today’s market? What would that be like?

Depending on the way the money is allocated, invested in a fixed income investment, or an interest-bearing account in a bank or whatever, what I can tell you is over the same amount of time, that $9000, over 160 months, youre probably talking about quadrupling the money. I would say that that is relatively easy and I’m not talking about taking on significant stock market risk. What I’m talking about is just compounding interest in some kind of interest-bearing account. I mean it could be a bank CD.

The other thing to do is we have this book called the Short Sale Playbook written by Ron Quinterro that we have available to anyone who is interested in it…

Duration : 0:6:12

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