In The News

Our broker named to 100 Most Influential list

In The News

Big congratulations to our broker, Jay Thompson, for being named to the Inman News 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders list! This is of course no surprise to any of the nearly 30 Realtor agents who work for Jay.*  He speaks locally and across the country at real estate conferences, is quoted in mainstream media, [...]

15 December 2010 Read the full article →

Condo refinancing: tricky to impossible

In The News

Way back in April of 2010, my partner Chris wrote a piece about how condos were doing in the Great Recession. This was after much discussion between the two of us. The piece was long, well reasoned and thoughtful. It was also long. We’re both sometimes guilty of over-writing. <smile> Essentially, Chris’ piece reminded buyers [...]

11 December 2010 Read the full article →

$48 billion in debt reduction

In The News

It seems like everyday we’re faced with mainstream media stories about how massive the foreclosure crisis has been. I don’t know about y’all, but I usually have a hard time getting a mental picture of how much money we’re actually talking about. This morning I stumbled on an article with an easy-to-understand number and it’s [...]

8 December 2010 Read the full article →

Fannie Mae is cost cutting

In The News

Just got a newsflash via my email subscription to Inman.com, a real estate industry news source. Fannie Mae has launched a pilot program in three markets in which it’s only accepting offers on properties in its real estate owned (REO) inventory when they are first submitted online by agents representing buyers. Test markets are Orlando, [...]

19 November 2010 Read the full article →

Rental scams still alive and well

In The News

We’ve been looking for a small 1 bedroom condo in downtown Phoenix for a very longtime customer of ours. Something in the range of $600. I found an ad on Craigslist that advertised a two-bedroom condo at the Copper Square condos for $588 per month. Copper Square is one of the premiere upscale hi-rise condo [...]

19 November 2010 Read the full article →

Price cuts on nearly half of homes for sale

In The News

Nearly half of homes on the market [took] a price reduction at least once in October, according to a monthly review of multiple listing service listings in 26 major markets conducted by national online brokerage ZipRealty. The ratio of price-reduction amount to list price was 7.5 percent… If you’re selling your home, read that again. [...]

18 November 2010 Read the full article →

Jumbo mortgages

In The News

A jumbo mortgage is a home loan that’s too big (in dollars) to be sold to government backed agencies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac). The upper dollar limit for jumbos varies geographically but the general rule of thumb is a loan larger than $417,000 is a jumbo. It seems to me that people who have money [...]

17 November 2010 Read the full article →

First time homebuyer rates surge

In The News

First-time homebuyers accounted for 50% of all home sales from July 2009 through June 2010, according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) survey of buyers and sellers. That’s the highest share of first-time-buyer purchases in the history of the survey, which dates back to 1981. In July 2010 first timers bought 38% of the [...]

15 November 2010 Read the full article →

Most banks already repaid TARP funds.

In The News

Bailout is a dirty word these days. A lot of people go beet red and start shouting about ‘big government’ and ‘where’s my bailout’ when you mention TARP. Some people even go looking for the nearest Tea Party rally they can join. But did you know that most banks already repaid their TARP funds? You [...]

18 October 2010 Read the full article →

Bank of America halts foreclosures in all 50 states

Foreclosures

Just announced today, Friday, October 8, 2010 – Bank of America will stop all foreclosure proceedings in all 50 U.S.  states while they review their internal legal procedures related to the foreclosure document filing process. From the official statement: “Bank of America has extended our review of foreclosure documents to all 50 states. We will [...]

8 October 2010 Read the full article →

Robo-signing

Glossary Posts

(image credit, StockExchange user macaruba) We’ve all learned a new word recently: robo-signing. The Big 5 Banks* are holding off on foreclosure proceedings in lots of US states because the employees in charge of signing off on the foreclosure documents have admitted to robo-signing up to 8,000 documents per month without reading each. Robo-signing and [...]

2 October 2010 Read the full article →