When Buying Home, Be Cautious Of Divorced Couples Selling

CNN reports buying a home from a couple getting divorced usually means a good price on their home, but recommends being careful when attempting to buy from them.

According to the article, several divorced couples always hit a snag when selling their home typically due to unwillingness of one of the spouses to sell.

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REO Properties – Tips and Suggestions

Lots of people are talking about REO properties; but do you know what they are referring to? When a bank forecloses on a property, they don’t want it. They put these foreclosed properties in a public auction; the ones that don’t sell are referred to as REO properties. REO properties can consist of anything from apartment buildings to vacant land.

Banks don’t deal in the real estate business; they only want to get cash. Because they only want to sell the property as quickly as possible, you can usually find REO properties listed on their website, along with the name of the loss mitigator who’s managing the sale of that property. The loss mitigator is similar to a real estate agent; you will need to contact him or her to set up a viewing, and make an offer if you’re interested.

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Looking For A Good Deal On A House: Bank REO’s Can Be Quite The Steal

One reason is that bank-owned sales transactions can be more complicated, in part because the sale terms must be approved by the lender or the lender’s attorneys. Another reason it is difficult dealing with bank-owned properties is that some lenders are in offices far away from where the loss-mitigation department is struggling to process the listings.

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Housing Recovery Stalls

A new bout of declining home prices is threatening to hamper the U.S. recovery, just as consumers and the overall economy have been showing signs of healing.

Home prices across 20 major metropolitan areas fell 1.3% in October from September, the third straight month-over-month drop, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index released Tuesday. Many economists expect the declines to continue into at least next spring, erasing most of the gains made since prices bottomed out in early 2009. 

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Merry Christmas!

Read About Christmas Here:  Christmas...

In a Sign of Foreclosure Flaws, Suits Claim Break-Ins by Banks

When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks.

When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert. 

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Foreclosures.com Founder Faces Auction of Fair Oaks House

Alexis McGee, founder of Foreclosures.com, made a national reputation by helping investors find and buy distressed properties whose owners were struggling to stave off foreclosure.

Now those investors might have an unlikely prize in a large new Craftsman-style home in Fair Oaks that's scheduled for sale on the courthouse steps early next month.

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Short Sales Becoming More Attractive To Servicers As Foreclosure Expenses Rise

Offering a 10 percent recovery advantage compared to foreclosures, short-sales are becoming a popular solution for servicers faced with projected steeper loss severities on mortgage-backed securities  in 2011. Short-sales are especially attractive as the unprecedented lag between the last payment and a foreclosure is expected to grow. See the following article from HousingWire for more on this.

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2011 FHA Home Loan Requirements for Borrowers

If you are a home buyer thinking of using an FHA loan to buy a home, you should be aware of certain changes to the FHA program. This page offers a summary of FHA home loan requirements for 2011.

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12 Days Of Short Sales

Imagine the 12 days of Christmas as it would apply to short sales in a perfect world . . . while no meant to be sung, we’re sure you get the picture.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me………a negotiator that can get approval letters in 12 weeks, with no deficiencies and no seasoning requirements.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me………..a wonderful document management system that not only stores all the documents, but also does automatic email updates, and is accessible 24/7.

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Custom iPad App Controls Curtains, Heating, Lighting

In the last decade Silicon Valley wealth has gushed into the interior design business, and much of it lately has gone into San Francisco penthouses and apartments. "The venture capitalists live in Woodside, Calif., deep in the suburbs. The kids they've been backing want to be in San Francisco," says David T. Oldroyd, a partner at Orlando Diaz-Azcuy Design Associates.

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Banker Wants To Save Foreclosed Homes

A former Wall Street investment banker has come to the Phoenix area seeking opportunity among the thousands of foreclosed homes.

Laurie Hawkes, co-founder and president of American Residential Properties, spent three decades working in real-estate banking and finance for big firms such as CB First Boston Corp. and Salomon Brothers before starting her own company.

Hawkes was one of three expert panelists at a seminar earlier this month in Phoenix to discuss the Valley's real-estate market.


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Foreclosure Mess Didn’t Significantly Impact Home Sales

When revelations that banks filed flawed foreclosure paperwork in thousands of cases emerged over the fall, it was widely assumed that the problems would be a disaster for the U.S. housing market.

Now, evidence is emerging that the threat–at least for home sales–may be less significant than it appeared.

Tom Lawler, an independent housing economist in Northern Virginia, scours reports on home sales from metro areas around the country before making a forecast of how home sales will look each month.  He is predicting that next report from the National Association of Realtors (due Dec. 22) will show that November’s sales of previously occupied homes will actually be up 3.2% from October–a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million.

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What Delays a Mortgage Foreclosure

Six hundred days. That's how long, on average, mortgage loans in the foreclosure process in New York have been delinquent.

That's the longest average in the nation, but not by much, according to LPS Applied Analytics, in Jacksonville, Fla. Loans in foreclosure in Florida, New Jersey, Hawaii and Maine have been delinquent more than 500 days, on average, while home loans in California and Nevada have been delinquent 461 and 427 days, respectively. In the two speediest states, Nebraska and Wyoming, loans in the foreclosure process are delinquent by an average of 358 days.

Those statistics raise a question: Why do foreclosures take so long?

Read more: What Delays a Mortgage Foreclosure...

Woman's Foreclosure Nightmare: 'Like A Black Hole'

State prosecutors from all 50 states are investigating the country's largest banks, to learn whether they have been foreclosing on thousands of Americans improperly.

The banks say they do not seize people's houses without justification. But NPR has uncovered a case that might suggest otherwise. In fact, the homeowner in this case was actually the victim of a scam run by one of the bank's very own employees. But despite that, the bank moved to foreclose anyway.

Six Years Of Stress
The banks say they've been doing all they can to work with homeowners to avoid foreclosures. But don't tell that to Rachel Keyser from Deerfield, N.H.

"I can't tell you the emptiness," she says about dealing with the threat of foreclosure. "I mean, my knees started to shake, my stomach got into a knot."

Click Here to Read: Woman's Foreclosure Nightmare: 'Like A Black Hole'...

How Rising Mortgage Rates Could Boost Home Sales

If you're in the market for a home, you're probably feeling pretty calm: Prices are falling, interest rates are low, and there are few other buyers to compete with. You can probably just hang out for awhile and wait for prices to fall some more.

But how long will the buyer's market last? Conventional wisdom holds that prices will fall another 5 to 10 percent, most likely bottoming out sometime in 2011. As the housing market stabilizes, sales will slowly pick up, while the huge backlog of foreclosed and bank-owned homes gets worked off. In healthier markets—like many in the Midwest, where there was never much of a bubble to start with—the housing market might even start to feel normal again in 2011 or 2012.

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Foreigners Flock To Florida Real Estate Bargains

Foreign tourists who for years have crowded Florida's shopping malls to buy clothes and electronics, are now flocking to real estate offices to snatch up apartments and homes at bargain-basement prices. 

The investors, mainly from Europe and Latin America, are jostling over apartments in Miami's trendy South Beach neighborhood selling for 70,000-100,000 dollars, and in less exclusive areas to the north where they start at around 50,000.

"The buying opportunities are maybe the best ever. Who knows if we'll see prices again like today's in Miami Beach," Keys Real Estate agent Michelle Iglesias told AFP.

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LeBron James' New Home In Coconut Grove

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14 Years After Condo Sale, Retiree Gets Foreclosure Notice

Elizabeth Bolinger was stunned when she received a foreclosure notice recently — on an Oakland Park condo she says she hasn't owned in 14 years.

Bolinger, who now lives in a retirement community in Port St. Lucie, said in 1996 she deeded the home at 639 W. Oakland Park Blvd. to a man who had been renting it from her. Eventually, he took out his own mortgage, paid her off and she forgot about it.

Then, in September, she was served with foreclosure paperwork on the unit. "It's interesting that you can be foreclosed on a property that you don't own," she said.

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Should I Keep My Home or Let It Go?

The Real Estate market right now is terrible. This is the truth, no matter what part of the country you may reside in- the future does not look pretty for homeowners. All around us there are short sales, foreclosures, vacant homes and distressed properties. I know that when I stumble across a “normal” listing (meaning not a short sale, foreclosure or auctioned home) I always do a double take! Typically, these normal sales occur when a homeowner has lived in the home for many years, never took out a HELOC or re-financed during the boom of 2004-2008. Simply because I am in the Real Estate Industry I oftentimes find friends begging the question: How do I know if it is wise to stay in my home?

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What is a Good Credit Score in 2011?

What is considered a good credit score these days? This is one of the most common questions we receive from our readers. And as we replace our 2010 calendars with new ones for 2011, this question will surely see a spike in frequency again.


So, in anticipation of all those emails, I thought I’d share my own definition of a good credit score in 2011:

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Real Estate Buyers Flock to Online Auction of Bank-Owned Assets

Savvy commercial real estate buyers looking to take advantage of the down market have come to LFC.com to conduct research and submit bids on various bank-owned assets in a portfolio of ten REO properties. With just over a month remaining before the bid deadline, the auction has already attracted over 4,600 hits to the website and interested buyers from nearly a dozen states.

The minimum bids are set far below current market prices, giving buyers the power to name their own price in a fair and transparent auction process and sending the message that the seller is in fact willing to trade these properties.


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5 FHA Streamline Facts You Need to Know

The benefits of an FHA Streamline loan are going to be discussed in the following article. Anyone with an FHA loan that wants to reduce their monthly payment is going to want to see these facts.

1. Who qualifies for an FHA streamline loan?

• Home owners that currently have an FHA loan.
• Must have the loan for 6 months or longer.
• No delinquencies on the mortgage in the last 12 months.

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The Advantage of Buying Short Sale Home

Short sale is usually a common solution left for most home owners because of the extended recession on the real estate market. The term “short sale” means that the owner at this point owes more on mortgage compared to actual worth of his or her property. The bank will not wish to own the property through a pricey procedure like foreclosures and so they will  be looking for those who are usually buying short sale home.

Which means that there is a excellent chance for those who are qualified to acquire the property for less than its value. It also means a chance for the owner to avoid getting a bad credit history because of property foreclosure. At the same time, the financial institution can still retrieve as much of their investment as possible in this way.

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Philadelphia Law Firm Used Nonlawyers to File Foreclosures, Suit Alleges

A Philadelphia law firm has been accused of the “unauthorized practice of law” by using nonlawyers to file hundreds of foreclosure cases and collect attorneys’ fees, according to a lawsuit.

In a further indictment of the mortgage industry, it also contends that banks, loan servicers and other creditors knew of the practice.

Patrick Loughren, a Pittsburgh, Pa., trial lawyer with Loughren, Loughren & Loughren, sued the law firm of Goldbeck, McCafferty & McKeever, along with 35 employees of the firm, according to the case, filed in Allegheny County, Pa. Messages seeking comment were left with the Goldbeck firm and Loughren. They could not be immediately reached for comment.

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Bing Crosby Home Selling for $3.5M

Bing Crosby, known for his laid-back style as much as his soothing bass-baritone voice, liked to entertain other celebrities around the pool at his 6,700-square-foot former home in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

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Getting a Deed in My Name After a Divorce

When you are awarded full ownership to real property in a divorce decree, you must take further steps to change the property deed. A quit claim deed must be filed with the county court in order to remove your former spouse's name from the original deed to the property. A quit claim deed states that one party is transferring all ownership rights to the property to the other party involved.

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Fed Wants To Strip A Key Protection For Homeowners

As Americans continue to lose their homes in record numbers, the Federal Reserve is considering making it much harder for homeowners to stop foreclosures and escape predatory home loans with onerous terms.

The Fed's proposal to amend a 42-year-old provision of the federal Truth in Lending Act has angered labor, civil rights and consumer advocacy groups along with a slew of foreclosure defense attorneys.

They're not only asking the Fed to withdraw the proposal, they also want any future changes to the law to be handled by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which begins its work next year.


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The Latest Confusing Foreclosure News

Trying to keep up with what’s happening with foreclosures around the nation is confusing, indeed.


At the end of November, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the government-sponsored enterprises which underwrite the bulk of mortgages in the United States – told real estate agents to resume with sales of foreclosed properties. That was a significant announcement as Fannie and Freddie had about 240,000 properties set for foreclosure at the end of September.

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Today's Real Estate Market Calls For Dire Divorce Decisions

Sarah Bandy always knows something is up when she helps a couple try to sell their home, but hears back from only one spouse.

"They don’t tell us in the beginning," said Bandy, a real estate agent who brokers deals for luxury homes in Colts Neck. But lately, when she presents clients with a home valuation report, the answer is almost always, "Oh, we can’t do that. It’s too low."

"Then they end up confessing, especially the wife," Bandy said.

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Southwest Florida Real Estate Market Attracts Canadian Investors, Other International Clients

They come from Toronto, London and Dusseldorf, and they're all here for the deals.

Foreign buyers are on the hunt for real estate bargains in Southwest Florida. They scour listings from across the Atlantic and leave Canadian tundra in search of properties dotted with palms.



"They seem to be out shopping," Mary Bondurant, an agent with John R. Wood Realtors on Sanibel, said of international buyers. "They're feeling a little optimistic about the market in general but they know it's a good time to buy in Florida."



And local real estate agents say foreign interest could help revitalize the area. International clients tend to be cash buyers who are financially stable, since many of their countries haven't weathered financial storms to the level the United States has recently.

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The Top 5 Barriers to Buying a Home

Buying a home is worlds away from just a few years ago. In 2000, approval rates were around 90 percent. Today, the home loan approval rating has fallen to a mere 30-40 percent. While decreased access to credit is a byproduct of the recession (largely caused by lax lending and the ensuing defaults) and the subsequent financial reform, it doesn’t change the fact that one of the following situations may prevent you from buying a home:

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Fannie, Freddie Say Mortgage Servicers Triggered Foreclosure Crisis

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac defended their role in the foreclosure crisis in prepared testimony to Congress on Wednesday, while at least one federal regulator said the mortgage giants had contributed to the problem.

Speaking to the Senate Banking Committee at a hearing on the national foreclosure debacle, Fannie and Freddie executives emphasized that they are not responsible for managing payments by borrowers on home loans or foreclosing on homeowners when they default.

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How to Buy a “Short Sale” House

A short sale in real estate terms is when a borrower sells their mortgage for an under appreciated value because the home is worth less than what is owed on the mortgage. In this event, the lender agrees to allow the home to be sold for less than the amount owed on the debt. But like a loan modification, a homeowner must prove that they have gone through a hardship that has gotten them to the point that they are at with the short sale.


Like almost every real estate transaction, a short sale will require the seller to submit all of their financial information to the lender so they may determine if they are eligible for a short sale. Eligibility is a key importance with this topic, as the bank is more than likely enduring a huge loss. If the bank determines the seller not to be eligible, or they cannot demonstrate a financial hardship, this can prevent you from obtaining the property.

Click Here to Read:   How to Buy a “Short Sale” House...

VA Loans Thrive in the Face of Widespread Foreclosure

The VA Loan program has weathered the foreclosure crisis, despite the fact that nine in 10 borrowers purchase a home without a down payment.


In fact, these flexible, low-cost loans remain the safest on the market. The foreclosure inventory rate for VA loans was 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2010, better than both prime and FHA loans. After nearly seven sometimes turbulent decades, this home loan benefit for American service members is better positioned and more powerful than ever.

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Some Homeowners Still Owe After Short Sale

Some former homeowners who went through short sales to avoid foreclosure are finding they are still in debt to their lenders.

Because the short-sale concept, which allows people to sell their homes for less than they owe, is designed specifically to help homeowners avoid having to pay their lenders more money, some sellers have been careful to negotiate their deals so the lender, by contract, can't later seek payment. Those who haven't done so are at risk.

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Fannie And Freddie Give Green Light To Resume Sales Of Foreclosures

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gave real estate agents the green light to resume selling foreclosed homes, after suspending the process as the robo-signing debacle unfolded the past two months.

Freddie told agents in a memo last week to "resume all normal sales activity," as the government-sponsored enterprise will "resume marketing, sales and disposing of assets previously placed 'on hold.'"

Fannie Mae told its real estate agents "to proceed with scheduling and holding the closings" of sales of homes with mortgages owned or backed by the GSE.

Click Here to Read:  Fannie And Freddie Give Green Light To Resume Sales Of Foreclosures...