FSBO BLOG

I continually point out how the largest owner of real estate is the banks and with them as your competition makes it difficult to sell your property. Now, good news out of Florida: the Short Sale process is taking three months instead of the nine months average in the past. The reason: banks are pre-approving properties for this process. Instead of losing on average $50,000 for each foreclosure, the bank on average loses $35,000 on each short sale. This improvement reduces inventory and is a major step towards increase in sales and home values. It’s been two years now and hopefully the banks are finally figuring out how to improve the real estate market and save themselves from future loses.  Remember, when Banks own vacant properties nobody wins!!

This happens all the time. You buy a home, get a mortgage from a local lender and within a short period of time you receive notice that the note has been sold to an investor (usually a Wall Street investment company). This free’s up cash for the lender to make another loan. Sounds simple, well, it is from the homeowners standpoint. The problem is with the lender if in fact the homeowner does not make timely payments or fails to pay. In this case, the investor that bought the note is entitled to ‘put’ back the note to the original lender. Right now, there is over $90 billion dollars worth of notes in the process of being ‘put’ back to the lenders. This is just one more stumbling block to get real estate sales to increase. Lenders keep tightening up until this and other issues get resolved.

same story and same result. Increasing bank inventory and record low mortgage rates!!

As reported by (AP), 288,345 properties were lost to foreclosure in the July-September quarter, that’s up from nearly 270,000 in the second quarter.  2010 is a repeat of 2009 with over 1,000,000 properties obtained by banks, these properties need repair, lower the value of home values and prevent a real estate recovery.  Just like last year the government is keeping interest rates low, but only the banks benefit from this and no real estate recovery.  And just like last year, www.FSBO.com says to offer investors with 20% down a 1% mortgage rate to buy bank owned property, which will reduce the inventory, stimulate the economy, hire workers and slowly increase the home values. It is so simple, but the banks and government are not getting it. See ya next year…

‘Dry Closing’ - buyer and seller sign all required documents, but the mortgage company does not send the funds so the closing agent can not disperse the sellers proceeds

‘Frozen Closing’ - ready to close, but seller or title company have concerns over who is the actual seller, occurs during a sale of foreclosed property

‘Limited Warranty’ or ‘Foreclosure Deed’ given the buyer in lieu of the normal ‘Full Warranty Deed’

‘Special Title Insurance’ - because of ‘clouds’ on the title of property that went through foreclosure the Title Insurance company refuses to give buyer the normal title insurance.

more to come….

Now, Bank of America is delaying foreclosures in 23 states as it examines whether it rushed the foreclosure process for thousands of homeowners without reading the documents. They join the other mortgage companies stopping the foreclosure process. We continously are asked, “when will real estate sales and home prices rebound?” The answer continues to be with banks getting their act together. The banks (including govt) own more residential real estate than any other company or individual. These properties are vacant, in need of repair, and for sale. The asking prices continue to come down in an effort to attract buyers. Delaying the foreclosure process means there are more properties to come on the market in 2011 by the banks. When will it end?