• Changes are effective as of January 1st, 2010.
• Mortgage brokers and commission based lender staff are now prohibited from selecting the FHA appraiser.
• Lenders aren’t required to use Appraisal Management Companies.
• When the borrower switches to another lender, FHA prohibits the 2nd lender from ordering additional appraisals to obtain a higher value, unless:  The DE Underwriter determines the 1st appraisal is deficient,  The Appraiser of 1st appraisal is on 2nd lender’s exclusionary list, or First lender delayed the appraisal transfer to the 2nd lender so as to cause a harm to the borrower, e.g. missing a closing date, or expiration of a rate lock.
• Appraisals are now going to be valid for only 120 days for all existing and proposed or under construction properties.

Do you feel house Poor?

Fewer and fewer people are going to the movies, and other types of entertainment. Many are not buying goods in stores. Major grocery chains are seeing a rise in what were second rate brand food products selling at a discount. The no name brands that most people call generic. Peoples savings have risen and may hit a new high. America is on a budget crunch, and a growing number of home owners are suffering from being house poor.  Sound familiar?

Hundreds of thousands of older people who had already retired are being forced to take on jobs again in restaurants and at retail chains, because they suffered major losses in the stock market and in their homes.

Home equity for the majority of homeowners has been killed by declining home values, an excess of inventory and the foreclosure crisis, now the short sale ways are changing and many are wondering when we’ll all get out of this financial mess.

Lost home equity doesn’t just represent decreasing wealth. It has an over riding effect on consumer confidence. Home owners, who are house poor can’t borrow against equity, take out new lines of credit, refinance, pay for college and even sometimes pay for the bare necessities

For many decades  Americans believed that buying a home was an way to wealth and savings, but not anymore. Now a day’s most people no longer believe that the American dream of homeownership is a realistic way of building wealth.

Many people who have experienced the housing crisis feel they may never be able to buy a home again 

The housing bubble that produced so much wealth seems to be providing an extremely depressing view of the future. With the lack of confidence in consumers’ ability to buy a home, improve their current housing situation or trust homeownership to provide a significant portion of their wealth sends a strong message about the impact of the housing crisis.

But is the shift for real or long lasting? Could it be fall-out from the national economic downturn and fears of the economy worsening? Economists don’t know and can only study and speculate about the situation, and like the rest of us wait to see what happens next.

In Las Vegas it seems the majority of the people with money are buying up the foreclosures while everyone else is just watching and waiting.

The discription of a turnkey home/property in Las Vegas is a purchase or sale of a home In a condition that is ready for immediate use.

The housing market throughout Las Vegas, Green Valley, North Las Vegas, Summerlin and Henderson has the potential to be a turnkey housing market. One of the problems are with foreclosures,most of the foreclosures  are left in extremely poor condition with water damage and other interior/exterior damages these properties are anything but turnkey ready.

On the other hand short sales properties are more likely to fit the turnkey criteria.  Many people who sell as a short sale do not have any money to do any repairs, nor is it excepted for the seller to do repairs.  But, generally people who have remained living in their homes have cared for them as most home owners do.  So, the chances of you purchasing a turnkey property is highly more likely when purchasing a short sale.

Foreclosured homes sit so long as vacant homes that they lose their turnkey affect.  Toilets are ruined, yards are dead because they have been neglected for months.

I have seen a number of Las Vegan’s moving out of Las Vegas.  I don’t know what the numbers are but I will tell you that one Sunday I spent an hour at a U-Haul company and 7 different people came in to pick up trucks to move out of this town.  I asked almost every one of them where they were going and why? All of them were moving back to where their families live.  To live with family.  Why?  Because they lost their job/jobs and can not make any money here.  Some of these people were blue collar workers, the rest white collar workers.  They told me they truly had no where else to go, but to go sponge off relatives.

And it’s not cheap renting a truck to move away.  Most of these people were spending an average of $1500 to move.  I don’t think that included the gas/diesel.  And none of them were happy about having to leave Las Vegas. 

The only thing I could honestly share with them is what a older gentlemen told me when I first moved to Las Vegas.  He had asked me where I moved here from?  I told him Iowa and he continued to tell me that ”most everyone that will move out of Las Vegas ends up coming back to live in Las Vegas”.  I found that to be very interesting.  That was 11 years ago that this gentlemen shared that with me.  I could only pass on the message from him to all the people that day who were moving away.

So this Real Estate business is full of Monkey Business…take the “k” out of monkey and you get money, how strange is that?  You can take that in a number of ways.  You can consider it funny in the way that things are changing on a daily basis and you have to go with the flow when it comes to financing for a property.  You can look at some other agents and wonder how in the world they get clients and make money.  It’s funny how some agents “know it all” and really don’t.  There’s some agents out there that truly are so out spoken that you just can’t tell them they’re full of it because you’re laughing too hard inside.

I compare it to the movies “Monkey Business with Cary Grant and Ginger Rodgers a 1952 movie.  Or the movie “Monkey Business with the Marx brothers of 1931..  Two really great movies with great actors and lots of comedy.  I don’t believe there’s been a movie made called Money Business, and if there was it probably wasn’t a comedy.

I’ve noticed that several vacant homes I’ve viewed lately have had angels left behind.  Either in the form of a statue in the bachyard, a waterfall, little staute angels left on kitchen counter tops or pictures, books of angels or angels painted on the wall. 

In my opinion people must be leaving them behind intentionally.  People leave all kinds of things behind.  Some things I’ve seen are furniture, personal family pictures, at least they look like family pictures.  Wedding books, scrap books of babys and toddlers all the way to their teenage years.  Treasure chests full of memories.  Kids and adults clothing.  Closets full of sheets and towels.  Many times I see numberous cleaning supplies and bug/weed sprays. 

After researching angels on the internet and understanding a liitle more, perhaps they are left behind to fight off the demons.

With the very low intenvory of foreclousres out on the market, the possiblity of Las Vegas agents successing at getting an offer accepted is extremely low.

On the contrary the general public listening to the news whether it’s the local stations or world wide news,  what they hear on the radio or from co-works and other friends and framily.  They are under the impression that there are so many foreclosures out there they should be able to get a steal of a deal with no problem.

Well, like I said there are several reasons why buyers and Real Estate agents can’t get an offer accepted.  For example: there may be as many as over 40 offers on just one property.  Some agents are writing offers on over 40 properties before they finally get their offer accepted.  The second and very difficult issue for buyings to understand is that most of the offers coming in will be cash offers.  Which of course that is what the selling bank perfers. No additional costs to them and they can close quickly. 

The frustration I hear is from agents that call me and ask, do you have any offers on the property?  How many do you have?  Is is worth my client and I putting in an offer? Can we put in a back up offer?  Do you have cash offers.

If a property has cash offers than almost everytime cash buyers win the bid and people retaining any kind of a loan is out of the running.  Which is very sad for the first time home buyers who require FHA loan, or the Vet. who would like to get a VA loan. Or even conventional loans.  None of these loans can compete against cash.

During the late part of 2008 the Division published its first textbook on Nevada real estate law.  Called the Nevada Las and Reference Guide.  It’s an educational resource for education providers and it may be used and should be used by licensees on special topics that may occur.  It is available online for the use in continuing ed courses and a reference source.

 

I would like to get feed back on what your experience has been as far as  your process of going through the loss of your home due to foreclosure, bankruptcy or short sale.

I want to hear everyone’s story. I want to here from every state.  What happened that you had to move, was it loss of job?  Mortgage payment go too high?  Divorce?  Death of a family member?  I really don’t have any restrictions on what your story is about.

I’m just curious because I have so many friends, family and associates/clients who are going through the same thing.  I know we are all joined together in this fiancial crisis.