Those of you in the market will be pleased to know that rates have fallen again thanks to the government’s commitment to purchase bad mortgage debt.  The most recent quote I received was 4.5% on a new home loan purchase.  4.5%!!!  The FHA rate is slightly higher, but still under 5%.  The nice thing on that FHA loan is that you only have to put down 3.5%, and the money can be a gift.  If you need a good lender, we have several that we recommend quite frequently.  Keep in mind that if you are interested in refinancing that the rates that you typically see and hear about are for new home purchases.  The refinance rates are slightly higher.

Those of you out of the market may want to consider getting into the market with rates like this and deals available everywhere.  We have helped people in just about every situation take advantage of this market, and we would be happy to talk with you about it.  The market is primed for a pickup like never before.  We still have higher inventory; home values are down; the interest rates are at historic lows, and perhaps the best news of all is that we are entering the busiest real estate season in Spring! 

Let us know if we can help you on the buying or the selling of your home.  You’re in good company with The Peters Company.

Lesley was recently awarded a Keller Williams WI4C2TS Award given by our peers.  This is a culture award representing the best of the Keller Williams.  I thought this might be a good time to introduce you to that Keller Williams culture and belief system if you aren’t familiar with it.  You’ll also get a glimpse into how the name of the award came about if you look closely.

Keller Williams Realty

Our Mission:  To build careers worth having, businesses worth owning and lives worth living.

Our Vision:  To be the real estate company of choice for a new generation of sales associates and real estate owners.

Our Values:  God, Family, then Business

Our Belief System:

Lesley and I would be honored to share with you a little more about the Keller Williams difference.

It’s amazing how much information we think is ironclad and secure, but in reality, it’s just out there for everyone and their brother to see.  RecentlyLeigh Clack, a closing attorney friend of ours, shared this valuable information with us, and we pass it along as a consumer advisory.  I was amazed to see what is accessible to anyone via the public record.  See below…

Many thanks to Leigh Clack with Neel and Robinson Attorneys at Law, LLC.  Leigh is a great closing attorney who we close with often, and she can be reached at 404-705-3690 or lenox@neelandrobinson.com.

Inflation. Is it our friend or foe? Well, we all know that dollar won’t get what it used to. I bought a jumbo sized package of Wrigley’s gum the other day and paid $1.69. It doesn’t seem like that long ago when it was 79 cents. Everything goes up in price. The same can be said for home prices. That’s why 30-year loans are so attractive. You’re buying and locking at a time in space that typically over a 30 year period will see massive amounts of inflation, positively affecting price and value.

Looking at this economy and the money that is being thrown around or proposed to be thrown around, one thing is obvious. We’re going to be printing more money folks and lots of it. The most likely solution to this economic dilemma is good old fashioned spending. Lots of spending. What’s President elect Obama calling for? Survey says, “Spending!” These events will sooner rather than later lead to a classic case of stagflation, for all you economic minded folks out there. All that means is that we will have an ecomony that isn’t growing while prices are rising. Unemployment will rise as well for a time period as the economy searches for a bottom. This infusion of dollars into our economy will dillute our buying power, costing us more and more to buy the things we want and love. That’s the negative. The positive is that it’s going to add value to our appreciating assets at a larger than life rate. In perhaps one of the most historic times to buy a home from an inventory, price, and interest rate point of view, we have something else to consider now in short term inflation. It’s bound to happen. It’s simply a matter of how much inflation we’ll see. The likely response to the stagflation is to spend more and more and more to a point that we out run it and get over the hump. The cash will eventually lead to more than an artificial boost to our economy. Meanwhile, property owners will see their home values rise considerably. Unfortunately, so will interest rates. The government has demonstrated that it is prepared to do whatever it takes to boost our economy. So fire up that money press, Mr. U.S. Mint, and lock those floating interest rates and lines of credit!

If you are taking a significant hit right now on the sale of your home, don’t sell. Rent. Keep your home. We have told many clients this here recently. We’ve told clients for months now to buy investment property.  Why not treat your primary residence as an investment property and buy your next home while the rates are ridiculously low, prices are painfully low, and inventory is incredibly high?  Nothing pains us more than to give bad news, but we are not going to expect or coach you to list your house below what you paid for it, if we can help it at all. The rental market is great with plenty of folks looking for a deal to rent that depressed valued home that either they can’t afford right now or are too scared to buy. Despite low interest rates, the lenders are ruthless in making you stand on your head to qualify for loans. In addition, first time homebuyers have to put down a minimum of 3% on the purchase of a home, which is downright hard to come by for some aspiring homeowners. I might argue that if you don’t have 3% to put down on a house, perhaps you should not be thinking about buying a home, but that’s a totally different conversation. By renting, you may not be in a position to get your value back to where you need it to be in the time frame you want, but it can’t get much worse, right? Give it a couple of years and let inflation help you out. I’m not cashing in my IRA right now just because it lost 25% of its value over the last quarter. By the way, that’s a true story. Whew! I’m buying real estate from now on as opposed to the stock market. Call me crazy, but at least I can do something to the real property. Improve it, rent it, something besides pray it goes up in the stock market. Hang on folks. This year is going to be historic for the economy, and the housing market will lead the charge back. We’ll be here whenever you need us.

Wow! Things here are busy – both personally and professionally! First of all, we took advantage of the fantastic 37-year low interest rates and refinanced our personal home today. Best yet – we’re going to save almost $300 a month. If you want to talk with a lender about a refinance, give us a shout and we can provide some great lender recommendations.

Professionally, we’ve been pulling 80+ hour weeks. We worked New Years’ Eve and rang in the New Year with dualing laptops on our sofa taking care of our clients. Tonight is no different. We have 4 listing appointments this week, 2 inspections for buyers, 1 closing, and more inquiries than we ever anticipated for the first week in January (I’ve lost count). To top it off, we had 2 great listings come on the market today – check them out below. And, stay tuned as we have a townhome with unbelievable skyline views coming on the market later this week. It’s busy out there – Spring-like in fact. If you are ready, willing and able – there is not a better time to buy new or refinance your current home! For the latest, up-to-date rate quotes, email Andy at Andy@ThePetersCompany.com to join our bi-weekly mailing list. Give us a shout!

Lesley and Andy have some great new listings coming on the market. Stay tuned!

A recent survey by The Mortgage Bankers Association stated that 10% of mortgages on one- to four-family homes were at least a month overdue or in the midst of the foreclosure process during the third quarter of this year. That is up from 9.2% three months earlier and 7.3% a year ago.  Wow!  Inventory is already high, and an increase in foreclosures does not smell very good.  So, what’s a county to do to boost the real estate industry, the lifeblood of the economy?  How ’bout a bailout?  The Treasury Department is in the beginning stages of a deal that would help reduce interest rates for new loans to purchase a home.  The number that’s being thrown around is roughly 4.5%.  The hope is that this new low rate will boost sales, help stunt the slipping national home prices, and enable homeowners to “buy up” and afford larger loans.

So, how good is a 4.5% rate?  Check out the 30-Year FRM graph representing rates from 1971 to present day at www.mortgage-x.com/trends.htm just to see how good it can get and just as important, how good it is currently!  If you haven’t noticed rates right now, we are hovering just above 5%, which is still historically low even without the Treasury Department’s proposal.  Love the mortgage-x.com site, by the way.

I have previously talked about the refinancing opportunity out there right now.  I would highly recommend you talking to a lender if you are in above 6% on a fixed OR adjustable rate mortgage AND plan to stay in your current home for at least the next 3 years.  Just how much do I believe that?  I am closing on the 22nd of December on my own personal refinance!  It’s important to note that the proposed Treasury Department plan will most likely not apply to those applying for a refinance.  This new deal is exclusively for new home purchases, and if it is successful it should inject some new life into the national real estate picture.

I read a lot of blogs.  I get a lot of new updates.  I sift through a lot of stuff to bring you what I hope to be valuable content.  I found a great update on the foreclosure situation including statistics suggesting foreclosures are up 25% from October 2007 but only up 5% from September of this year.  Is the carnage beginning to slow down?  Are the government programs starting to help?

Here’s a great video from The Wall Street Journal and Delores Conroy, a real estate economist from the University of Southern California.

http://online.wsj.com/video/programs-helping-slow-foreclosures/E822DF82-B800-4BEF-9BCD-01144D141D80.html

Lesley and I are fortunate to go on at least two listing appointments every week.  So, we must get a lot of listings, right?  Well, we certainly are successful securing listings, but we don’t want every listing.  You see, many desperate real estate agents take listings regardless of the situation because they know in their heart of hearts that even if the listing can’t and won’t be sold that they can use the listing to promote themself.  It’s a terrible reality, but it is just that, a reality.  When we all agree to agree to take a listing, Lesley and I take it because we genuinely believe we can sell it.  We aren’t desperate.  We aren’t in the business of listing homes.  We are in the business of selling homes.  If we can’t sell your home, it bothers us.  We don’t sleep well at night.  You aren’t happy.  You don’t use us again.  You don’t refer us to your friends and family.  We are sad, and eventually we become desperate.

So, what would cause us to not take a listing?

1 – Price – it’s hard to sell a home when it’s priced so high that it doesn’t attract buyers.  We are very realistic on price, and we play to the percentages, not to the possibilities.  This has helped us achieve an average days on market much lower (30.4 days) than the average Atlanta real estate agent.  We tell everyone that we meet with for a listing presentation that there will definitely be another agent that will come along and price their home higher than we would.  That will always be the case.  We completely understand when someone feels like they must “try” to sell their home at a higher price with another agent.  Unfortunately, the market stats suggest we have far more “tryers” as opposed to sellers considering 67% of listings fail due to being overpriced (ChartMaster 3rd Qtr Market Stats). 

2 – Condition – in this buyers’ market, you have to be competitively priced and you have to be the “prettiest.”  If a buyer sees a defect in your home, they don’t discount in hundreds of dollars.  They discount in thousands of dollars.  It’s hard to build value to a buyer when there are glaring defects that a seller is not willing to repair.  With high inventory, it is easy for a buyer to simply move on to the next listing without batting an eye.  It’s very unlikely that we will walk into the absolute perfect home that needs nothing done in order to get it ready for the market.  Part of our listing consultation includes a walk through of a home to make some clear cut recommendations on what exactly needs to be done in order to maximize your opportunity to sell in the least amount of time for the most amount of money.

3 – Financial – sometimes it is just not in the best interest of the seller to sell.  If someone is severely upside down on their home, we don’t want to take that listing unless the seller absolutely has to sell.  If they have to sell and it isn’t pretty, we coach people to explore short sell options with their lender to avoid foreclosure.  We tell more people not to sell than we do ask for their listing, and that’s the honest to goodness truth.  The rental market is booming right now as more and more people realize that renting their property gives them an opportunity to fulfill their obligation to their lender and hold on for a better day.  We want that better day for everyone if it’s in their best interest.

We know that selling a home can be a very stressful experience or a very enjoyable experience.  We are the difference maker.  We are not desperate.  We do not do desperate things.  We follow a time tested model that allows us to sleep at night.  We study real market statistics that give us important clues and direction when listing and buying property.  Continue to think like a buyer, and if you are looking for an agent that will give you the straight talk on selling in this market, look no further.