Category: Real Estate

10 Tax Tips for Home Sellers – great article – had to share…

10 tax tips for home sellers

Real Estate Tax Talk By Stephen Fishman

The IRS has recently issued a helpful list of 10 tax tips all homeowners should keep in mind when selling a home:

1. You are usually eligible to exclude the gain from income if you have owned and used your home as your main home for two years out of the five years prior to the date of its sale.

2. If you have a gain from the sale of your main home, you may be able to exclude up to $250,000 of the gain from your income ($500,000 on a joint return in most cases).

3. You are not eligible for the exclusion if you excluded the gain from the sale of another home during the two-year period prior to the sale of your home.

4. If you can exclude all of the gain, you do not need to report the sale on your tax return.

5. If you have a gain that cannot be excluded, it is taxable. You must report it on Form 1040, Schedule D, Capital Gains and Losses.

6. You cannot deduct a loss from the sale of your main home.

7. Worksheets are included in Publication 523, Selling Your Home, to help you figure the adjusted basis of the home you sold, the gain (or loss) on the sale, and the gain that you can exclude.

8. If you have more than one home, you can exclude a gain only from the sale of your main home. You must pay tax on the gain from selling any other home. If you have two homes and live in both of them, your main home is ordinarily the one you live in most of the time.

9. If you received the first-time homebuyer credit and within 36 months of the date of purchase the property is no longer used as your principal residence, you are required to repay the credit. Repayment of the full credit is due with the income tax return for the year the home ceased to be your principal residence, using Form 5405, First-Time Homebuyer Credit and Repayment of the Credit. The full amount of the credit is reflected as additional tax on that year’s tax return.

10. When you move, be sure to update your address with the IRS and the U.S. Postal Service to ensure you receive refunds or correspondence from the IRS. Use Form 8822, Change of Address, to notify the IRS of your address change.

For more information about selling your home, see IRS Publication 523, Selling Your Home.

Stephen Fishman is a tax expert, attorney and author who has published 18 books.

I read this article at:  http://lowes.inman.com/newsletter/2012/09/10/news/200760

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email Sabrina & Susan at:  Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit our Website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp us at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-cityå

Or Yelp me:  http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:

http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading – Sabrina

Top 5 Homebuyer Regrets – Had to share this article…

Please enjoy this article I found…

Top 5 Homebuyer Regrets

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson

In life, and in real estate, there are decisions that, if we had them to do over again, we might do x, y or z differently. But all in all, we are not too upset about how things turned out. “C’est la vie,” as they say.

Then there are the decisions and actions we actively regret, worrying over their long-term consequences, wishing we could have a cosmic do-over, stewing and ruminating over what we did wrong. (In truth, it’s a sign of emotional maturity to see every experience as an education, and to be free from ruminating over even the worst of our regrets. But I digress).

Contrary to popular belief, my experience shows that the vast majority of homebuyers commit what they see as the first type of mistakes, but not those deep, dark regrets. However, those that do have serious regrets can lose many hours of sleep and many thousands of dollars trying to remedy them. Their only gain? Experience and gray hairs.

Here are the top 5 true, deep regrets of homebuyers and some insights for how to prevent them from taking over your own life:

1. Premature buying. This is not at all about timing the market or making sure you get in at the “just-right” moment. There’s not much you can or should do about that. But buying before your life or your finances are ready for homeownership is a transgression that ends up causing serious, long-term regrets for those who end up doing it. Premature buying takes several forms, the most common of which includes jumping the gun and buying before you’ve saved as much as you really need, or before you’ve paid your debt down to the level you really needed to.

Another pervasive form of premature buying is to buy before you’ve truly, deeply, seriously run all your own personal financial numbers, which puts you in the position of forced reliance on what the bank, lender or someone else thinks is affordable, which is often wrong.

Similarly, buying because you feel pressure to get in while the market is keeping prices and interest rates low, rather than because you want and can afford a home, is a surefire path to real estate regret.

2. Buying too small of a house. People who buy too large of a home often realize, several years in, that they simply aren’t using all of their rooms and many either sell and downsize or find ways to put the extra space they have to better use. People who buy too small of a home, on the other hand, are acutely aware of it from the moment their children start fighting, they find themselves and their energy levels deactivated by clutter or they end up realizing that there is no room at the inn for the family members or friends they’d like to house, short or long term.

Buying too large of a home is potentially wasteful of the money spent maintaining, heating and cooling the place; buying too small a home is uncomfortable and frustrating, sometimes intensely so, on a constant basis — hence, the regret it can create.

Avoid this regret by starting your house hunt with a visioning exercise: What do you want your home life to look like in 10 years? Who will live with you? Do you entertain or have overnight guests? What activities do you want or need to be able to do there? Do you want to practice yoga, crafts, have kid-sized homework spaces, work at home, collect classic cars or move your parents in? If so, seek to buy a home that can comfortably fit all these people and their activities, even though they might not all exist — yet.

3. Buying a home you can’t truly afford. You might think that one of the top 5 regrets of homebuyers would be buying at the top of the market. But that’s not the case — I know plenty of buyers who bought at the top, paid top dollar and are still upside down on their homes, yet are still happy with their homes because they can well afford the payment and bought homes that will serve their families very well for the very long term (which will allow their home’s value to recover).

It is much more problematic to simply overextend yourself on a home — no matter what the market dynamics are at the time you buy. People who both bought at the top of the market AND overextended themselves made up the large majority of folks who lost homes, as the mortgage gyrations they went through (i.e., taking short-term, interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgages) in order to qualify for the home in the first place also caused them to be utterly unable to sustain the mortgage once the market declined and their mortgages weren’t able to be refinanced.

If you can’t foresee being able to make the mortgage payment on your home 10 years in the future without refinancing it, that’s a sign you might be approaching the unaffordability danger zone.

4. Incompletely resolving co-buyer conflicts. Many co-buyers are couples, but I’ve also seen parents buy homes with their children, siblings buy homes together and even good friends team up to co-buy a home. Any time there is more than one buyer, there is a chance that the co-buyers will have one or more disconnects in their wants, needs and priorities. Often these are resolved almost effortlessly by the realities of the homes that are on the market (e.g., neither party’s dream home turns out to actually exist, or pricing realities require everyone to compromise); other times, people simply work things out like mature individuals, seeking first to understand their co-buyer’s position, then working out a compromise that works for everyone involved.

But in still other cases, the conflict is never truly, deeply resolved; even on closing day, one side feels completely misunderstood, or caves in for the sake of avoiding conflict, or someone simply throws a tantrum, insisting that they get their way. In these cases, it’s common for the party who feels undermined and trampled on to ruminate on it as they live in the property every single day, ending up with great resentment and anger over the years.

5. Taking on fixing beyond their skill, patience and resource level. It can be heartbreaking to tour one of the many homes on the market that was clearly the subject of a previous owner’s fixer-upper dream but was abandoned in the middle of a remodel. Often, these abandonments happen because the owner simply underestimated what the project would take and ran out of time, energy or, most commonly, money to get the remodeling completed. But it’s even sadder to tour the home of a frustrated fixer whose owner and family still lives in a half-done, very dysfunctional property, and who are getting more and more disgruntled with their situation every time they make a mortgage payment.

I read this article at:  http://lowes.inman.com/newsletter/2012/08/29/news/199628

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email Sabrina & Susan at:  Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit our Website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp us at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-cityå

Or Yelp me:  http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:

http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading – Sabrina

Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite

The National Pest Management Association’s Vice President of Public Affairs, Missy Henriksen, shares the following tips for avoiding these pests while traveling.

Check Your Room. If you don’t want to let the bedbugs bite, thoroughly inspect your room for signs of infestation. Henriksen advises placing your luggage in the bathroom when you first arrive in your hotel room, because there’s no place for bedbugs to hide in most bathrooms. Next, says Henriksen, “Pull back the sheets and inspect the mattress seams, particularly at the corners, for pepper-like stains or spots or even the bugs themselves. Adult bedbugs resemble a flat apple seed.” Also look behind the headboard, inside chair and couch cushions, behind picture frames, and around electrical outlets. If you see anything suspicious, notify management and change rooms (or better yet, establishments) immediately.

Request A Different Room. If you do have to change rooms, don’t move to a room adjacent to or directly above or below the site of the bedbug infestation. “Bedbugs can easily hitchhike via housekeeping carts and luggage or even through wall sockets,” notes Henriksen. “If an infestation is spreading, it typically does so in the rooms closest to the origin.”

Cover Your Bags. Even if you don’t see any signs of bedbugs, you should still take precautions. Never place luggage on a hotel bed or floor. Use luggage racks if available, and place your suitcase in a protective cover. Even a plastic trash bag will suffice.

Keep Everything Off the Floor. Despite the name, bedbugs lurk in many spots, not just where you sleep. Always be vigilant when you travel. Avoid putting your personal belongings on the floor of an airplane, bus, train, or taxi. Keep your small bag or purse on your lap at all times, and seal your bigger bags inside plastic or protective covers before checking or storing them in overhead bins.

Treat Your Luggage and Clothes After Travel. “The best way to prevent bedbugs is to remain vigilant both during travel and once you return home,” says Henriksen. The National Pest Management Association offers the following checklist to make sure you leave the bedbugs behind:
• Inspect your suitcases before bringing them into the house, and vacuum all luggage before storing it.
• Consider using a handheld garment steamer to steam your luggage; this can kill any bedbugs or eggs that might have hitched a ride home.
• Immediately wash and dry all of your clothes—even those that have not been worn—in hot temperatures to ensure that any stowaway bedbugs are not transported into your drawers or closet.
• Keep clothes that must be dry-cleaned in a plastic bag and take them to the dry cleaner as soon as possible.
• If you suspect a bedbug infestation in your home, contact a licensed pest professional promptly. Bedbugs are not a DIY pest, and the longer you wait, the larger the infestation will grow. A trained professional has the tools and knowledge to effectively treat your infestation.

I read this article here:  http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/five-ways-to-stop-bedbugs-before-they-bite.html

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email Sabrina & Susan at:  Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit our Website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp us at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-cityå

Or Yelp me:  http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:

http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading – Sabrina

A Cinderella Story… Lisa and All Those Offers….

The inspiration for this section of our blog – Cinderella Story – was inspired by Lisa and her long journey to home ownership.

Enjoy – Sabrina

Let’s take a look back to 2010 when Russ and Natalie referred their neighbor and dear friend Lisa to us.  Lisa was looking to buy her first home.  We got her pre-approved with Melanie Flynn at First Priority Mortgage and she qualified for the FHA loan.  With her pre-approval letter in hand the hunt began.  And what a hunt it was.

2010 was a tough year…the real estate market had been in a slump…the world knew the real estate market had crashed.  Many buyers were hesitant to buy, fearing the prospect of over paying while the market was still going down.  Locally however, by 2010, we had already hit bottom in many areas of the SF Peninsula the year before and we were now seeing the market slowly starting to recover.  Multiple offers and bidding wars were starting up again.  But unless you were in the trenches as a Realtor or buyer/seller…you wouldn’t know because the media was intent on focusing on the national real estate market which was still struggling.

At the time, the market was heavy on short sale properties, and with the banks so overwhelmed, the process of trying to buy some short sale houses outweighed the joy of owning the house.  Nonetheless,  we wrote offers on choice short sales for Lisa.  I swear, we’re still waiting to hear back on some of them.  There were also some regular sales, but if the home was in nice shape, you could guarantee multiple offers and a bidding war within the week.  The rest of the homes on the market were in pretty bad shape.  Yes the hunt continued.  We looked at many homes in various areas.  My favorite quality of Lisa was her imagination.  She could look at the dumpiest house and see it’s potential.  There were a few times Susan & I steered her away from homes with too many projects.  We truly wanted her to buy a home she could afford, that would need only cosmetic work – not structural headaches.

Lisa had an open mind.  Each home we checked out she seriously considered.  She wrote great offers, including letters to the sellers with a cute photo of her and her furry baby.  She listened to our suggestions and advice.  However, with each offer we would discover the seller accepted an all cash offer….sometimes for less than Lisa’s offer.  We kept checking out homes and writing offers till she could practically explain the purchase contract to us.  In light of constantly being outbid, Lisa wasn’t discouraged.  Well maybe a little, but she would dust herself off and keep on going.  We hunted for more than 6 months…but in retrospect we could have easily looked for a year.

Then one day while Susan & I were touring listings, we drove by a home we hadn’t seen yet.  On my trusty smart phone I looked it up and found out it was a bank owned home that had just fallen out of contract.  It was currently priced higher than we could go, it was an older home, in a beautiful west side location – and well just sitting there.  I quickly did some research.  The home had never had an open house, was never on broker tour and had just fallen out of contract – I called the Listing Agent.  Being that it was already bank owned and had fallen out of contract, I explained our situation to the listing agent and that afternoon we wrote an offer.  Within the week we heard the good news, the bank accepted our price (under list price) and we were on our way to closing an escrow.  After our inspections came up with no surprises, you could tell Lisa was slowly getting excited.  Finally, after writing nearly 20 offers and being outbid and beat up over and over again – 3o days later we popped the bubbly and handed Lisa the keys to her new home.

The moral of this Cinderella Story – sometimes you gotta kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince charming.

Congrats on hitting the 2 year anniversary in your home Lisa.  We truly enjoyed working with you and turning your home ownership dream into a reality.

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email Sabrina & Susan at:  Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit our Website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp us at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-cityå

Or Yelp me:  http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:

http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading – Sabrina

California for-sale inventory at 2005 levels – great article – had to share…

California for-sale inventory at 2005 levels

Homes on the market in May represented just 3.5 months of supply

By Inman News

Inventories of homes for sale in California continued to shrink in May, as the highest pace of sales since February 2009 reduced the supply of available homes to just 3.5 months — down from 4.2 months in April and 5.7 months at the same time a year ago.

Many housing analysts view a six-month supply of homes as a good balance of supply and demand — anything less means there are not enough homes to meet demand.

“Low housing inventory continues to be the critical issue in the California market,” said California Association of REALTORS® Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young in a statement accompanying the release of the latest numbers. “Inventory levels have not been this low since December 2005, when the supply matched the current level.”

Sales of existing, single-family detached homes were up 3.4 percent from April, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 572,260 in May, CAR said. That’s the fastest pace of sales since February 2009, when homes were selling at a seasonally adjusted rate of 598,770 per year.

The San Francisco Bay Area had the greatest shortage of homes for sale, with inventory levels in the two- to three-month range for Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, Appleton-Young said. A seven-month supply is normal, CAR said in releasing data from more than 90 REALTOR® associations and multiple listing services.

The inventory figures could provide ammunition to critics of plans to allow bulk sales of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac real estate owned (REO) properties. The National Association of REALTORS® has urged that such programs be “implemented on a strictly limited, as-needed basis,” citing estimates by analysts at Barclays Capital that private investors are converting 800,000 homes a year into rentals.

Fannie and Freddie’s federal regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA), has said it will approve bulk sales only in markets where there’s a glut of properties on the market.

The first “REO to rental” sale of 2,490 Fannie Mae “real estate owned” (REO) properties will be limited to eight markets: Atlanta (572 properties); Los Angeles-Riverside, Calif. (484 properties); Phoenix (341 properties); Las Vegas (219 properties); Chicago (99 properties); Southeast Florida (418 properties); Central and Northeast Florida (190 properties); and Western Florida (167 properties).

But last month, California REALTORS® got behind a bill introduced by Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea, that would prohibit bulk sales of Fannie Mae REO homes in the state.

For housing statistics please visit the link below:

I read this article at:  http://lowes.inman.com/newsletter/2012/06/19/news/191356

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email Sabrina & Susan at:  Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit our Website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp us at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-cityå

Or Yelp me:  http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:

http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading – Sabrina

The Advantages of Preapproval – great article had to share…

The Advantages of Preapproval

By VICKIE ELMER

WITH the housing market warming up in many areas, and multiple offers becoming more commonplace, buyers who want an advantage in the bidding process will need more than a mortgage prequalification. They will need a preapproval.

The difference is significant. Prequalifying for a mortgage is based solely on what you disclose to the loan officer or broker about your earnings, credit score and total assets, including what is available for a down payment.

“It’s verbal — it doesn’t really mean anything,” beyond providing some basic guidance on the range of prices you may be able to afford, said Kevin Chittenden, a vice president and regional sales manager in Paramus, N.J., for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

A preapproval, by contrast, requires borrowers to provide documentation of their income and their assets.

The lender typically pulls your credit report and score, and you should gather together almost everything you will need for the actual mortgage underwriting: W-2 wage statements; 1099s, which show things like dividends and interest income; recent pay stubs; bank statements; and statements from Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k)s and other assets that could show you have the resources to buy and maintain a home.

At Wells Fargo, one of the country’s largest mortgage lenders, the first quick review provided by an underwriter constitutes an agreement to lend. “It’s a real commitment, a commitment to lend,” Mr. Chittenden said.

Other lenders may treat preapprovals as more of an opinion on the person’s ability to borrow, not a guarantee to lend, said Jack Guttentag, who runs the Mortgage Professor Web site. Generally, borrowers need to have chosen a property and have it appraised before they can expect a firm commitment from a lender, he said.

Still, a preapproval is more important now, with so many more homes receiving multiple bids, and because the housing market in many parts of the New York region has been getting stronger.

“Preapproval carries more weight when you go to negotiate a deal,” said Ray Mignone, a certified financial planner in Little Neck, Queens. “It gives them bargaining power.”

Borrowers should ask the lender to provide a good-faith estimate on closing costs and fees along with the preapproval. Many will provide this only once you have a home under contract, but some will give you an estimate of those costs, said Sofi Cordero, a senior housing counselor with La Casa De Don Pedro, which works on affordable housing and neighborhood development in Newark.

The preapproval letter should include the amount a borrower is qualified to borrow, as well as the loan officer’s contact information. Some letters may have an estimated monthly payment. But details about the loan type and interest rate will not be included; those are filled in when you are ready to receive the loan, experts say.

Timing is important. Buyers should aim for obtaining a preapproval letter from a lender within 30 to 60 days of the expected purchase date, Ms. Cordero said. That is because some letters expire in 90 days or so. (Wells Fargo’s, for instance, last for 120 days.)

Your income and bank statements may also need to be updated if it has been a few months between preapproval and the signed contract for buying, Mr. Chittenden said.

Wells Fargo charges would-be borrowers $18 for the credit report for a preapproval; the other costs of the mortgage start once you have a purchase agreement, he said.

Other lenders may waive the preapproval and application fees because they want to sign you on as a customer, Ms. Cordero noted, adding that if you find another lender with better terms, you are under no obligation to use the lender that provided the preapproval.

I read this article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/realestate/mortgages-the-advantages-of-preapproval.html?_r=2&ref=realestate

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email Sabrina & Susan at:  Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit our Website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp us at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-cityå

Or Yelp me:  http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:

http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading – Sabrina

Sharing a Terrific Article on 4 Ways a Buyer Can Compete In Today’s Market By Dian Hymer

Hello Blog Readers.  Sabrina here –  had to share this right away.  I’ve been meaning to write my own blog update about our local real estate market when I can came across this article.  Please enjoy – Dian is spot on for the SF Peninsula Real Estate market.

Enjoy, Sabrina

 

4 Ways Buyers Can Compete In Today’s Market

Don’t be intimidated by all-cash offers

By Dian Hymer

Inventories of homes for sale are dropping in areas where they’ve recently been high like in Oakland, Calif., Phoenix and Miami. Interest rates are approximately 0.75 percent lower than they were a year ago. It seems like a good time to get off the fence and into the action if you can find a house that reasonably matches your wish list and you don’t find yourself bucking other buyers who have the same idea.

Months’ supply of inventory is an estimate of how long it would take to sell all of the homes in a given market at the current sales pace. A six-month supply of unsold inventory is thought to represent a balanced market.

In California, there was a 4.2-month supply of inventory in April 2012, down from 5.6 months a year ago. When buyer demand increases, the unsold inventory drops, and multiple offers often enter the picture — sometimes in a big way.

In the hills above Berkeley, Calif., buyers are chasing too few homes for sale. But not all homes are coveted. The best homes that are priced right for the market are drawing attention. The multiple-offer activity can be fierce. Recently, a home that was perhaps underpriced for the market was bid up significantly with 17 offers. Four of the top offers included no contingencies.

The first step to successfully compete in a sizzling market is to know the inventory. Pricing low to generate multiple offers is a strategy commonly used in a low-inventory, high-demand market. You need to be familiar with how much listings in your area are selling for in order to determine if a listing is priced at, above or below market value.

HOUSE HUNTING TIP: You might have only one opportunity to grab the sellers’ attention, which means that your first offer may need to be your best. You need to feel confident that the price you’re offering — particularly if it’s significantly over the list price — is reasonable in terms of your long-term housing needs and in light of the fact that the current uptick in many segments of the market may not be a sustained recovery.

Before writing an offer, find out how many offers the agent anticipates. If you can barely afford the asking price and there are seven offers, you might reconsider and wait for an opportunity that will allow you to move up in price, if necessary.

It’s hard to compete with an all-cash offer if you need to qualify for a mortgage. Make sure to get preapproved for the financing you need. Some sellers will accept an offer with a loan contingency from a well-qualified buyer over a cash offer if the price is higher. A large cash down payment makes your offer more attractive.

Make the cleanest offer you can without taking on too much risk. Offers made contingent on the sale of the buyers’ home have little chance of being accepted. In the example above, four buyers were willing to make offers without any contingencies. That’s as clean as it gets.

In this case, the buyers preinspected the property. In 2005 and 2006, buyers waived inspection contingencies to compete. Sometime negative consequences such as drainage or foundation problems were discovered after closing.

But if you’re willing to pay to inspect a home before the sellers have accepted your offer, you can gain the information about the property’s condition before moving forward. Be sure to ask for the sellers’ permission before preinspecting their home.

It’s always a good idea to find out as much as possible about the sellers’ situation. This may allow you to offer a perk that could swing the deal your way. Recently, buyers of a Piedmont, Calif., home offered the seller 30 days to rent back at no cost.

THE CLOSING: This clinched the deal.

Dian Hymer, a real estate broker with more than 30 years’ experience, is a nationally syndicated real estate columnist and author of “House Hunting: The Take-Along Workbook for Home Buyers” and “Starting Out, The Complete Home Buyer’s Guide.”

I read this article at:  http://lowes.inman.com/newsletter/2012/06/13/news/190914

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email Sabrina & Susan at:  Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit my Website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit me on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp The Caton Team at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-cityå

Or Yelp me at:  http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:  http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com

Thanks for reading – Sabrina

Offer Subject to Inspection – What Does That Mean?

As a Realtor I have a whole dictionary for just real estate jargon.  One of the most confusing terms, and often buyers will get the wrong idea about their agent, is “offer subject to inspection.”  So allow me a moment to explain what on earth this means.

“Offer subject to inspection” is a typical hurdle for buyers to overcome when shopping for homes that are tenant occupied.  The term means – the buyer can physically go in and SEE the home AFTER an offer is accepted.  Sounds a little backwards right?

And no – your agent is NOT trying to strong arm you and force you to buy a home without evening seeing it!

Generally this clause is for homes which are tenant occupied.  In order to preserve the rights of the tenant to have the quite enjoyment of their home – the tenant has the right to refuse prospective buyers to come in and see the home.  That is – until an offer is accepted by the seller, then the buyers has the right to inspect the home.

How does this work you ask?  The buyer must write a REAL offer since the terms are binding once accepted.  When the seller accepts the offer, the buyer will have a certain amount of days which is written into the contract to actually go in and see the home for the first time.  If the home is to their liking and the buyer wants to proceed with the contract – they do.  If the home is NOT to the buyers liking – for just about any reason – during the agreed upon days – the buyer will have the right to cancel the deal and walk away without any harm to both buyer and seller.

So you found a home you like – how do you write an offer?  If there are inspections available before hand – it makes our job of writing the offer a bit easier since we have a good idea of what the condition is.  If there are no inspections, and we haven’t seen the home, we drive by and gather as much info as we can with our eyes from the safety of the car.  We write the offer as best we can with the information provided and once the buyer has seen the home and had inspections we proceed with the new information – either by moving forward or discussing the new information with all parties and find a common and suitable outcome for all parties.

As strange as it seems – it happens more than you know.  For some buyers, they cannot imagine writing an offer for a home without ever seeing the home.  For investment buyers, this very typical and generally have no issues writing up a fair offer to get in.  Of course, what happens after a buyer gets to see the home is a far different story.  I have experienced both follow throughs on the contract and recessions – so truly we cross that bridge together when we get to it.

Which is truly at the root of what us Realtors do.  We are the buyers and sellers guides through Real Estate – what can The Caton Team do for you?

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email us at:

Info@TheCatonTeam.com

Visit our website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

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5 Things Home Buyers Hate… oh this is a funny read especially if you are selling your home…

I had to laugh when I read this article.  Would love to hear what my readers think of this – please comment or share your stories at info@TheCatonTeam.com

5 Things Home Buyers Hate

1. Images that lie

Stretching photos to make rooms appear much larger than they actually are would be banned by listing services, if buyers had anything to do with it. And if your home is pristine and staged during the photo shoot (which it should be), it should still be pristine and staged when buyers come to see it in person.

Taking a photo of just one corner of a room that is shaped strangely or stuffed full of personal items is another way to confuse and irritate buyers, who hate nothing more than to feel like they were misled and tricked into wasting their time to see a place that is nothing like the photos.

* The Caton Team does not stretch our photos on our listings.  We do add extra photos from different angles so internet clients get the best idea of the home before they come and see it

2. Listings with no useful images at all

Listing photos of the piano or a piece of beautiful furniture that is not included in the sale is irritating to online house hunters, who might assume that the house had no other attractive features to furnish. Even worse: Home listings with no photos at all.

Nine times out of ten, when the listing has no photos buyers simply scroll or click right past those homes — even the ones that might perfectly meet their expectations.

Sellers, let’s be clear: Skilled listing agents who are getting homes sold in today’s market are putting 10, 20 even 30 photos of each listing online. That’s your competition. If a buyer only has time to see seven homes on a Sunday, and there are 20 listed in your area and price range, chances are good that those with the best, most numerous pictures will capture those valuable showing slots.

Often, listings with no photos are that way because of technical difficulties. Check on your home’s online listings on various real estate search sites and alert your agent if there’s a problem with the pictures.

* Our MLS allows 25 photos and I add them all.

3. Misleading marketing

Problems in the condition of the home that will be obvious when buyers enter, like a shifting foundation or clearly leaky roof, should be disclosed as such in the listing to minimize the inconvenience to you and those buyers who wouldn’t have bothered to visit if they knew. Disclosing such problems upfront will maximize your chances of finding the right buyer, who is willing to take them on.

Phrases like “immaculate” and “better than new” set you (and your home) up for failure when the buyer walks in and sees even normal wear and tear, or the smells and clutter of daily living.

* The Caton Team provides full up-front disclosures online so any interested party has all the information they need at their fingertips.

4. “Stalkerish” sellers

Sellers who are intrusive or follow buyers around during a showing were No. 1 on my own list, and on the lists of buyers. A seller might love the murals they’ve painted on your kids’ walls or the custom living room crafting area they’ve set up, and want to share their love with prospective buyers.

But the fact is that most buyers just aren’t interested, and would rather be able to discuss their plans to get rid of crazy customizations freely with their spouse and their agent than feel obliged to feign appreciation. (I’ve even had some buyers say they liked a house, but kept looking because they would have hated to pull out the sellers’ beloved personal touches.)

* The best way to sell your home is to not be there when buyers come through.  They are not buying YOUR home, they are buying THIER home.

5. Bizarro showings

Dogs, kids and sleeping residents all made recurrent appearances in the comments to my article. Nothing worse than showing a home and finding dog “leavings” on the interior carpets, and even once joined my out-of-shape clients on a foot chase to catch a wily little dog whose owner had left explicit instructions not to let “Fido” out (but left him roaming around the house, poised to dart out the front door the second I opened it). One reader related a showing in which she opened a hall closet door and out popped a dog that had been cooped up there for the occasion.

A short-sale buyer related the depressing tale of an 8-year-old boy who showed her the whole house, while another distressed property viewer told of the kid who ran after her and her husband, screaming, “You can’t have my house!” Multiple buyers told of walking into rooms where people were changing clothes, eating, frying up food or sleeping during the showing.  I’ve personally walked into a man coming out of the shower – and he was NO Brad Pitt – the scene still burns my retinas.

My heart does go out to the Short Sale Sellers – it is the hardest sale.   But I must be blunt – if you have your home on the market and truly want to get out from under your property – please treat your home as an equity seller would.  Present it in the best possible fashion and when an agent comes through to show this home – please leave.  They’re is nothing more uncomfortable than showing buyers a property and the buyer feeling bad for the sellers situation.  They can’t get excited and write an offer if they feel uncomfortable.

Showing bizarreness is tough for buyers to get past, even if the place is a palace.

I would love to hear your silly real estate stories – don’t be shy!  Email us at Info@TheCaton Team.com

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email us at Info@TheCatonTeam.com or visit our website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp me at: http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:  http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com/

This article is shared from Inman News – Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of “The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook” and “Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions.” Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com.

3 ways Homebuyers kill their OWN real estate deals…

Hello  again!  Below is a great article I read in Inman News that I thought I would share.  I truly see this often….

Got questions – the Caton Team is here to help.  We are a click away – email us at Info@TheCatonTeam.com

 

3 ways homebuyers kill their own real estate deals

Mood of the MarketBy Tara-Nicholle Nelson

I recently bought a couple of spa treatment packages for a friend’s birthday (as much as a gift to myself as to her, to be sure). The package included a pedicure and a massage for the price of the massage, but had a bizarro restriction that required I pick the gift cards up at least one day prior to spa day.

The problem: The spa was across a bridge from my town. Despite my very best calculations, I hit unexpected traffic and it took me an hour’s drive just to pick them up.

It’s a good thing for the spa that I was literally stuck on that bridge, unable to turn around; otherwise, that would have been an undone deal. I was very clear that the value of my hour far exceeded the value of those two “pedis.”

In the end, the conditions I had to surmount to take advantage of the bargain negated the value of the deal — and then some.

And that happens much more frequently than you’d think in the world of real estate. Today’s ridiculously low prices and interest rates, combined, seem like the perfect storm for finding a great deal.

But some buyers run into — or even unwittingly create — circumstances in an effort to cash in on the bargain that deactivate or diminish the full value they otherwise stand to gain from buying at the bottom of the market, for both home prices and interest rates.

Here are three ways homebuyers are defeating their own deals in today’s market:

1. House hunting too long. As many as 60 percent of the homes for sale in some markets are short sales. Many other listings are bank-owned (also known as real estate owned or REO) properties, and those homes tend toward two extremes: terrible condition, or so nice at such a low price they receive multiple offers.

Even the nicer, nondistressed homes on the market can end up in and out of contract over and over again due to appraisal or other lending-related issues.

As a result, it is not at all bizarre to hear homebuyers today say they’ve been house hunting for a year, 18 months, even two or three years. When you house hunt that long, you become susceptible to house hunt fatigue, which causes irrationally extreme overbidding out of sheer exhaustion.

Alternatively, it can cause you to settle for whatever house you can get, even if it doesn’t actually meet your needs — then spend the next 10 years obsessively spending to upgrade, improve, repair and furnish the place to try to make it more like the home you actually wanted.

Both of these outcomes negate and deactivate the bargain you stood to score.

To avoid house hunting too long, it’s uber-important to get and stay clear on the differences between what you want and what you need, and to work with a local real estate professional you trust.

Look to your agent to get and keep your expectations centered in reality, so you can make more strategic decisions throughout your entire house hunt, like house hunting in a price range where you’re likely to both find homes that will work for your life and be successful in your efforts to obtain one.

2. Making lowball offers way too low. Overbidding seems like an obvious way to cancel out the bargain potential of your deal. But making excessively low offers — offers sellers couldn’t afford to take if they wanted to — can have the very same result.

Buyers who think they can operate strictly on the basis of buyer’s market dynamics — without realizing that most sellers will need to make enough to pay off their mortgage or at least receive the fair market value for their home — are cutting off their own noses to spite their faces, all in the name of trying to score an amazing deal.

Note to “lowballers”: If you don’t actually secure the home, the superlow price you offered is no deal at all.

3. Freak-outs, stress, drama and mayhem. Once was, it was mostly the buyers uneducated about the homebuying process who tended to freak out and stress the most, especially at the top of the market. These were the folks who found themselves defeated at every turn by buyers who knew what they were up against and were prepared to make their best offer on their first offer.

Fast forward, and now the norm is for buyers to spend much more time reading up on what to expect, but the inundation of information can create brand new mindset management challenges.

Almost every buyer is stressed about whether they can qualify for a loan, and about buying into a down market. Some buyers try to apply national headlines about home prices being depressed to the superlocal dynamics of their neighborhood market.

This is unwise if you happen to be, for example, trying to buy a home in the boomtown real estate markets of Silicon Valley. Others go the opposite direction and deny that the basic truths about, say, buying a short-sale listing will actually apply to them (attention homebuyers: buying a short sale usually takes a long, long time).

The emotional freak-outs that result from having your expectations shattered, sometimes brutally, in the course of buying a home often lead to panic-based and fear-based decisions, which can be costly in the short and long term. Additionally, the stress itself can take a toll on your ability to be productive at work, and can even impair your relationship with your mate, neither of which are worth any deal you think you stand to strike.

Again, managing your expectations by working with a trusted broker or agent you feel comfortable relying on to understand the market in your neck of the woods and the type of transaction you want to pull off is essential to downgrading the role emotion plays in your real estate decision-making.

Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.  Email us at Info@TheCatonTeam.com or visit our website at:   http://thecatonteam.com/

Visit us on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834

Yelp me at: http://www.yelp.com/user_details_thanx?userid=gpbsls-_RLpPiE9bv3Zygw

Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:  http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com/