Team Reba Real Estate

Last minute attempts in the House and Senate working to extend tax credit closing timeline

Filed under: title/escrow, market activity, tax issues, King County, Snohomish County, FHA/VA, single family, townhouse, real estate, condo, seller, economic issues, legal issues, buyer, Puget Sound, mortgage/loan, foreclosure, short sale, Washington — Reba Haas @ 9:19 am

The folks at Inman released the news that the House has approved an extension of the closing timeline for 1st time buyers and move-up buyers to get the tax credits offered for purchasing during the specified time limit. However, we’re still waiting for final news that the Senate has also approved it. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for it, but in the meantime all of the escrow offices I know are working full-tilt to get as many contracts closed today as they humanely can do.

Some of the frustrations that home buyers have experienced are that a large amount of the sales going on today involve either bank owned or short sale transactions - both of which aren’t always following the deadlines put to them in real estate contracts. With short sales taking, on average, around 6 months or more to close these types of transactions have really strangled the buyers who are trying to purchase them, if they were going for the tax credit.

At Team Reba we’ve seen the reality of the concerns that buyers have had with at least one listing having had a contract cancelled due to concerns that the buyer wouldn’t be able to close in time for the tax credit. Now it’s too bad that they did so since the extension is likely here. We also had another contract where we had to push hard on behalf of our buyer because the family was purchasing a bank owned home where the Trustee and the bank were slow to respond on every deadline and request for documentation, taking upwards of 3.5 months to close the deal. We just closed that transaction last week, much to the relief of our clients.

For the rest of you out there waiting to get your closing done today, you might cross your fingers, toes and legs and knock on wood - let’s hope the Senate gets moving on this bill.

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New Fannie Mae guidelines revealed for underwriting plus new rules for buyers with prior short sales.

Filed under: Conventional loans, single family, Snohomish County, Pierce County, government, 1-4 unit, credit score, FICO, adjustable rate mortgage, primary residence, King County, market activity, interest rates, Puget Sound, buyer, economic issues, short sale, foreclosure, real estate, condo, mortgage/loan, Washington — Reba Haas @ 4:58 pm

The REALTOR.org site has links to stories that cover these items. For different types of Fannie Mae backed loans there are new underwriting guidelines to help mitigate risk on these loans which means that for the public they’ll be harder to get. Not impossible, but more documentation and stricter guidelines for qualify.

Specifically, Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) loans are addressed with regard to qualifying standards (ie, customers must qualify at the adjusted rate, not the teaser/start rate) and interest only loans (yes, they still exist)now require a minimum 720 FICO credit mid-score.

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FHA cutting seller concessions from 6% to 3%

Filed under: FHA/VA, real estate, mortgage/loan — Michael Lindekugel @ 10:53 am

In an attempt to mitigate the risk of insuring underwater loans from inflated appraisals the FHA announced it will cut the maximum allowed seller concessions from 6% to 3% sometime this summer. Read on…..

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2011963532_harney30.html

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Strategic Mortgage Default…….

Filed under: HAMP, HAFA, CDPE, deed-in-lieu, mortgage/loan, foreclosure, economic issues, interest rates, short sale, legal issues — Michael Lindekugel @ 12:30 pm

Turns out the “strategic default” is not a strategic calculated rational economic decision after all. Read on.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2011896802_harney23.html

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Unemployed and trying to pay the mortgage? Check out the new HAMP program for payment reduction for qualifying homeowners.

Filed under: HAMP, HAFA, government, Conventional loans, townhouse, single family, TARP, unemployment, primary residence, deed-in-lieu, 1-4 unit, employment, CDPE, Snohomish County, Pierce County, Puget Sound, short sale, seller, economic issues, legal issues, foreclosure, mortgage/loan, market activity, King County, Fair Housing, real estate, condo, Washington — Reba Haas @ 9:20 am

Several of the members of Team Reba are Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) designation holders and with our membership in this group of specially trained real estate agents we get regular updates on changes within the TARP, HAMP and HAFA programs. Most recently a new program for unemployed persons has become available. Check out this link to read the terms of eligibility and pass it on if you know of anyone who may benefit from the information.

For those that don’t qualify, there may still be other options against foreclosure including a short sale or deed-in-lieu action. If you live in the greater Seattle/Bellevue/Puget Sound area (King, Pierce & Snohomish Counties), feel free to contact us if you need assistance in reviewing your options.

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Buying a foreclosure home in WA State? Be prepared that excise tax may become your responsibility if this Senate measure passes.

Filed under: Pierce County, King County, title/escrow, property taxes, Snohomish County, townhouse, Conventional loans, FHA/VA, single family, market activity, tax issues, buyer, seller, economic issues, legal issues, Puget Sound, foreclosure, real estate, condo, mortgage/loan, Washington — Reba Haas @ 10:54 am

WR Urges Call to Action on Proposed Tax Increase
Please send a message immediately to State House members to stop taxes on real estate. The Senate’s budget increases the B&O .25% on real estate professionals, as well as shifts the real estate excise tax onto the buyer of a foreclosed home. The Senate’s budget passed the Senate and is now being considered in the House.

The message above was sent out to real estate agents who are members of the local multiple listing service along with a link to the site where we could send a message to our representatives. For the general public, I realize that you may not care if real estate professionals are hit with a higher Business & Occupation (B&O) tax, but know that we have the highest rate of such a tax in this state.

The more important issue to the home buying public is the shift of moving the excise tax payment burden from the seller to a buyer of a foreclosed home. All this does is help lessen the costs of banks when selling their foreclosed inventory and it puts a higher cost burden on the buyers, who in many cases for first time buyers are just barely qualifying for the amounts that they’re purchasing in. If excise tax, which runs 1.78% here, is now put on them as a closing cost fee, then that buyer ends up paying the tax twice because they’ll have to pay it again later when they sell the home at whatever that new value will be at that time. Also, it will lessen the amount of home purchasing power that they’ll have, at least when it comes to buying bank owned homes because that will likely be part of the qualifying factors for the lender when they do their underwriting review. If a buyer is qualified at $200k for a traditional purchase but now 1.78% ($3,560 in this case) must be considered, then a buyer may not be able to buy a $199k home because the excise tax payment requirement puts them just out of reach if they originally only needed $7,000 for down payment via FHA (3.5%), PMI payment of roughly the same amount (possibly wrapped into financing) still increasing cost of loan and impacting qualifying factors, and reducing what they might have in their “reserve” accounts which are also factored in for qualifying because most banks want 3-6 months worth of funds available at closing.

If you are in support of not having the excise tax payment shift made to buyers, please contact your State representative immediately!

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An interesting video explaining One West Bank profit model on “short sales” of former IndyMac loans

Filed under: King County, market activity, tax issues, real estate, Pierce County, Snohomish County, Conventional loans, FHA/VA, single family, condo, mortgage/loan, seller, economic issues, legal issues, buyer, Puget Sound, foreclosure, short sale, interest rates, Washington — Reba Haas @ 10:12 am

This is an interesting video about former IndyMac loans that were purchased by One West Bank and how the short sale process enriches that company. I had a short sale that I negotiated for a client last summer that included a 1st lienholder as IndyMac (now One West Bank) and our understanding of how these transactions worked helped us close a great deal for our buyer - without the… seller taking on a promissory note. What frustrates me is to see the lenders who buy discounted notes and won’t negotiate in good faith on the “short”.

Watch Video

Keep in mind, that if the short sale was an investment property, there is not only the possibility of a promissory note to the seller, but there are tax implications for any forgiven debt. Currently, with the Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007, primary residences have had some reprieve from taxation on forgiven debt, but a lot of underwater loans belonged to people convinced of buying single family homes as investment properties who weren’t that financially stable to begin with but who had hoped to grow their assets but who are now losing nearly everything.

If you know someone who is in a position of needing to do a short sale in the King, South Snohomish or North Pierce County areas, please feel free to have them call us to learn some of the options available to them.

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FHA albatross of a townhome condo transaction is almost over!

Filed under: real estate, condo, market activity, King County, FHA/VA, Redmond, mortgage/loan, seller, economic issues, buyer, Puget Sound, HOA, Washington — Reba Haas @ 9:18 am

Many of you have read various posts from me over the past few months regarding FHA and the nightmares that it has been causing when trying to sell condos or townhomes with HOA’s. Well, my longest lasting closing is just about to finish this Friday. Tonight, I was able to give the happy news to my client that we got the final sign off on FHA approval to insure the loan on this property sale.

When the newer FHA rules came in to play we got caught up in the middle of it all in November when we learned that the reserve study the HOA had in hand hadn’t been approved by the board yet and FHA now would not accept spot approvals for anything with a reserve study outside of 12 months. Because of this, we thought it was a dead deal and the contract was rescinded in early December. Then it was like Phoenix Rising as in late December we heard that a lender was willing to consider the loan by using the budget review of the HOA as the determining factor. Ok, we said! So, back into contract we went.

Then December moved slowly on by and our goal of a January 6th closing extended further into January, with our extension for closing pushed to mid-January. Mid-January came and went and the next thing we knew it was pushed to late January.

Now, during part of this time I began to learn that the buyer was also dragging his feet. It became a catch-22 as the buyer wouldn’t follow up with loan conditions as he waited for FHA to move first with their approval. This caused unnecessary delays as having the closing loan conditions cleared would have helped with moving the loan into the hands of FHA earlier.

One of the many beneficial things we did on the seller side of things (I am the listing agent in this scenario) was for me to contact other listing agents in the same complex to build support for homeowners to apply pressure to their board to accept the reserve study - even if it was with conditions for review of certain elements. This along with another agent working with yet another lender to submit a full FHA approval packet for the development (only 1 out of 5 divisions had originally held FHA approval) which was approved within a day of our spot approval. Our client had at least passed an FHA appraisal in November and I believe that helped us as well since it would have been recorded against the property in the FHA database, plus at least 3 other homes had sold via FHA loans in the 6 months prior to all these changes.

So, our last extension put us to a Friday closing of this week. My fellow agents and our friend/clients out there, please cross your fingers for us and knock on wood that this is it!!!!

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Hard work pays off in getting FHA approval on a condo complex

Filed under: professionalism, real estate, title/escrow, townhouse, FHA/VA, condo, mortgage/loan, seller, economic issues, buyer, Puget Sound, HOA, Washington — Reba Haas @ 11:42 am

We’ve been working on a transaction for one of our clients since late October 2009. The client came to us the year prior thinking it would take him 2 months to get ready for on market, but then took 7 months to get there. I’d done a lot of early review of the property to try and determine our chances with FHA since only one part of the complex was initially approved when the development was completed. For those not familiar, if your complex isn’t already approved you can do what is called a “spot approval” with FHA but only IF your building meets certain criteria. At the beginning we were in good shape.

However, late 2009 brought lots of changes in FHA and as most of us agents know the spot approval process was in jeopardy of going away - and that’s exactly the kind of buyer we ended up in contract with so we knew it might be touch and go as we targeted a closing to meet the initial 1st time buyer tax credit deadline. The FHA spot approval cutoff is now pushed to Feb 1st of 2010, but many of the tightening aspects of FHA have been happening along the way to that new deadline. For one, we got hit with this transaction failing at one point because even though we’d had an FHA appraisal completed, we got turned down for spot approval because the association hadn’t yet approved their recent reserve study. FHA was requiring that reserve studies be within the 12 months prior and the last approval of one was from 3 years ago - even though the association had a study in hand, it just hadn’t been approved by the board yet as they continued getting bids for the roofing element.

The buyer’s agent and the lender for this deal have been great about staying diligent with the file and found alternate ways to have the budget review of the association used for the spot approval - and on my end I was coordinating with other listing agents with clients in the complex to have us all pushing support of approving the reserve study. One agent had her client’s lender submitting the entire complex to FHA for approval.

With all of us working in concert with each other we got the wonderful news on Friday that our approval from FHA was accepted! Not just for my client’s spot approval, but the entire complex will now be approved. YEAH! Now, we are back on track for closing - 2 months later than expected - but closing nonetheless. All the selling clients involved are very relieved and the buyers are all starting to get excited about their purchases again. It’s a new day and time in real estate, and those of us with the nerves of steel and willingness to work hard, and together, to overcome the obstacles that arise for our clients it is very worthwhile.

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Snohomish County Courthouse holidays (closures) for 2010

Filed under: Snohomish County, title/escrow, townhouse, single family, commercial real estate, FHA/VA, market activity, real estate, economic issues, legal issues, seller, mortgage/loan, condo, Washington — Reba Haas @ 10:49 am

Much like the folks in King County, there are days in Snohomish where the recording office is closed. This will affect the closing of any real property transfers, sales, and refinances. Below are the dates affected:

January 1st - New Year’s Day, January 18th - MLK Day

February 15th - President’s Day

May 31st - Memorial Day

July 5th - Independence Day

September 6th - Labor Day

November 11th - Veteran’s Day, November 25/26 - Thanksgiving

December 24th - Christmas

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June 30, 2010

Last minute attempts in the House and Senate working to extend tax credit closing timeline

June 21, 2010

New Fannie Mae guidelines revealed for underwriting plus new rules for buyers with prior short sales.

May 30, 2010

FHA cutting seller concessions from 6% to 3%

May 23, 2010

Strategic Mortgage Default…….

May 19, 2010

Unemployed and trying to pay the mortgage? Check out the new HAMP program for payment reduction for qualifying homeowners.

March 9, 2010

Buying a foreclosure home in WA State? Be prepared that excise tax may become your responsibility if this Senate measure passes.

February 12, 2010

An interesting video explaining One West Bank profit model on “short sales” of former IndyMac loans

February 10, 2010

FHA albatross of a townhome condo transaction is almost over!

January 20, 2010

Hard work pays off in getting FHA approval on a condo complex

January 8, 2010

Snohomish County Courthouse holidays (closures) for 2010

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