By Inman News Feed
Mood of the Market Tara-Nicholle Nelson Inman News I'm not really sure exactly when investors got such a bad name. Once upon a time, every other person I met wanted to be one. Maybe it was the imprimatur of slick, infomercial-esque get-rich-quickness that kick-started the national anti-real-estate-investor antipathy. It probably didn't help when investors, only a small percentage of whom can accurately be called "flippers," ended up squarely on the wrong end of the foreclosure-crisis finger-pointing. Probably wrongfully so, as the last numbers I could find -- from 2008 -- showed that only 20 percent of the foreclosures in America at the time were on non-owner-occupied homes, which is disproportionately low, considering that 33 percent of homes in America are owned by investors. All last year, during the deepest depths of the foreclosure crisis, I saw buyer after buyer get outbid -- or underbid, but still bested -- by cash investors seeking to make the most of the decline in home values. While I felt deeply for the homebuyers who lost out, I also saw how investors played a big role in mopping up the excess inventory that was depressing values,...
By Inman News Feed
Will new rules spur other banks to follow suit? Jack Guttentag Inman News Bank of America recently delivered the following message to its loan officers: "Policy Change: Effective with initial locks on or after Jan. 21, 2010, overages will not be allowed on either purchase or refinance transactions." Some years ago, I had occasion to compare the marketing of home mortgages by lenders in the U.S. with the marketing of carpets in Middle Eastern bazaars. The comparison favored the carpet merchants, who didn't pretend their prices were fixed. Virtually all carpet buyers know that in the bazaar, bargaining is the rule. While less-competent bargainers may pay a little more, they are paying for their incompetence, not their innocence of the rules. In contrast, a large proportion of mortgage borrowers did not understand that they were in a mortgage bazaar -- they paid for their innocence. The price of innocence is called an "overage." It is the difference between the price a lender posts with its loan officers -- which is the price the lender expects to receive -- and the price the loan officer (LO) charges the borrower. If the posted price...
The Zestimate (pronounced ZEST-ti-met, rhymes with estimate) home valuation is Zillow's estimated market value, computed using a proprietary formula. It is not an appraisal. It is a starting point in determining a home's value. The Zestimate is pulled from data; your real estate agent or appraiser physically inspects the home and takes special features, location, and market conditions into account. Variations in price also occur because of negotiating factors, closing costs, and timing of closing....
By Inman News Feed
Home Sale Hindsight Tara-Nicholle Nelson Inman News Q: My wife and I have been house hunting with more or less urgency since this housing crisis began, around 2008. We really expected there to be lots of bargains and motivated sellers. We spent many hours house hunting in several different cities and neighborhoods. We made several offers on homes, and were always outbid. We were really surprised at how many of the homes sold for more than asking, and how few deals there were to be had. My wife recently went back to work after staying home with our young children for awhile, and we decided to wait until her income can be considered toward our qualifications, so we can afford more. We've come to the conclusion that we just aren't going to find what we need in the price range we've been looking at. I feel like all this "buyer's market" stuff was misleading. Was there anything we should have done differently? A: No. On every factor that matters, you did what you were supposed to do. You were an informed buyer and paid attention to what was going on in...
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