Yesterday, I received a flyer in my mailbox at the C21 office from a local lendor with the title “Protecting Your Credit”. It listed some things to watch out for to protect your credit card. One of the items said that hotel card keys contain your personal info on it (including credit card numbers) and the recommendation was not to turn these back to the hotel/motel but destroy them.
Unfortunately, this is incorrect and is one of those Internet e-rumors that has been going around since 2003. See this page:
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/k/keycards.htm
Ryan’s Mortgage Blog Part 2:
I stated last night rates were slightly up…BUT I should have been more specific. While the average rate may have gone up with a majority of lenders, that doesn’t mean all of the lender’s rates went up. Being a brokerage we have the ability to shop hundreds of lenders/banks to find the lowest rates out there. Granted when rates steadily increase or decrease they will eventually do so with all the lenders. In a case like the last couple weeks when rates were only slightly up, not all lenders followed suit. This was brought to my attention this morning when our company priced out a 5 year arm (interest only) at 5.625% and a 7 Year Arm (I/O) at 5.75%. Both of these rates are below what many news sites have the current rates at.
Another thing to note is lenders anticipate what is going to happen in the market and they price things into their rates ahead of time, so just because something happened on Wall Street today doesn’t mean rates will change today because lenders anticipated this two weeks ago and adjusted their rates then.
Next week I will talk about the pros and cons of using a brokerage over a direct lender/bank. RBaker@PeregrineLending.com
Ryan’s Mortgage Blog:
I wanted to provide a post about how the mortgage market is doing since I haven’t written about it in a while. I have seen rates rise slightly over the last couple weeks and an article from www.mortgagenewsdaily.com provided a possible explanation. Below is an excerpt from the article:
Mortgage rates rose slightly last week based on encouraging news about job growth. Conversely, fees and points related to originating mortgages have declined based on 3 of the 4 programs surveyed.
Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey reported that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.22 percent with an average 0.4 point for the week ending April 12, 2007, up from last week when it averaged 6.17 percent with 0.4 point. Last year at this time, the 30-year averaged 6.49 percent.
According to Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist, “Interest rates in general ticked up following the release of the March employment data, which showed stronger job growth than what the market expected. This brought interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages back up this week to match the first quarter average.”
If you have any questions or comments I can be reached at my NEW email address RBaker@PeregrineLending.com. That’s right, I am with a new company as well…I followed in Keith’s footsteps with a change.
If you’re a Bank of America customer, be prepared to wait in line longer at ATMs. I just tried BofA’s new ATM terminal in Pismo Beach. I had 9 checks to deposit and instead of putting them in an envelope and deposting them in the machine, you now have to insert each one to scan, verify it on the screen, enter the amount if the ATM can’t make out the amount, ok it, and then choose to continue to another check. Their other new terminal wasn’t working yet so when finished with the deposit, there was a line of 3 people. At the end, it prints out all the scanned checks (a waste of paper!) but doesn’t even include your balance. If you want that, you need to spend even more time at the ATM. So, if you are in line and someone is taking 5 or more minutes at the ATM, don’t blame them…blame the bank. Unfortunately, from the looks I got from the people in line behind me, it wasn’t the bank they were mad at.
Different ways to show your home to potential Buyers
When you put your home on the market and on the MLS, you are wanting to make it as easy as possible for other Realtors to show your home to real Buyers. When a home is entered into the MLS, a Realtor chooses the showing instructions from a list.
For occupied homes, the most popular choices are:
- Call/lockbox
- Appointment only
- Appointment Listing Office
A Realtor can also choose “24 hour notice” as well
Call/lockbox means that the Realtor with the Buyer calls the number listed in the MLS listing (the owner or tenant). If no one answers, the Realtor can leave a message when they are wanting to show and then use the lockbox to show the home. It’s courtesty within the Realtor community to give at least a 2 hour notice before showing on a Call/lockbox.
Appointment only means that the Realtor needs to make an appointment with the owner/tenant on when to show. If their is a lockbox installed, the homeowner doesn’t have to be at home.
Appointment Listing Office means that the Realtor has to call the Listing Agent to arrange a showing appointment.
There is also a small area where the Listing Agent can add showing comments. This area is way to small to add more than a few words but there is also a “Confidential Agent Remarks” section which is a great place for the Listing Agent to communicate to other Realtors. What I do is put “see remarks” in the showing comments section and then communicate any additional showing instructions such as an additional phone number that the Realtor should call or other info such as the need to provide more than a 2 hour notice.
I had an unfortunate experience today while showing a home. This particular listing was “Call/lockbox”. I called the number listed on the MLS listing and received voicemail. I left a message of the time I wanted to show and my number in case this was a problem. When I arrived to show with my clients, the person at home was unaware of my showing and did not have the home ready to show so we were turned away. The homeowner wanted to be contacted before a showing. I felt bad for both my clients and the homeowner. I know what a pain it is for homeowners during the time when their home is on the market and really try to mimimize the trouble for them. In this case, the showing instructions should have been “Appointment Only” instead of “Call/Lockbox” and there should have been instructions to say to use an additional phone number if no answer at the one designated as the phone number to call for showings.
I’m surprised how little the “Confidential Agent Remarks” section is used by agents. Not only to make the showing instructions clear, but it’s also a great place to market (and hype!) the home to other Realtors. Some listings have no remarks in this section. Last year, I was successful in getting this section increased from 300 characters to 500 characters in the MLS system as I’m always running out of space. It’s still not enough, IMO, but I was happy I got it increased at all.
When you list your home, have your Realtor send you a copy of the listing that other Realtors see in the MLS. That way you can see if the showing instructions are clear and what you want. There’s no secret codes that Realtors use, if what you read on the MLS listing doesn’t make sense to you, then it probably won’t to other Realtors as well. By looking at the full listing you can also see how they are marketing your home to other Realtors.
Here’s a mid-month check on our local market:
April 1 – April 15 – Central Coast MLS Stats – Residential
480 New Listings
231 Pendings
504 Price changes
We’ll see how the rest of the month goes but it does look like we’ll end up with fewer Buyers than we did in March and inventory will increase at a higher rate. (In March, we had a total of 845 New listings and 568 Pendings).
The Arizona Board of Appraisers has sent a cease and desist letter to Zillow to have them stop giving “Zestimates”. They say that you need a license to provide appraisals but Zillow says what they are offering aren’t appraisals.
In the letter to Zillow it states:
“The board requests that you cease and desist from all appraisal activities in the state of Arizona until such time as they are performed by a licensed or certified appraiser in this state. If you fail to comply with the board’s request to cease and desist from these activities, the board will have no option but to pursue injunctive relief.”
To me, what Zillow is doing is not appraisals but an online home valuation using public information. Some of their zestimates are close but many are 10-20% either too high or too low. It’s just one piece of data that people can use. Realtors aren’t licensed appraisers either but most homeowners will turn to Realtors to get an idea on what their home is worth as part of a Comparable Market Analysis (CMA).
The Internet is a really great for marketing-minded real estate agents in that you can get info on who sees your stuff online. How you interpret the data is the next challenge. For example, for my new listing at 680 Chorro I’ve had 286 visitors already come to the www.680chorro.com website since I listed the property on Thursday! I can also see what network they’ve come from such as AOL, Charter, SBCglobal, etc. I advertised the property in Cal Poly’s Mustang Daily on Thursday and Friday and I can also see how many visitors came from computers attached to the Cal Poly network too.
I can also see how many Realtors have looked at the listing on the MLS since Thursday and that number is 131. This number is pretty surprising to me since we have over 2700 Realtors on the Central Coast and over 500 in San Luis Obispo alone. I hear Realtors saying “I monitor the hot sheet of new listings daily” but the 131 number says that not that many Realtors really do look at new listings. With this statistic, it looks like I may need to do a specific marketing effort directed at Realtors other than relying just on the MLS.
On April 12th, the Department of Real Estate (DRE) clarified whose duty it is to explain loan terms, the Mortgage Broker or the Real Estate Agent. In their updated article, it is the Mortgage Broker that has the responsibility to explain the terms plus explain the positives and negatives of the type of financing. Previously, the article said that some of the responsibility was on the Buyers Agent but the updated article has eliminated any responsbility from the Buyers Agent.
