Going Green
How many knew or know or remember that there is a tax credit for those homeowners who turn their homes into a more energy efficient home? Check this out…
Kelly…
Generation Y and the checking account….
It has come to my attention in a fun and interesting way that some of the Gen Y’ers have checking accounts but they don’t necessarily have checks. I sat down with a client last night and we put pen to paper to make an offer on a wonderful home around the corner from his parents house and when I asked him for an earnest money deposit, his question to me was… “it has to be a check?” Wow, I thought for a second and realized what a great question and answered, well….uh yes I suppose it does. To which he replied ” I have never written a check before” You see he pays either online or with a swipe of his card.
Is generation Y the beginning of a paperless society? Will this old fart see a world convert to only plastic currency? Interesting.
Well, until then, when you go to buy a home kids, you still need checks.
Oh, don’t reply that we can accept jewelery, boats, planes, trains and automobiles 
Kelly…
It may be a scam if…
When ever there’s an economic downturn, the scam artists come out of the woodwork. Well guess what? They are here and they are here in full force. If you’re having trouble making your mortgage payments, and/or if you’re already in foreclosure, here are a few tips to remember if you get a phone call or if someone shows up at your front door and they say they “want to help”. That’s your first clue that something is amiss. If they say they can “stop your foreclosure”. DON’T believe them. (Only the bank can do that). If they say”they will buy your property”, You can believe them, but DON’T trust them.(They will only purchase your property if it’s well below markt value. Well…anyone will do that. If they say you should “sign your property over to them”. Don’t trust them. Call someone, anyone,Your CPA, Your attorney, Your REALTOR…Anyone, Someone.. Just DON’T trust them..And last but not least… If they say to “make your monthly mortgage payments to them”. Either hangup the phone or gently SLAM the front door.
wallace…
Appraisals and the Catch 22
So, the other day at the marketing meeting I was bemoaning the trials and tribulations of a certain transaction with yet another appraisal gone bad and a very reputable appraiser in town who was eaves dropping asked if he could interject some of his experiences. Well, being the perfect gentleman that I am I said absolutely please enlighten us. Boy, oh boy…. He Did!!!!
He went on to tell us that the very same large financial institutions that own most of the inventory we mice are scurrying to sell has delivered down to the appraisal department or their HVCC management company a commandment to undercut the market value by 10-15%.
Wow!!!! We all say as we stand in utter disbelief. That declaration got the minds rolling and we stood around for the next few minutes comparing notes from our previous escrows gone awry and low and behold if that dude wasn’t absolutely right on mark.
I just don’t want to believe it…. Why would the seller of property want the appraisers to come in below market value? Uh, I am beginning to feel like the super computers Captain Kirk used to destroy with his keen sense of logic, thanks to Spock.
Kelly…
The American Dream. Is it still Alive?
Well, I’m sure that there are some, maybe more than some, cynics that would love to argue that the American Dream is dead. In these days where the seller isn’t really a seller, you know, the kind that blood runs through their veins, the process can feel very detached. There’s almost never a connection between the buyer and the seller these days. The seller could care less about who buys their proprty. It’s just a monetary transaction. No emotion. The buyer still has a basic human need for a connection to the seller but it’s not going to happen. And since this is not going to happen, the buyer can never feal fully engaged with the purchasing process. Absent this connection, what drives the buyer to perform? I believe that it’s still the “American Dream” that moves people forward. It’s our desire to own a piece of Mother Earth, so-to-speak. It still makes people proud to get their slice of the pie, what they rightly deserve, a place to call home and somewhere to hang their hat. In our current real estate market there is a huge sense of accomplishment when you finally close the transaction. There’s one hurdle after another and sometimes it may seem anticlimactic, but it is big, really big !!!!!!! You get bragging rights. You’ve done it and now it’s yours. You can paint it, wallpaper it, scrub-a-dub-dub-it, landscape it, un-landscape it, and the list goes on. You can personalize it to the point it screams your name. And when night falls, you can sit down in your over stuffed chair, put your feet up on the ottoman, and with a beer in your hand, you can fall asleep to the fading sounds of the 10:00 o’clock news.. This my friend IS the American Dream”
