Home Strategies with Orville Information you need to know about real estate and finances

Your home has lost value, right? Owe more than what its worth? Need to sell quickly? Can’t do repairs?

In our tight economy, if you have to change jobs, you may not have time to wait till your house sells. What then?
Two mortgages?
Do repairs to get it sold? Even more money out of pocket!
How can you sell quickly and move on?

Options
What options do you have?
You can list with an agent. How long will it take to sell to a bank-qualified buyer?
We are hearing only about 14% of applicants get approved. And it may take a while.

There are other options.
We may be able to buy your home, or find a buyer, or maybe you’ll want to lease it to us while we look for a buyer. You can move on to your new and better job, and your old house can make you money instead of costing you money!

Informed Decision
Time is of the essence when you get a good offer. THS can help with this. But investors we work with will work flexibly with the homeowner to meet the need.

We pledge to provide a fair and open evaluation of your home and the current market. We’ll share information and analysis with you, fully open, to enable you to make informed decisions!

How can a company make money if they then also will have to repair the house, market the house, show the house, get a loan-qualified buyer and such? Yes, a deal has to make sense for your buyer. All those factors have to be considered.

Similarly, you can avoid agent commissions and a long wait while you still have to continue making payments. We can look at a variety of strategies. We work with a network of investors who can buy homes nobody else will buy. There are different strategies that may meet your need.

We can close quickly to save you time, money and stress. We work with you to make a deal happen.

We will make a fair offer or find a suitable solution for your need.

HOW TO SELL YOUR HOME IN 7 DAYS

Texas Home Strategies is here to provide information and services to help home owners with problems, and to assist buyers who cannot get a traditional loan.  Free consultation.  How can we help you?
682-325-8439

Did you know you can sell your home in as little as 7 days?!

Buying a home involves some risk.  And even selling a home involves some risk.  But there are ways to minimize and control risk.

The traditional bank and mortgage system is designed to protect the banks from their risk.  There are other approaches that will protect you as a seller.  The Texas Property Code, as in most states, provides for many approaches to buying and selling real estate that are not used by banks and mortgage companies and the realtor selling system.  These are to your benefit.

Realtors use the same methods now to sell homes that they started with over 100 years ago.  We live in modern America.  This economy is different.  Texas Home Strategies can provide options to meet your situation.  We can look at different strategies to meet your particular need and situation.

Situations change.  We work with homeowners needing to sell, with financial pressures, maybe having trouble handling their mortgage.  We work with a network of real estate professionals look at creative strategies to help owners sell, protect their credit by avoiding foreclosure or bankruptcy or sell quickly.

We can match buyers to sellers, we make offers on houses or find investors or other cash buyers who can take distressed properties no one else wants and restore them.  Our partners include credit repair services for buyers who want a home but cannot qualify for a conventional loan.

We can suggest various strategies to facilitate a purchase while your credit score is building to the qualifying level for a conventional loan.  If you qualify for initial Owner Financing, you can get into your home quickly, then build credit for a refinance loan, which is easier and cheaper than a conventional initial purchase loan.

A few months ago, market information showed that only about 20% of people applying now for a bank loan get approved.  That number is now down to 14%!  I have even heard one anaylist report it is only 8% – only 8% of buyers who apply for a loan get approved?  Amazing!

This time delay in the long and arduous process of loan approval by a bank is also a great pressure on both sellers and buyers.

We can buy your home.
We can pay your mortgage.
You can sell quickly and make adjustments to your financial situation.

We never charge for any market information or services.  If we can’t buy your home or find a buyer, you owe us nothing.

We can find a buyer with our unique marketing techniques.  We match up sellers with buyers.

Ask about Owner Financing strategies for buying or selling, enabling deals that would not otherwise occur.  We solve problems.

Learn here how to
SELL YOUR HOME IN 7 DAYS

Texas Home Strategies is here to provide information and services to help home owners with problems, and to assist buyers who cannot get a traditonal loan.  Free consultation.  How can we help you?
682-325-8439

One Real Estate blog commented that with all the Foreclosures on the market now, the best thing for property values is for an investor to buy your neighbor’s house, fix it up and sell it for top dollar.

This would solve your problem by taking away your liability to repair the house and continuing to pay for a house when you need alternative.  And by putting money into the home to renew it, the investor would then will raise property values of the other houses on the block.

Value

What determines the value of a home?  What buyers are willing to pay.  In the current market so many homes need repairs or updating, many end buyers will move to a move-in ready home in preference to one that needs more work to get up to expectations.

When an investor rehabs a house, it raises the value of that home.  This raises the value of the whole block.  Investors are willing to buy and repair homes an end-buyer will bypass.  The longer a home sits for sale, the lower its value falls — along with the whole block!  So quick sale is important.

Discount?

A company that buys homes has to make a profit to stay in business, right?  An investor wants to help a family with their housing needs, but has to eat too, right?  How can you afford to sell your house at the discount this often requires?

On the other hand, it saves you money and removes your financial liability.  You don’t have to make repairs.  It can actually cost you more to list your house and keep it on the market till it sells retail!  You can sell it now, avoid agent commissions and falling prices and your ongoing payments!  Quick sale at a discount may net you more!

Many owners owe more than their home is now worth on the market.  You may have to pay someone to buy your house?  There may be other ways to approach this.  An honest, confidential review can explore what other options might work to meet your need.

Texas Home Strategies assists homeowners and sellers to explore options open to them and to assist with difficult decisions.  Free consultation.  How can we help you?

682-325-8439

Bank of America has developed quite a reputation for being hard to work with on Short Sales and foreclosure properties they are trying to sell.  They seem to be trying to clean up their act and tighten up their procedures to make things happen.  We want to discuss one positive decision recently that will help many underwater home owners.

The good news recently is that Bank of America announced recently that it has sent notices to certain borrowers that they are forgiving second mortgage loans and issuing releases of those liens.

One colleague recently introduced me to one deal where that happened.  He called me about a deal he was working out with a homeowner who had two loans on his home for a total higher than the home is worth on the current market, if in top market condition.

With a lot of deferred maintenance that need to be done, the value of the home at Fair Market Value is very low.  By the time you figured the repairs and costs to resell the home, it was a woeful and daunting figure.

This homeowner recently did get one of those forgiveness letters from Bank of America, who owned both loans on his home.  So his second lien was cancelled and he was left with only the first lien mortgage with Bank of America.

Sadly, even this amount has him underwater.  My colleague worked with a Realtor to process the papers required for Bank of America to approve a short sale.  The bank has agreed to take less than now owed on the remaining first-lien mortgage.  How much less remains yet to be seen.

Like many homes, this one is way underwater, and needs lots of maintenance and updating to become a viable home for current buyers.  So after figuring repair estimates and costs for closing and reselling, we made a fair offer on the property.

We’ll see what Bank of America says.  It still takes quite a while sometimes to get a response to an offer on a Short Sale.  The banks are still stacked up with Short Sales and properties they now own after foreclosing (Real Estate Owned, or REO).

We commend you, Bank of America, for considering these beleaguered homeowners with two mortgages their home values can never cover.  Thanks for helping us move towards recovery.  Keep working on the weak links in the system like the puzzling example Phill Grove tells us about On the other hand, BoA makes some stupid decisions that hurt them as well as some of their customers, and the economy in general.  Real Estate investor and analyst Phill Grove tells of where a qualified case was turned down by BoA one recent instance.

If you are looking for a home for yourself, you cannot count on a Short Sale unless you are under no pressure to move quickly.  Be prepared to wait.  But prices on Short sales are more reasonable now, though still too high to allow for adequate repairs needed in most cases.

Sell Your Home Now
Buy a Home

Read More on Bank of America Second-lien Forgiveness:

Bank of America to forgive some second mortgages – Mr Williamsburg.com
Bank Of America Forgives Second Mortgages – Harris Real Estate University

Texas Home Strategies provides free consultation to inform home owners of market values and options and to assist with difficult decisions.  How can we help you?
682-325-8439   817-860-2811

I continue to be amazed at all the stuff people make up and circulate over the Internet as fact and statistic.  I never knew so many people were perverse and devious.  Isn’t it amazing how some people will believe anything and circulate it without checking on its truth?  A friend asked me about a new one the other day.

Knowing I am involved in real estate, he wrote to ask about something a friend had told him, that there was to be a new 13.5% tax is starting in 2013 on all real estate transactions in the US.  I had not heard of anything this preposterous.

This sounded like an urban legend (something made up for fun or subterfuge to mislead).  I did some research from several angles to see what I could uncover about this.

I cannot find anything on this and have not heard anything previously about it.  There has been no bill passed I can find anything on that institutes a real estate sales tax to support part of the new medical care program.

It  sounds like a variation of an earlier confused email circulating a few months ago, but the figure usually mentioned was 3.8%.

There was a provision passed that defines a new Medicare support tax at the rate of 3.8% on capital gains. This apparently would apply to any real estate transactions which qualified for a capital gains profit, but this would basically exclude all family residences, since it is based on profit due to gain in value.

The existing capital gains exclusion for personal homes is $250,000 for an individual, $500,000 for a couple. This might leave 3% of homes that might be affected IF the dollar sale price yielded an actual profit after the purchase and expenses. The median price of family residences in the whole US was $154,700 as of January 2012. So the Medicare tax would not affect homeowner families except those who make a substantial profit on the sale of their home above the $500,000 mark.

The tax is on capital gains, so the hardest-hit segment would be traders of stocks and bonds, or perhaps commercial real estate transactions. But most of such transactions I hear about these days produce a capital gains loss, not a gain.

I am always on the lookout for news about legal and financial market trends affecting real estate.  I am open to information about real sources and news of import in that regard.

Comment added 6 September 2012.  More on this topic in another source:

http://www.duncanwierman.com/blog/

Home prices are stabilizing in some markets.  In some markets and in some neighborhoods, prices are still falling a bit, and in some a definite rise has begun.  Foreclosures are still occurring and increasing in some markets.  They have slowed in some markets as banks are trying other methods to stop the hemorrhaging.

Lauren Holloway, a realtor and blogger for the Patch Network, covering Danville & Alamo, California, addressed falling home prices and property values related to foreclosures.

When No One Else Will Buy

Lauren commented, “If an investor buys your neighbor’s house at the foreclosure auction, then you got lucky: They will fix it up, stage it, and sell it for top dollar.”

I agree that the best outcome is often for an investor to buy the house, either at the Short Sale stage, at the foreclosure auction or as an REO direct from the bank.  If the distressed owner is lucky, he will make contact with an investor who can help with the owner’s problems.

An “investor” may be able to buy a house when no else can or wants to.  And they may be able to offer creative alternatives to solve the problem.  If such a Good Samaritan arrives in time, it may be possible to forestall the foreclosure, or even stop one in progress.

Then the homeowner won’t have to lose their credit rating with a foreclosure hit.  If you have any equity in your home, there may be a way to save it.  If the mortgage is upside down, options are fewer, and a Short Sale may be necessary, but time may not allow that.  There may be another way the traditional system does not provide.

Improving Neighborhoods

Investors are the primary force improving neighborhoods and helping first-time buyers or credit-challenged buyers get into a like-new home, while the banks make it harder and harder to borrow money.  And actually, savvy rehab and resale investors will price their homes at below the market to sell the house more quickly, and give the new owner even more equity value in the best house on the street!

As investors improve homes and neighborhoods, and raise home values, overall market prices improve while houses still sell at an affordable, comparably low price level.

And more houses sell faster through their multi-channel aggressive marketing.  You don’t usually sell a house very fast by just listing it on the MLS and waiting, hoping someone will call on it.  Average time to sell a home varies but in some areas it is 9-12 months.  Working through safe non-traditional channels, closing can come in weeks or even days.

Comments originally written on The Danville Patch, the Patch Network

Texas Home Strategies provides free consultation to inform home owners of market values and options and to assist with difficult decisions.  How can we help you?

682-325-8439   817-860-2811

Did you know your IRA can invest in Real Estate instead of volatile and fragile stocks and mutual funds?  In 2009 I fist learned about this possibility, and kept it in mind as I learned more.

This is a good, safe way to build your retirement package.  Even if something goes wrong, you have a deed to the property and the value is there.  With stocks, your money is at risk.  Your IRA can own a rental property or loan money to a company to rehab and resell a house.  You get a promissory note and a Trust Deed just like a bank.  Your IRA custodian manages the investment.

Some custodians are harder to work with, or require more paperwork; some are cheaper; some understand Real Estate better.

In 2011, we decided to put my wife’s retirement fund into Real Estate.  Through research and my Real Estate contacts, we had become acquainted with an investment company in Dallas called Diversified Metroplex Investors.  They buy distressed and down apartment buildings, and rehab them and turn them around.  They put together funds from private investors, many of whom invest with funds from their IRA.

I talked with others who were investing their IRAs in Real Estate, and talked with custodians of several companies who manage IRAs for people who want to invest in Real Estate.

We decide to invest in a new DMI venture in single family homes.  The company we chose as a custodian for a Self Directed IRA was IRA Services.  We rolled over Edith’s 403b fund into a new Self-Directed IRA with IRA Services.  This custodian was chosen because of a prior relationship with DMI, who facilitated the transactions and funding paperwork.

Other investors also loan our company money from their Self-Directed IRAs to buy properties to remodel and sell or rent out.

In February 2012, we rolled over my retirement fund with IRA Services as well, to invest in a single-family home rental  The rent money would build the IRA.  This experience did not go well.  Without the facilitation of DMI, I found IRA Service to be terrible in communication.

It was impossible to get to anyone who could even clarify what their paper instructions meant and make any decision.  Fortunately, we were buying from a development company with experience working with investors and IRAs.  This is their business model.  Otherwise this deal would have fallen through early in the game.

Even with Property Direct handling contacts with IRA Services to get straight what was needed for them to release my funds, it took us two months to get funding and documentation finalized to actually get the money to the owner we were buying from.

Property Direct, whose business model is remodeling and selling rented homes to investors with IRAs, said they have never had such a hard time from any previous IRA custodian they have worked with.

Despite our good first experience with IRA Services, facilitated by our investment partner DMI, I cannot in good conscience recommend IRA Services.  There are great companies out their who serve as custodians for Self-Directed IRAs investing in Real Estate.

Investing in Real Estate with your IRA is a great approach to build your retirement.  I am glad we learned about this avenue of investment personally and for our business.

Find out  more about Self-Directed IRAs here:

How to Buy Real Estate in Your IRA

Texas Home Strategies assists homeowners and sellers to explore options open to them and to assist with difficult decisions.  Free consultation.  682-325-8439

The Bank of America has announced a new program to address the great number of homeowners facing difficulaties with their mortgage.  Instead of proceeding with foreclosure they are offering to convert the mortgage into a lease.

I can see that this would save the bank the significant expense of processing the foreclosure, plus the extra time in the foreclosure notification process, lost payments, added expense of maintenance, insurance and taxes during the holding period, legal expenses.

It would offer an alternative to the borrower-owner under financial pressures – perhaps, what would be the rent in relation to the current mortgage payment?  But can this help in the long run?  How will the bank restructure the rent payments to make it easier for the homeowner to pay rent than to make mortgage payments?

And is the bank ready to pick up all the maintenance and ownership expenses?  I wonder if Bank of America realizes what this is really going to require?

In its new role as landlord wouldn’t the bank then still pick up the taxes, insurance and other expenses as the landlord?  Management can be a great expense if you are not set up for it.  Or the management fee for someone else to do it properly.

What do you think other banks will do?   I expect they will watch with great interest as BoA conducts this experiment.  Do the Banks really want to become landlords?

Why doesn’t BoA actively solicit investors and property managers who do this business, or who can more cheaply take the homes off their hands?

It will be interesting to see if other banks move in this direction.  It was surprising to hear that the government-sponsored entities were going this direction.  They aer going to sell their homes on Owner Financing, simiklar to Lease-Purchase or Rent-to-Own.  But a commercial venture like Bank of America?  Very interesting.

The Boston Herald reports comments by David Berenbaum, chief program officer for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.  In light of his background in this nonprofit umbrella group, Berenbaum called mortgage-to-lease “a very compelling idea,” but only if the lender “has exhausted every other option” to keep people in their houses.

What do you think about this?

Texas Home Strategies assists homeowners and sellers to explore options open to them and to assist with difficult decisions.  Free consultation.  682-325-8439

New Job, can’t move because you can’t sell!  Can you wait 9-12 months to sell?  Pay two mortgages?  Can you get approved for a second?

What if you had a new job offer in another town?  You can’t pass up a job offer these days?  But how can you buy a new house till you sell your old?

In March 2011 Real Estate Radio reported that 2% of US unemployment is people who have a job offer but cannot move because they can’t sell their house!

The time on the market to sell is getting shorter in some areas of the Metroplex, but in some areas and some properties, homes on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) are still commonly listed for 9-12 months before selling to the end-buyer who will live in your house.  Houses that are advertised For Sale By Owner, without the benefit of broader advertising, take even longer in most cases and often do not sell.

Wow!

What if your current house needs significant cleanup or repairs to bring it up to current market standards for a current buyer?  Due to the depressed economy for the last three to four years, many owners have been unable to perform normal maintenance on their homes.

Over the last two years and more, the long droughts and flooding rains in between have caused unusual damage to walls and foundations in North Texas.  Harsher winters and hotter summers take their toll.

This makes it hard to sell a home to an owner-occupant.  Some buyers will want to save money by doing fix-up themselves.  But they often need the major things, like foundation repair, to be done before they will buy.  How can a distressed owner do this?

There are further hidden costs people don’t think of in trying to sell a house through traditional channels.  These days multi-channel marketing, which most realtors don’t do or won’t do, is needed to get your house before buyers.

We can explore creative strategies to help meet your needs.  We share market information.  We work flexibly with homeowners to meet the need or help you find a way to deal with the problem.  Our consultations are free.

Texas Home Strategies assists homeowners and sellers to explore options open to them and to assist with difficult decisions.  Free consultation.  How can we help you?

682-325-8439

Commonly the term foreclosure refers to a lender taking back a home on which loan payments have fallen in arrears.  But there are other reasons why the bank or various other parties may have a claim on the house and take steps to foreclose.  Even an HOA can foreclose over the comparatively minimal dues owed!

The most common types of foreclosure are bank or lender foreclosures and tax foreclosure.  Again, note that there is considerable difference from state to state.  Laws and procedures for foreclosures vary from state to state.  Time periods and processes can vary considerably.

No Redemption

In Texas there is no redemption for a foreclosed house. The foreclosure notice period before auction is 21 days, after the actual foreclosure notice has been sent to the homeowner-borrower.  initial period for notice of default.  There is usually a period before this after an initial Notice of Default is sent, after one or more payments are late.

Foreclosure auctions in Texas are held once a month, always the 1st Tuesday in the month in every country at the same time.  The foreclosure can be stopped at any moment up to the actual time of that particular property is announced AT THE AUCTION and bidding starts.  This can happen if the owner can come up with back payments and get the loan reinstated with the bank before the house is auctioned.

Stopping a Foreclosure

In reality, the wheels of officialdom at banks usually grind much more slowly, and usually it is a whole different office or section of the bank that is handling the foreclosure/auction process and the loan collection reinstatement process.  Some services an handle this, but even 24 hours is a very short notice to accomplish such a task.

On one occasions, I had put in an offer on a preforeclosure, and was awaiting reply from the bank.  One Tuesday morning, my realtor got a call from the seller’s realtor informing us that the house was going to be auctioned that morning!  And I already had 4 buyers interested in it!

Tax Foreclosure

If the house is foreclosed due to taxes, there is a redemption period.  A tax deed sale does indeed transfer a clear title to the auction buyer, but there is a 6-month redemption period.  If this is your homestead, the redemption period is 24 months.

But there is a statutory 25% premium required for the redemption, that is, the redeemer must pay back the costs to the tax lien purchaser plus 25% interest.  Base costs include any fix-up done in the interim.  After 12 months the interest rises to 50%.

REO

If your house did not sell at the June 1 auction, it is retained by the first lien holder, and could go to public sale, listed with an agent (as Real Estate Owned, or REO).  You as the previous owner would have a chance to buy the house, but this would be a new purchase, and other funding or cash would be required.

In an REO, technically a short sale might be involved, in that the purchase price could be lower than the remaining mortgage.  But I would not expect the bank, at any rate, to sell an REO to the previous owner for less than that previous borrower had in the original mortgage.

Generally the term REO (Real Estate Owned) is used if the bank has actually taken the property back and holds it now in their name.  Advertised properties on the MLS will be REO.

Short Sale or REO

The short sale process is often so onerous that some investors actually prefer to offer only on REOs.  It is likely that in the case of upside-down mortgages (where the market value has fallen below the amount of the original loan), the asking price will be below the mortgage amount.  In Texas, the term “short sale” is not used commonly for the negotiation of REOs, but I have found some in other states using the term this way.

But the same principle is involved if the final price is less than the mortgage held by the bank.  If a house is upside down, it is highly unlikely that the bank can get its full amount back the full amount of the loan plus all the extra expenses it has incurred to foreclose and put the house on the market.

First posted in a discussion on Trulia.com 11 June 2010

Developed for Home Strategies Blog 7 February 2012

Texas Home Strategies assists homeowners and sellers to explore options open to them and to assist with difficult decisions.  Free consultation.  How can we help you?

682-325-8439