Hell Yeah!... Sally's Foreclosure Song... YEOWWW!

Times are tough... people are losing their jobs, their credit scores and their homes to foreclosure. But this guy gets even. (This is not a typical Wednesday office meeting for Lyon Real Estate, Fair Oaks office, but we do have fun! YEOWWWWWWW!!!!) (And thanks Montgomery Gentry, for not suing me for butchering the great tune of your song, with my cheap rendition!)

So seriously... this was for a talent show, which was a fundraiser for the Salvation Army. Lyon Fair Oaks has been the top money contributer to the Sacramento Association of Realtor (SAR) CanTree, raising over $160K for the needy at Christmas time. This talent show, hosted by the Hostess Honeys (Marg Graf, Patti Nelson, Lyn Gras, Kathy Chigbrow and Mary London, all of Lyon Real Estate), raised over $2,000 in one night of fun, frolick.... and embarassment for some.

This is the song I wrote fpr the talent show, but this version turned out a little better than my live version... so here you have it. File this under: Work Hard, Play Hard.... or Life is Either a Daring Adventure or it's Nothing.... Hell Yeah!

Bummed Out... Focus on 2020 Vision

Brad Paisley has a killer song out called "Letter To Me" where he writes a letter to himself at 17. He tells his young self it's not the end, now that he's been dumped by his girlfriend. Oh, and be sure to fill up the tank for your date with Bridgett... "on second thought that one turns out all right". Be sure and thank Mrs. Bringham for seeing the rough diamond underneath and polishing you til you shined. It's a tear jerker, for sure.

But his capper is the best part.. wait til you see you wife and kids.. you wont believe how great they are. These are nowhere near the best years of your life!

Now zap the message into our lives today. The economic situation we're in is only for today. It's temporary. It's just the crap we're going thru for now. We have great years ahead. We will look back on what we are going thru today and realized how much we learned.

* Our kids were able to learn that easy money doesn't last
* Prices don't go up forever and maybe our home is not an investment... it's our HOME.
* That you should consider ALL variables when you make a big decision, (like that you may not be able to refi when the ARM adjusts)
* We've learned to love board games and Family Friday Nights
* We've learned to be OK without our nails done (have you looked at a group of business women lately... plain nails!)
* We've learned it's pretty fun to go to Lake Tahoe instead of Hawaii on vacation... or to stay home and chill.
*We've learned to be open about our finances... which is unbelievable... that's good!
*We've learned to live within a budget... maybe we CAN clean our own pool.
*We've looked at our "conspicuous consumption" and questioned the "stuff" we've bought... who can believe what we have accumulated... mostly that we didn't need. And look where it's gotten us.

Fast forward to the year 2020. Do you think you will be looking at the same crap as today? Heck, no! It will be different! Things will change. You will have new grandkids, new spouses (if you are married and said "yay"... slap yourself), different jobs, different joys, new challenges, new talents you discovered, and a whole new and exciting world to discover. What we're facing today, is just for today.

So buck up, deal with it, and don't take it all so seriously. And go download Brad Paisley's "Letter to Me" on iTunes... it's only 99 cents. Then write yourself a letter from yourself in 2020 about how this stuff won't last. It's nowhere near the best years of our lives.

Flickr Photos by a.drian, dotbenjamin, zpinkster

Get Out of the Rabbit Hole, Before it Becomes a Sinkhole!

It was Valentines morning. I had just read two articles in the Sacramento Bee. One about a woman, employed a few months ago, who was just "evicted" from her car for failure to pay registration fees - it had become her only home after she couldn't pay for her rental. She's now homeless.


The second, about a family who moved to Boise after a job loss, hoping to scrape together the money to buy an old RV or trailer to live in, as they couldn't make ends meet. They were hoping to find an affordable trailor park.


I got depressed.... On Valentines morning, as my sweetie was frying up the spuds for a wonderful breakfast.

As my mind went down the rabbit hole of doom and gloom and "the end is near" thoughts, I fa
st forwarded to our losing our house when the entire economy collapses, that I never have another buyer again because they will all be living in Boise in a Happy Trails RV Camp. Life is over... the subprime snafu..... Blah, blah, blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...... .Oh My God, STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...........


I suddenly swerved to miss this mental pothole, which was beginning to look like a sinkhole.
Then I remembered.... I've got.....


Buyer "A" is biting at the bit to find a home for him and his sweetie - to get out of their cramped apartment. He has saved up over $30K to be ready for this... living at home with Mom and Dad.


Buyer "B" has a giant down payment ready, and is proposing to his sweetie today, then prepared to offer on one of 4 perfect homes we've found, once his soon-to-be-betrothed picks her favorite. His company has a huge pool of money available for employees to get home loans from.... They're pretty strong.


Buyer "C" can't wait to find his perfect home, with room for his 2 RV's, room for his live-in daughter and two kids, and a master downstairs - They are pre-approved and SOOO ready to go. We just need to find the home.


Seller "A" is relocating to So Cal in a few months, and counting on me to sell her home.
Seller "B" has moved to Arizona, and waiting for me to sell their home after the rehab is finished (It almost is)


GET TO WORK, YOU BOZO........


OK.... I'm back to happy land. I've quit licking my wounds about how miserable this economy is. It is what it is. Life goes on. This too shall pass. I can focus on the desperate situations out there (and there's a lot of them), or on the job to be done to help my clients. For the 10% (or whatever) of homes facing foreclosure, 90% are not. (I don't have the patience right now to look up the accurate stats, so just get the point!) For the huge number of homes upside down... the rest are not. Of the 70% of Americans thinking about the interest rate on their home loans, 30% don't even have loans! For every seller losing their home in foreclosure, there's a buyer getting a great deal on a first time purchase or an investment. It's all dependent on which side you focus on.

Every day we choose whether to be productive or whether to get sucked into negativity. Every minute we choose to go down the gloomy rabbit hole of "It's so awful", or HOP up into the sunshine of the positive.

I do peak into that gloomy rabbit hole periodically, but only enough to know I don't want to set up house there. I have buyers to help, sellers to help, homes to go find, statistics to analyse, classes to attend, systems to perfect. Hell, I've even got a song to finish writing for a talent show.

Life IS good... and sometime it's not..... but mostly it IS!

The Right Kitchen Remodel Pays For Itself!

A complete kitchen remodel isn't cheap...$20K - $40K on average. But if you have an ugly kitchen, you will drop the price of your home by more than that to sell.

Would you pay $25K more for this home with this kitchen?

Or think of it this way, if you were a buyer, how much would you take off the price of a home if it's kitchen looked like the "before" kitchen below?

This kitchen was MAJORLY UGLY... bad flow, funky cabinets, ugly counters, yucky lighting, dated tile floors, a dropped ceiling and right-in-your-face hanging cabinets.

Before putting it on the market, we redesigned it, (thanks Suzanne Kyle Space Planner & Interior Design) gutted the old one, and built a beautiful new kitchen with new hardwood flooring and contemporary lighting. (Thanks DR Dunbar Construction Services... my sweetie). What a difference!

(See how expanding the cabinet around the corner opened up the whole space? That was Suzanne's money making idea.)

Sellers, To get your home ready to sell.... call me.... I GOT PEOPLE!

Does Your Lender Make a Difference?

When a new buyer chooses a lender, what is their choice based on? Interest rate?, the trust of a referral?, who has the prettiest sign? Often it's who seems to have the cheapest interest rate. What a mistake!

Consider Captain Sulley. He looked like everyone else who flew. He always landed those planes, so it's hard to say how good he was. But when disaster hit, he was able to pull off the miraculous, and land a giant engineless jet in the cold frigid waters of the Hudson River. He used his years and years of experience, training, drills, and lessons learned from the inevitable mishaps he must have faced before to pull it off.

Your lender is the same. They all seem comparable... until disaster strikes. And when it does, you want experience on your side. A few months ago I sold a home in a great neighborhood of Citrus Heights, located 1/4 mile from a very seedy street (one of our areas worst). Any local appraiser would have understood to not use comps from the seedy street, as it was insulated from my buyer's home by geographical factors. But as the crow flies, it's another story. Our appraisal came in fine... actually above our price. It was the desk review that shot us down. It came in $60K low! Why, because the out-of-area underwriter used a zillow-like process to estimate the value... which included sales within a bull-eye radius. And that meant our seedy street became our comparable.

But my lender has been doing this for over 30 years, and understands the ins and outs of lending like the back of her hand. She whipped into action, and got the loan through. Did she use magic?, coercion?, bribery?... no. She used her experience to know which of the many paths to take to make it work. She could have gone a number of different directions, but she knew exactly the turns to make at each fork in the road, as she led our transaction down the path to a closed escrow.

So don't just pick the lender with the cheapest quote. It could mean the difference between getting your home or not. Always go with experience. Don't know who to call?
CALL ME... I GOT PEOPLE!

flickr Photo by mpflies2 & theevilmightyf

How Do You Buy a Short Sale? First... What is it?

Buying a short sale is very different than buying a bank foreclosure or from a regular seller. So first... what is it?

A short sale is when the owner is "upside down" or owes more than the home is worth. In order to sell, he would need to bring cash to escrow to sell, or would need the banks approval that the bank will accept less than the amount they are owed. In order to accept less (accept a short sale) the bank must convince themselves that the home is actually worth less than they are owed, and that there is no other way they will get the lost money out of the owner (like from money they have in savings, or an IRA, or another home they own).

The process goes like this. First, the real estate agent puts the home on the market. The list price has no relation to what is owed, and is probably listed somewhat low for the market, in order to get an offer. The list price is their "bait". Once they receive an offer, they send it in to the bank, along with an application from the seller. The application contains the reason why the seller feels the bank should let them off the hook. Their tax returns, bank statements, and a letter explaining what their hardship is are all included. The hardship must be a medical problem, divorce, forced relocation, job loss, etc. It can't just be "I'm upside down and don't want to keep paying".

Now here's the kicker... the bank takes as long as they want to decide what they are going to do. It's usually a minumum of 60 days. But it can be 4 months, like my last one!

But let's say the bank comes back in a record 30 days and says they will agree to let the seller off the hook... they agree to a short sale. At this point they come back with the price they need to sell for in order for them to agree to the short sale. It's rarely the same as the list price. I'm in contract on one now that was listed for $161K, the bank came back at $182K. The other one I'm in escrow on was listed for $214,500, and the bank came back at $240K. The bank deteremines the price they will accept (if they accept the seller for a short sale) after they have done an appraisal, regardless of what the list price was.

OK, moving on... so let's say the bank has told the listing agent they will do the short sale, but for THEIR price, which they give the listing agent. (It's actually more complicated, because they actually give the agent a "net" number, which the agent has to compute into a sales price, considering all the liens and other charges.) The agent goes to the first person who submitted the offer to see if the bank's offer is acceptable. (That's because the first acceptable offer is in contract with the seller.) Many times, it has taken so long the first buyer has already found another home and moved on. Or, if the price comes back higher, the first buyer may not qualify at the new price. Or don't want to. So, if the first buyer passes on the bank's offer, the listing agent then calls the other agents who have made offers to see who else is interested. At that point they can choose the offer that will net the bank the amount they need, and the one that seems to offer the most likelihood of being able to close.

THAT's the person who will end up buying the house.

At the point the new person says YES, the inspection time periods begin, and that's when you really have a good look at the home from an inspector's viewpoint... but we'll save that for another discussion!

Bottom line -
* It may take months to get an answer.
* There's no guarantee what the price will be , regardless what the list price is.
* It's somewhat of a crapshoot as to who the buyer will end up being.


What it takes to be a successful short sale buyer is patience, and to not have a pressing timetable. It also helps to not expect concrete answers from your agent, as they are hard to come by. But you can be successful.... just hang in there!

Flickr photos by doug8888, seekyu, flexyourhead, thinkpanama

Should you inspect new construction?... HECK YEAH!

It's tempting to save $400 - $1000 when you buy a brand new home by forgoing an independent inspection.  "Heck, it's brand new... what could be wrong?"... Right?... Wrong!!!

A few years ago I sold a 2 million home in Los Lagos, Granite Bay.  Simply beautiful... and built by a well known, outstanding builder.  He was somewhat offended when I had my buyer pay for an independent inspection, but I explained the inspector would be the eyes for all of us, to prevent problems for all of us in the future.

Was it worth it?.. spending $750 (in this case) to inspect something the building department had already approved?  Well.... the beautiful custom box beam ceiling had a fire sprinkler system installed overhead.  However no one had finished connecting the pipes!  A disastrous water leak all over the custom box beam ceiling was just waiting to happen.

The builder thanked me!  Imagine the hassle, inconvenience and potential litigation had the pipes leaked after the buyer moved in.

So, yes... an inspection of  new construction is a good idea before you purchase.  Just think of it as cheap insurance!

Flickr photo by Scott Hargis