Real Estate For Atlanta Blog

Keller Williams Atlanta North will be hosting a massive multi-home open house weekend this Sunday, March 29, 2009 from 2-5pm.  Homes being held open are all over the metro area with the majority in Marietta and others in nearby Roswell, Atlanta, Kennesaw, and other cities.  If you are in the market for a home or simply enjoy looking please stop by.  In particular, I’d love to see you at mine which will be at 560 Bircham Way; Roswell.  For a complete list of properties being held open this Sunday, you can visit:  http://www.RealEstateForAtlanta.com/publicpages/openhouses.aspx

1. Get started early - don’t wait until you’ve found a home to begin investigating lenders.
2. Pick one day to call 2-3 lenders that you wish to comparison shop.  Ask each for what is called a Good Faith Estimate (GFE).  This is a standardized form that will show a complete breakdown of estimated fees and loan terms.
3. Don’t just look at the bottom line - many of the fees are 3rd party fees and government taxes that will be the same no matter which lender you use.  The fees that you want to consider most heavily are those in the first section of the GFE (lender fees).  You can pretty much ignore the rest.
4. Generally speaking, if you plan to be in the house for a shorter time or if you are cash poor and need all of your money to be applied to your down payment, then you are better off with a lower fee structure even if it means a slightly higher rate.  If you are not cash poor and plan to stay in the home for a long time and don’t anticipate refinancing, then it may be better to get the lowest rate even if you have to pay more upfront.
5. The lenders will want to pull your credit report.  Consumers are often afraid to have that done because they fear that it will negatively impact their score to have it pulled many times.  Firstly, although it is true that it can have a negative impact, the impact is so small that it is insignificant for most poeple and very rarely does that alone make the difference between qualifying or not.  It’s a good idea to have it pulled at least once early on to identify any issues that might take time to work out.  Also, there is a rule that multiple credit pulls done during a short window of time are not supposed to negatively impact your score at all.  This was put in place to allow home buyers to shop for loans.
6. Don’t forget about the customer service aspects.  Your lender will play a significant role in how smooth your transaction goes.  Your best option is to select a local lender that you can meet with face to face if necessary (Internet lending does add some difficulty) and who knows the local customs and laws for the state in which you are buying a home.
7. Don’t drive youself crazy - while there will be some differences and it is worth shopping around, you are likely to find that the costs are going to be very close no matter who you go with.
8. You should not generally have to pay an up front fee to lock your rate, etc.  Be leary of anyone that asks you to do so and find out specifically why.

No Sale - Cash Register

It is easy to blame a lack of a home sale on the market. Afterall, the news is making us all believe on a daily basis that there are no buyers out there and that nobody can get loans. Don’t believe the hype or it can cost you a lot of money. 

The truth is that there are buyers and people are still able to get loans. Yes, the lending requirements have tightened to ridiculous levels and, yes, there are much fewer qualified buyers than there were in the past. However, in most areas, there are at least some qualified buyers and if you want your home to sell you simply need to make sure that you are presenting the best value in the area and doing all you can to make sure everyone knows about it.

I recommend that you revisit pricing every 30 days. If the home didn’t sell, look at what did sell in the area during that 30 day period. If you see that absolutely no homes in your price range in your entire area have sold then it could just be that there literally are no buyers; but I doubt that is what you will find. Most likely, you’ll see that there were a few sold homes. If that is the case, then it means there were buyers; but they didn’t choose your home. Look at what they chose instead and that will give you a clue as to what price adjustments and/or modifications to the home are necessary to make sure that it is the next one to sell.

Worse yet, we are still in a declining market; so the longer it takes for you to get it right, the lower the market price will become. Therefore, getting it right in terms of price and condition to make sure your home is the best value for the few buyers is more important than ever.

We also have a tendency to feel that our home is the nicest on the street because we picked it out. However, consumers view homes in a much more commoditized fashion. As hard as it is to justify spending any money or time fixing up a home that you are about to sell - especially when the market is forcing you to sell so low, it is imperative that you do what needs to be done. If you fix the house up and price it right, it will likely sell - even today. If you absolutely have to sell now then you will need to deal with this and the faster you do the better off you will be. If you have the luxury of waiting then this is not the market for you to sell in. On the bright side, you will be on the other side of the fence as a buyer once you get your home sold and will get a bargain to offset your loss.