Time to Jump in and Buy Real Estate Again!
March 30, 2011 by Glen Bell · View Comments
In an article posted on CnnMoney, on March 28th, titled “Real estate: It’s time to buy again,” Shawn Tully, senior editor, states; “Forget stocks. Don’t bet on gold. After four years of plunging home prices, the most attractive asset class in America is housing.”
This is a compelling article, with an optimistic overview on the housing market well worth the read!
This following quote lays the foundation and leads to an insightful argument in favor of recovery in the housing market.
If all the noise you’re hearing about housing has you totally confused, join the crowd. One day you’ll read that owning a home has never been more affordable. The next day you’ll see news that housing starts have plunged to nearly their lowest level in half a century, as headlines announced in March. After four years of falling prices and surging foreclosures, it’s hard to know what to think. Even Robert Shiller and Karl Case can’t agree. The two economists, who together created the widely followed S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price indices, are right now offering sharply contrasting views of housing’s future. Shiller recently warned that the chances were high for a further double-digit drop in U.S. home prices. But in an interview with Fortune, Case took a far brighter view: “The lack of new home building is a huge help that a lot of people are ignoring,” says Case. “People think I’m crazy to be optimistic, but housing is looking like the little engine that could.”
flickr photo credit Jitze Couperus Used under a creative commons license.
4 Ways to NOT Buy an East Bay Bank Owned Foreclosure
December 16, 2007 by Andy Kaufman · View Comments
Since a majority of our business is centered around East Bay foreclosures, namely Bank Owned REOs, our marketing efforts tend to bring in a variety of interesting responses. Since I’m feeling a bit snarky tonight, I thought that I’d share a few of them with you in the form of the following how-NOT-to tips.
1. The first way NOT to buy an East Bay REO is to send me a one line email with no name attached.
“I’ll offer 480″ or “I would like to offer 250,000 for this house.”
That’s it. No name. No phone #.
I’ve been getting a quite a few of these recently. While I get the feeling that most of them are just scam artists, or seminar newbies; there have to be a least be a few that simply don’t know any better. I usually just ask them politely to contact me via phone so that I can better asses their needs, but that seems to scare them away. I have played phone tag with a handful of these potential buyers to no avail and have actually talked to a few, but half of these “connections” invariably lead to #2.
2. If you sincerely would like to make an offer, you’re going to need to put it in writing. Don’t expect me to relay a verbal offer to my client (the bank) and expect them to respond. They will laugh at both you and me and tell us to put it in writing if we really want an answer.
3. The third way NOT buy a east bay REO is to ask to buy via lease option. When buying a bank owned property, this simply is not an option. The bank has no interest in keeping the property on their books for any longer than necessary and for this reason an offer asking for a lease option will get flat out rejected.
4. The fourth, and final way NOT to buy an East Bay REO is to ask me to make a verbal offer to buy the note outside of escrow and w/o title insurance so that you can avoid transfer taxes & transaction costs.
This was an actual request from an investor that says that he’s does it all the time and I’ve been trying to work out the mechanics of this transaction for the past week or so. Still, it doesn’t compute. Why would a bank do that?
I did ask my client (the bank) if they’ve ever heard of such a thing and got a rejection email resembling something from #1 in this list- “all transactions must go through escrow” Plus, if the bank foreclosed and took the property back, why is there a note in the first place? If anybody has seen something like this and could enlighten me, I’d love to hear it.
So there you have it, 4 ways to NOT buy an East Bay bank owned property. In all reality though, I’m a glass is half full kinda guy and the ultimate goal of this site is to educate potential clients so that we can put some deals together, which means that I’ll be working on a companion post entailing what you SHOULD do to buy an East Bay REO.
You’ll just have to wait a few days though. Deal?
Download a Weekly List of Active East Bay REO Listings
December 14, 2007 by Andy Kaufman · View Comments
You asked for it and we’re going to give it to you. From now on, we’ll be offering a free list of active East Bay REO (Real Estate Owned) listings in excel format.
As experienced REO investors, as well as active REO listing agents, we’re constantly trying to provide the best information possible so that potential buyers can make decisions quickly and act upon then when they identify a potential deal. By offering this information as an excel spreadsheet, our readers will be able to download and sort the data as they see fit.
Searching through the data, you’ll notice that we’ve included the MLS numbers for each property. With this number, you can click on the “Search the MLS” button on the sidebar and pull up detailed property profiles for any of the listings that you’d like.
If return, we ask that if you see a property, (or ten) that strikes your fancy, you contact us (415-449-1609). Deal?
Alameda County Residential Income REO List
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