Congratuations to Title-1.  I think this is a fanstastic too!

Related articles

• Best Parade of Homes Since the Housing Bubble Burst(northwestplymouth.com)

  ---

• Taylor Creek Draws Huge Crowds During Parade of Homes in northwest Plymouth(northwestplymouth.com)

  ---

• Parade of Homes, Spring Preview(craigkamman.com)

  ---

• Twin Cities Weekly Real Estate Market Update, April 02 2012(craigkamman.com)

  ---

Not surprising was to hear the news that my old friend, Freddie Mac was named the least reputable big company in America…closely followed by Fannie Mae and Goldman Sachs.

The least reputable company on the list this year: Freddie Mac. In dead last, for the second consecutive year, the home mortgage financier earned a pulse score of 26.01, which is 3.46 points less than last year. Fannie Mae did only slightly better with 29.52 points. Goldman Sachs proves the third least reputable company, with a score of 36.95.

I’m still involved in one of the worst transactions of my career right now with a Freddie Mac owned property.  What a delight.

Related articles

• Freddie Mac and Its Mortgage Servicing Companies Are Denying Short Sale Approvals in Redemption Period – Minnesota (johnmurphyreports.com)
• Here We Go Again – Freddie Mac Cuts Commissions to REALTORS (johnmurphyreports.com)
• Fannie Mae Serious Delinquency rate declines, Freddie Mac rate increases (calculatedriskblog.com)
• FHFA’s DeMarco: FHFA to make decision on GSE Principal Reductions this month (calculatedriskblog.com)

According to the story on WCCO, the district would have 17 fewer school days but apparently the same number of hours in the classroom.  This district is on the other side of the Twin Cities for me and I have not heard anything weather the school districts in the western suburbs are considering a similar option.

Any home can be sold.  It’s all about value.  It’s not about the marketing.  Trust me.  When you see the “marketing” that the REO (real estate owned) agents do, you will know that marketing doesn’t sell homes.  Is it priced aggressively?  Is it on the MLS?  If so, it will sell.

One of the things I’ve heard is that in part the mortgage servicers are denying the short sale approvals because the costs are too high for Freddie Mac.  Realtors and their clients, both buyers and sellers, are not happy about the news.  Short sales are difficult enough.  They’ve always been a bit of a crap shoot and this only makes it even more so.

One more reason why in my opinion Freddie Mac is the worst bank in America when it comes to REO or distressed properties.

Related articles

• Program HR 3648 Short Sale Platform for Stafford County (moyersteamblog.com)
• Fannie and Freddie Do NOT Underwrite HARP2 the Same (harptwo.wordpress.com)
• Brown Unveils Legislation to Make Short Sales Move More Quickly (asohiogoes.wordpress.com)
• Here We Go Again – Freddie Mac Cuts Commissions to REALTORS (johnmurphyreports.com)
• Freddie Mac accused of betting against homeowners (cbsnews.com)

Photo: MSNBC NY LaGuardia Airport

Remember when the airlines absolutely sucked?  (Pardon my language but how else to describe?)  Remember how awful the customer service was in the airline business in the 1980′s and 1990′s.  They seemed to have no care for their paying customers.  Service was terrible.  Response times were terrible.  Few if any seemed to go the extra mile to take care of an issue.  It was terrible.

Well I think the banks are the new airlines.  And when I mean banks, I don’t mean the front end of the banks – the retail side.  Those are some of the nicest, most polite and pleasant people you’ll ever meet.  I’m talking about the REO (real estate owned) and foreclosure side of the house.  The communication is stunningly poor and ineffective.  They are unresponsive.  There is no appreciation for those of us in the field trying to “get things done” for our buyers on their properties.  We are on an “as needs to know” basis and when we need a response, it might be days to get something back from them.  However, once they send us something they DEMAND that it be turned around in 24 HOURS or the deal is potentially DEAD.

It’s difficult to know where the problem lie exactly.  It could be the bankers themselves or it could be their asset managers that they’ve hired to “dispose” of their housing inventory.

They are now costing my buyers money because of their unresponsiveness and lack of attention to detail.  The latter has really been incredible lately and it’s amazing anything gets done.  If you’re reading this as an end consumer, you may not care in a broad sense what real estate agents get paid to put these deals together, but I would hope you care about your own particular agent.  Freddie Mac has started to cut commissions to Realtors now I guess perhaps because their deals are so easy that Realtors shouldn’t get paid their 3%

Currently I’m working on a Freddie Mac property where they misspelled my buyers name.  It’s a common name and they added a letter that should not have been there.  They have to send it back to be revised.  That was last Friday.  It’s now Wednesday afternoon…5 days later…still no revised contract.  It has to work its way through the bureaucracy for one letter!!!  Meanwhile, this is costing my buyer money as interest rates slowly tick higher.

I’ve had other dealings with Freddie Mac and they would definitely get my vote as the worst bank in America to buy a house from.  Bank of America might be a close second after the debacle I am currently working through right now.  There are plenty of characters who might, on any given day, might earn the award of being the worst bank in America when it comes to buying REO property.

One thing is for sure, these parts of the banking business and asset management business charged with disposing of these properties must have taking their customer service training from the same folks who trained the airlines many years ago.

Related articles

• WSJ: BofA to try Deed-in-lieu to Rental Program (calculatedriskblog.com)
• Here We Go Again – Freddie Mac Cuts Commissions to REALTORS (johnmurphyreports.com)
• Bank of America’s Rental Program (ilovevacaville.wordpress.com)
• Bank of America to reduce loans for homeowners (seattlepi.com)
• Do it right, or don’t do it at all (damniwish.com)
• Most Expensive REO in the U.S. Just Sold for $28 Million in San Francisco (johnmurphyreports.com)

Overall for the 10 and 20 city composites, home prices declined year over year by 3.9% and 3.8% respectively.  Most housing analysts and the economists I read have generally been predicting that we’d see about another 5-6% decline in home prices this year.  Based upon activity I’m seeing in some markets, we may do better than that.

Atlanta now has the distinct honor of being the worst performing market in the county with home prices down by 14.8% year over year according to this report.

Detroit gets the honor of being the best performing market with home prices up…yes, up, 1.7% year over year.  I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s great news for the Detroit area which has extremely difficult the past several years.

Below is a table showing the scores for the 20 cities studied by the Case-Shiller Index.

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Related articles

• Case Shiller: House Prices fall to new post-bubble lows in January (calculatedriskblog.com)
• Case-Shiller Index: Minneapolis Home Prices Decline by 4.9% Year over Year through December 2011 (johnmurphyreports.com)
• Case Shiller Index Minneapolis / St Paul – for data ending Dec 31 2012 (craigkamman.com)
• UNEXPECTEDLY: Case-Shiller home price index falls. “Home prices in the U.S. fell for the fifth mon… (pjmedia.com)

The story below is written in first person by Nate Jurmu, who is the owner and builder for Meadow Creek Building Corp.

This project was exciting because we were able to take an existing screened porch, and convert it to a spectacular hearth room with vaulted ceiling accented with beautiful reclaimed wood beams from Big Wood Timber Frames and capped off with a stunning Town & Country fireplace.  While the room is brand new, the timelessness of the reclaimed wood beams adds old world charm and really makes the room interesting and come to life!  It’s memorable once you’ve been there.

This project was an excellent example of working in collaboration with a client and architect.  Murphy & Co. Design of Buffalo, MN developed the architectural plans for this remodeling project.

At the start of the project, we installed in a new foundation for the area where we expanded the exercise room in the lower level.  Also, since this was a substantial expansion of the square footage of the home, we had to think about the heating and cooling components for the newly created space.  My clients already had a geothermal system in their home.  We were able to expand it in to the new exercise room as well as the upstairs space that was once a screened porch – radiant floor heat not only in the exercise room but also the wood floor in the hearth room!

The audio and video components for the hearth room were incorporated into the cabinetry in the exercise room underneath, eliminating any cabinetry by the fireplace.

For some additional accents to the exterior, my clients had a hot tub outside on a patio and we rebuilt the deck and added a pergola that extends over the hot tub.  The outside fireplace was already existing.

Customers wonder how we are able to match up siding and roofing material without having to redo all the of the siding or put on a new roof.  Usually we are able to get very close in matching up colors and materials so that it’s not noticeable.  Once in a while there may be just too much fading in the existing siding or shingles to make a great match, but those are issues we can discuss to come up with a reasonable solution that works for you.

We can accommodate any size project – no project is too big or too small for us to consider.  If you have some ideas on remodeling existing space, adding on or building new, please don’t hesitate to give us a call and we can arrange a free consultation.

To request more information about remodeling projects, please feel out the form below.

*(denotes required field)

First Name: *

Last Name: *

E-Mail Address: *

Phone *

Subject: *

Message:

CAPTCHA Code: *