•          self-assessment tools to help you actually figure out if your mortgage might qualify for a stimulus plan refi or modification,
•          a list of numbers of mortgage servicers, so you can call your lender up to get the process started, and
•          a payment reduction estimator to help you see what your modified payment would be under these programs.

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My husband John is a high-school baseball coach and former pro-baseballer. Of course, to me, everything is about real estate, so lately I’ve been mixing the two subjects in my brain - baseball and real estate - pretty frequently. So when the California Association of Realtors reported that statewide, prices dropped 3 percent but the number of sales rose 15 percent in April 2008 (when compared to March), the first thought that came to mind was - the market might have just hit its sweet spot.What I mean is that sellers have been sufficiently chastened by market forces into reducing prices to that perfect place where buyers are motivated to emerge from the Witness Protection-style hiding they’ve been in and take advantage of the buyer’s market, while it lasts.What’s sweet about this? Well, for sellers, the rising number of transactions backs up many Realtors’ anecdotal observations that buyers are out there in rapidly growing numbers, and are actually buying, so their homes have a better chance of selling. For buyers, the prices drops make things more affordable and come at a time when real estate and mortgage professionals have a much better grasp on where to find mortgage money in the post sub-prime market meltdown than we did 3 or 4 months ago.

 Three important things we can learn from this “sweet spot” data:

 1) Real estate data and markets are local, so get local advice. As striking as they were, the California data was even less extreme than Bay Area data, which showed a 22 percent increase in sales, comparing March to April 2008. Depreciation results were similarly localized - statewide, April prices were down 22 percent over last year; Bay Area prices were only down 17.9 percent, and if you exclude the recently-built-out, hard-to-commute “slumburbs” of the far Bay Area and a couple of the inner-city areas, some Bay Area zip codes are slightly up year-over-year in appreciation.

 The moral of the story: don’t take your homebuying (or selling) advice from the national real estate news. Get local information, ideally from a local professional, and use that to fuel your personal decision-making. 

2) You can’t perfectly time the bottom of the market. Listen, I would be a billionaire if I could predict the day, date and time of the absolute lowest prices of the market, sell all my clients homes in that moment, and then see the values of their homes start to skyrocket the very next hour after they get their keys. NO ONE can predict the bottom of the market with that level of precision, not even you. What happens to those who try to time the market is they end up paralyzed with the fear that their home’s value might decline in the months just after they buy, so they don’t buy until they realize that prices are headed back up. The problem is, in some markets, once the buyer’s market conditions are gone, those at the entry level are priced all the way out by having to overbid in order to compete against 10 other offers on every listing. 

Don’t take my word for it; Money Magazine’s 5 New Rules for Home Buyers came to the same conclusion. 

The moral of the story: Get educated about what sort of bargains or incentives the current market dynamics make available to buyers in your local area, and be an aggressive negotiator, but don’t kid yourself into waiting for the bottom unless you are willing to miss out on the best buyer’s market since World War II.

 3) Buy when it makes sense for your life, plan to hold your home long term, and buy soon (if you’re in the market, of course).Don’t let the market dictate when you buy or even when you sell. Do so when it makes sense for you life, as when you have income you need to offset for tax purposes, when your job moves, when you’ve finally got the job you’ve been working toward, or when your family grows or shrinks. If you are buying now, so long as you plan to hold your home at least 5 years (fewer in hotter real estate markets), you should at least be able to ride out this current market trough. But read #2, above - don’t wait until prices are already on the upswing before you make a move. Most people I’ve talked to with real estate regrets lament not buying sooner, not vice versa.

 The moral: Buy if you need to buy, sell if you need to sell. But if you need to buy, do it without too much further ado, and hold for the long-term.

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There is a transaction that resolves this issue called a short sale, in which you actually sell your home for less than you owe on it, and your lender agrees to forgive the difference.  Until very recently, if you did a short sale, your lender would send you a 1099 form at the end of the year, and the IRS would actually charge you income tax on the difference between what you sold your home for and what you owed on it.  [Talk about kicking someone while they’re down, right?  Can’t make your payment, selling your home at a loss, and now you get a tax bill, too?]

Many sellers simply said no, and chose foreclosure over selling the place and getting a big tax bill for the forgiven debt.

In December, the federal goverment passed this new law – it’s a mouthful – the Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Relief Act of 2007 – it basically says:

• if you have to sell your home in a short sale, and 

• you do so in 2007, 2008 or 2009,

• the IRS will not charge you with income tax on the mortgage debt that your lender forgives.   

The point? To provide some incentive for people who are upside down on their homes to get aggressive with their pricing and get them sold, rather than letting them go into foreclosure, which is bad for their credit, bad for the banks, and even bad for the neighborhood and city.

Why should you care? If you’re a seller and your house has been sitting on the market for a long time, get aggressive and price it to sell – we’re in a declining market right now, so you’ll need to price it even below what the recent sales in the neighborhood were if you really want to attract buyers.  But get it sold, don’t worry about that particular tax issue, and get some closure and start your financial recovery!

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The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook.

Real You, Incorporated is in some ways a love note to women entrepreneurs, in other ways a very practical-yet-inspirational manual to support biz mavens in their efforts to develop a personal brand out of their authentic personal selves.

In Kaira’s words, the top 5 things you’ll take away from Real You, Incorporated are as follows:

1. One Real You chart that will help you define your unique passions, brand, and positioning in the marketplace.
2. Eight real facts — broken into chapters — to help you build a brand that’s all your own.
3. Sixteen inspirational stories from women who have built their own real brands. (Tara’s Note: And yes, Virginia, yours truly is one of those women!)
4. Twenty-four practical action steps to help you get you started.
5. Countless lessons from Kaira’s personal experiences as a marketing executive, writer, and entrepreneur.

(more…)

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I was horrified when I opened one such piece of mail this week. It was an “offer” for assistance in getting my property taxes reduced from a real estate broker purporting to “specialize in reducing people’s property taxes.”  He wrote on:

My research shows that because you bought your property at the height of the market, there is a very good chance that you are overpaying the property taxes on the property at ____________________ (my address.)

I am one of the most experienced and successful agents in the state at reducing property taxes. . ..

Please understand that I would not spend the money to send this letter unless I was reasonably sure I could save you money on your property taxes.

I’m reasonably sure he could, too. The thing is, though, ANYONE can do this – on their own – for FREE! 

(more…)

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Though many developers were interested – I mean, the estate is over 2,900 acres of prime, Santa Ynez property (Oprah & Ellen have lived in the ‘hood) – nary a deal was cut.  By contrast, the average residential lot is around 1/10th of 1 acre – you could fit 29,000 houses on the Neverland property, and each one would still have a medium-sized front and backyard of its own!

Well, I guess times are tough for everyone. Yesterday, a foreclosure auction was scheduled for March 19^th – if M.J. hasn’t paid the $24 mill. or so he owes on the place, it’ll go on the auction block.

Any lessons here for the real-world property owner?  Yep – avoid overimprovement and overpersonalization.  Neverland is a very valuable parcel, but it would cost the next buyer tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to dismantle the amusement park/zoo/private railroad and convert it into something usable to, uh, regular people. So the interested buyers didn’t want to pay a jillion dollars for the place and have to still demo and redevelop it. 

My guess is that you don’t have a ferris wheel at your place, but remember when you convert your garage into a sauna that most folks would actually prefer the garage, so you might want to convert it back before you try to sell the place.   

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In one episode, Russell extends to Rev. Run the opportunity to invest a couple million dollars in a hip hop Web 2.0 venture, GlobalGrind.com.  Run balks at the amount, and also at the fact that the web space is completely outside of his comfort zone.  Despite Russell’s extensive market research into the opportunity and track record of startup success, Run remains undecided about the opportunity until his wife and youngest son check the site out and encourage him to get in. 

Before Rev. Run agrees to invest, Russell reminds Rev. that Russell set aside a number of shares for his family and friends as “schmuck insurance.”  Huh?  Russell then defines schmuck insurance as shares of an investment you offer to those close to you, so that when you make a fortune on it, they won’t be left standing there with nothing - “like a schmuck.”

Anyone out there offering schmuck insurance to their friends and fam who are trying to ”wait for the bottom” of this real estate cycle?  

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I have my own take on this issue, too. Selling a home is not rocket science. In my opinion, there are only three elements involved in getting your home to sell, no matter how long it has been on the market, and no matter how slow the market is in your neck of the woods:

• Pricing,
• Condition, and
• Marketing.

And the greatest of these is pricing.

If your home is not selling, you must tweak one or more of these three elements. Here are my tips - and some of Barbara Corcoran’s - on getting your house to finally sell:

Pricing

Lower the price. Period. And not a whole bunch of little, inconsequential price reductions. Look at the sales price (not the list price) of comparable properties that have recently sold in your neighborhood, and price yours below them. You can’t really underprice a home - the lower the price, the more it looks like a bargain. The more it looks like a bargain, the more people will come see it. The more showings, the more likely you are to get a qualified buyer. (more…)

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