Search this site
Matching entries from Searchlight Crusade
What Drives Loan Rates?
Supply and Demand. Now that I've given the short answer, it's time to explain the macro factors behind interest rate variations. But I'm going to keep referring to those first three words. It is a tradeoff between the supply of...
Buyer's Agency, Due Diligence, and the Illusion of Comity
Somebody sent me this story via e-mail: Feeling Misled on Home Price, Buyers Sue Agent Marty Ummel feels she paid too much for her house. So do millions of other people who bought at the peak of the housing...
How Can Buyers Get the Lowest Possible Price on the Best Possible Property?
The first piece of advice I have for buyers who want to get a fantastic bargain is to find a good buyer's agent. Nothing else will make as much difference as a good buyer's agent who is dedicated to...
How to Sell Your Home Quickly and For The Best Possible Price
There's really nothing mysterious about this. There are some subsidiary tricks and issues, but the most important thing is obvious. The economic games theory is crystal clear, as is the research into what really happens. But most people don't like...
How Loan Providers Make Money
In an attempt to debunk some of the slanders that are floating around out there, this article is an itemization of how lenders and brokers make money on loans. The first method is obvious: Origination or discount points charged to...
Buyer's Markets: Time for Listing Agents To Earn Their Money
One of the most common things I'm seeing as I roam about the East County looking for bargains: Agents not doing their jobs. Even when there were 40-plus sellers per buyer, single family detached homes that are priced appropriately were...
Buyer's Markets Are A Great Time For Moving Up
I have said repeatedly that buyer's markets are not the time to be selling a property if you have any choice. There is one exception: People looking to turn around and buy a more expensive property. If you're looking to...
What Do You Mean Back To Basics?
For a period of several months when the market started imploding, I got mass messages from basically every lender I do business with, saying it's time to "get back to basics". My favorite A paper lender became the last to...
Buying Without An Agent - My Own Experience
I had the idea for this article some time ago. It took me a long time to decide to share it publicly, because quite frankly, knowing what I know now, I was an idiot. I was still young enough to...
Asking Price Versus Sales Price
Hard as it may be to believe, I've never done an article comparing asking price to sales price. It's way past time. Asking price is quite simply, a written representation of an offer the seller would be willing to...
Lender Paid Mortgage Insurance or Regular PMI?
If I am buying a foreclosed home for 220k of which 200k is being financed, and the home comes back at being valued at 285k from my mortgage company, am I still required to pay PMI? If so, how in...
How to Avoid A Repeat of the Housing Market Mess
Scapegoating mortgage brokers or anyone else is not the answer, nor is prohibiting yield spread. We've been here before (in the early 1990s), congress did something remarkably similar except a little bit more sane. It didn't work then. Why would...
What Do You Know That I Don't Know?
Whenever I go scouting in public forums, somebody is always asking, "What's the secret? How do you get rich in real estate?" The alternate to this question is "What do you know that I don't?" These people are sure there's...
Mortgage Transaction Case Study
Note: This article was originally published November 2007, when rates were higher than currently I had been corresponding irregularly with this gentleman during his hunt. It happens he lives outside of California, and I only work inside California, so...
Where Would I Invest A Million Dollars?
Somebody asked me that. Well, I'd want to set some aside for liquidity and reserves, in case something happened where I needed money now. invest those funds in a diversified mutual fund and money market portfolio. Once that's done, I'd...
Bridge Loans
One of the things I'm seeing a lot of these days is blanket advice on bridge loans. A bridge loan is a loan that you take out with the explicit intention of having it be short term. The most common...
There Is No Fairy Godmother for Loans
Really. I know that most people who read that title are replying "no kidding" but you would be amazed at how many people act like there is such a fairy godmother. I got an email yesterday that said, basically, "Help...
Issues with Multiple Mortgages
We have several rental properties that we own (more than 10). When we were younger, before we got married, we both moved around a lot and bought houses, moved, stayed a year or so and did it again. I...
Segmented Real Estate Markets And Taking Advantage of Them
Market segmentation is what happens when certain things are much more in demand than others. For instance in the hot market brought on by the tax credit of 2009, the central area of San Diego was in high demand,...
Some Secrets to Good Transactions
Be prepared for trouble before it happens, know how strong your position is or isn't, and don't ever overplay your hand. Real estate transactions are the largest transactions most folks get involved in. Even small percentages of $500,000 or more...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'markets'. [What is this?]
