Helping Yourself Qualify for a Home Loan

There are a fair number of specific helpful suggestions to make in helping you purchase a home. All of them revolve around the loan. Let’s face it, the loan is far and away the most hypothetical and uncertain part about most real estate transactions. If there is a non-loan related problem, chances are that you …

Did That Slap On The Back Leave a Knife?

One of the things the place I work does to attract clients is advertise foreclosure lists to our clients. Several times a week, people call and ask for the lists, and we say, “Great! Just come on down, fill out a loan package and an agency agreement, and we’ll get them to you fresh every …

Buy Now vs. Wait: Some Practical Hypotheticals

I am hoping to buy in the (city) area and am reviewing the possibilities. While I fear that the local market may be peaking, I intend to live in the home for at least ten years, so I am not trying to time the market. My questions have to do with the down payment. I …

Approaching the Loan Application Process – What Loan Will You Qualify For?

On of the biggest time and money wasters in real estate is people that apply for the wrong loans – loans that they can never qualify for because they can’t meet the guidelines, or can’t prove they meet the guidelines, which amounts to the same thing. Often, loan officers are the worst offenders, judging by …

Appraisers Speak Out Against “Make The Deal”

Appraisers Petition Against “Make The Deal” I’ve spoken about these issues before in this post. I’ve certainly heard of plenty of abuse on both sides of this equation, and there is plenty of motivation for lenders to abuse the situation by requiring a higher than “real” appraisal value. Still, I think that by reading only …

Seller Paid Closing Costs (or, When Your Prospective Buyer Has No Money)

In many transactions these days, the buyer has absolutely no money, or an amount that is not sufficient to pay the costs that they would traditionally be expected to pay in order to close the transaction. Nonetheless, in today’s buyer driven market, often the seller still wants to do business with them. The usual way …

Related Party Transfers of Real Estate – Family, Corporate, or Partners

One of the things that has a lot of issues is any transaction between related people. Actually, this is not limited to purely family transactions, but applies also to transfers among partnerships and their partners, corporations and their officers The market theory holding that the value of a property is what is agreed to between …