Real Estate, Mortgages, Loans

Studio living can be both rewarding and frustrating, particularly in a city like New York City. With space becoming scarce, studios and one-bedroom flats are the standard, particularly if you don’t have roommates.

Because you don’t have a very big flat, you could want a place to keep your stuff. Keeping it in the flat will simply lead directly to a cluttered feeling, and dumping personal items isn’t a choice either. NYC mini storage can help if you won’t be looking to store big furniture.

Since the storage units are on the smaller side, they are not too expensive, and they provide a budget friendly solution to keeping your stuff close by without keeping it in the way. If you are looking out for a trusty company, you need to do a search for storage NYC. You need to find one that will give you both access and control.

You will have your own lock and key so you are the sole person who is able to get into your unit. The owner of the units won’t enter them and will make sure your things are safe and secure. When selecting a unit, go with the tiniest comfy size. Consider before you sign up if you’re storing things that would be better sold, given away, or thrown away. Large furniture and stuff that you use daily should not be stored except on a short term non-permanent basis.

Instead, consider putting into storage things that have sentimental value like things you have inherited from your mom and dad or grandparents, or things that you do not need to access regularly, like a filing cabinet of old paperwork that you are not prepared to shred yet. When you are packing your things and placing them in the storage unit, don’t forget to label carefully. You do not want to have to go through ten boxes to find one item. Also put the things you will desire regular access to in the front of your unit.

A foreclosure is what happens when you stop making payments, and the bank reclaims your home. A short sale is what a person does to avoid a foreclosure. Sell your home before it becomes to huge of a burden. People who owe more on their home often times find it difficult to keep making payments, so they also choose to foreclose in many situations.

Of course, one area that gets plenty of attention for the high percentage of foreclosure listings is Orange County. While nearly 10% of homes are foreclosures, that actually follows the trend of plenty of other areas in Orange County.

For example, Orange County has nearly 11% of homes listed as foreclosures, but when you look at metro areas in Washington (Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver), the foreclosure percentage of home listings are barely over 11% right now.

One the flip side of things, another important metric to look at is the percentage of short sales. In Orange County, the percentage of short sales has climbed to about 26% of home listings right now.

So let’s think of this way. 1 in 6 listings are short sales in Washington… 1 in 4 listings are short sales in Orange County. 33% more are short sales. That’s a substantial difference. But what is that difference you ask?

A higher amount of short sales is in direct correlation to inflated home prices which quickly deflated. People in Orange County realized that after the purchased their homes at the peak of the housing boom, that their homes were in reality not worth that much. Because of that, they want to get into a home where they are paying a lower mortgage and will have at least close to the same value when they have fully paid it off.

This makes for a slow house sale situation. Everybody with their homes for sale are waiting for everybody else to come and purchase their home, and they can’t purchase unless somebody comes and purchases theirs…

Here’s what this all boils down to for you. Homes in Orange County are cheaper than they were before, thanks to, you guessed it – foreclosures and short sales. So when you want to purchase your next home, check out those listings, and you’ll presently surprised to see what you can purchase for a reasonable asking price!

When you scope out places to live, one good strategy is to jump in your car and spend time driving through the streets of the community you want to buy into. If you’re using a Realtor to show homes, most likely he or she will only give you a tour of the major places of interest. In order to discover the real flavor of the community, try visiting areas away from the popular parts of town. You may discover a community suits your taste perfectly or you may feel like driving the opposite direction as fast as possible.

Your initial step should be to take out a local map and circle the areas you’re interested in. Make note of those areas next to the community you’re trying to buy into. Spend adequate time checking out neighboring streets in an organized fashion and decide if you feel comfortable living in that community. You should be aware a neighborhood can change within the interval of one block or after a naturally occurring divider such as the local park, freeway overpass, or planned housing development.

Evaluate a neighborhood to see if you could function comfortably in it-would you walk to the local bus stop or market, or let your kids play in the front yard alone? Consider these questions like:

1) How Well Maintained Are The Houses? – Home owners who take pride in their community keep their front yards nice, clean, and well maintained.

2) Learn About Your Neighbors – When checking out the people who live in the neighborhood, you’ll get a better feel for who your potential neighbors will be-do you see lots of kids playing at home or do you see party animals coming out at night on weekends.

3) How Bad Is The Local Traffic? – Do crazy drivers zoom past you with their radios blaring or does everyone drive close to the speed limit. What’s the local traffic like at the end of a workday?

4) What Are The Surrounding Businesses Like?-Well known restaurants, trendy coffee shops, and fine dining may suit your social life style, but if you can’t find any of your favorite hangouts or services like a health club, you won’t be happy living there.

5) How Many Homes Are For Sale? – If you see an excessive amount of homes for sale, it could be a red flag residents are moving out for a good reason-is there a new factory under construction or is there a rise in criminal activity? You may come across an opportunity of a lifetime and purchase a fantastic deal or you might decide to search somewhere else. Another potential reason could be due to the fact you’re looking for homes in a hot market where houses are selling quickly.

If you discover a neighborhood you really like, get a different color highlighter and outline your desired areas. This step will eliminate those home for sale advertisements that don’t fit your home buying criteria.

Statistics state that an average homeowner changes homes approximately every seven years. Young married couples rent their first apartment four two years on average. Saving a down payment and beginning the search for their first home is the American dream. National interest rates are at an all time low. Based on a purchaser’s credit history, rates are available below five percent on a fifteen year fixed mortgage.

Most first time homebuyers are moving from an apartment into a home to begin a family and the rational process of building equity in their first real-estate purchase. The average income and financial resources of the buyer determine the size and price range of the home they can afford.

Some areas of the country have been hit hard in the last few years buy the recession, causing property values to plummet. First time homebuyers with a reasonable down payment and a good credit history can purchase much more home for the money than they could five years ago.

If anyone remembers the eighties, then they may remember that interest rates of up to eighteen percent were quite common, and while this caused monetary problems for many, the number of homes being bought and financed did not drop. In fact, there were several thousand, and the American dream had become viable once again.

A house that was about one thousand square feet in a planned subdivision would sell for around ten to fifteen dollars per square foot, and while that might sound like a bargain today, the average wage during that time was somewhere around a dollar sixty-five per hour.

All things are relative to time and financial situations, and at this time houses were built for ten dollars a square foot, gasoline was eighteen cents a gallon and a pound of hamburger was eight cents per pound. The housing industry continued to become a steadily growing industry.

It wasn’t long before the word ‘suburbia’ rolled off the tongue of many Americans, and many returning servicemen caused what would be known as the ‘baby boom’. This meant more housing was required, and the government did help out quite a bit by providing the GI Bill along with government backed loans for veterans.

Those homes of the late forties and fifties, if cared for properly, even though they are over sixty years old now, are now selling for between sixty and ninety dollars a square foot. Inflationary trends have affected every corner of commerce, but the home is a perennial hedge against most financial woes and has provided a shelter for the homeowner and real estate investor. If a purchase is in the picture, a good Realtor is worth far more than the cost.

You have decided to make the ever-important step in your life to buy your own home. It may be that you are ready to get out of your apartment or you and your spouse have decided that its time your family moved to a nice family home. No matter the reason, deciding to buy your first home can be a very exciting experience.

If you were able to have your loan application approved, then you are probably eager to get started right away. However, you must remember that buying a house is not that simple of a process to complete.

As a first time home buyer, there is a tendency for you to get overly excited about closing a deal. When this happens, take a deep breath and relax. Bear in mind that too much excitement can lead you to commit errors of judgment.

You need to be extra-careful when shopping for your first home. A great piece of advice is to contact a broker and ask for his help, especially if you lack some good communication skills.

If you are meeting with the seller to talk about the price, don’t go unprepared. Find out about the market value of similar properties in the area before you schedule a meeting.

Another important piece of information you will want to know is how long the house you are interested in has been on the market. Knowing its length of time on the market can help you determine how motivated or eager the current owner is to sell the house. This can be a very useful piece of information when negotiating the final sales prices.

But remember the other way around is equally valid. The seller can actually see and feel all your excitement and can lead the negotiation towards a direction you won’t certainly like.

So make sure you hide your excitement even if you absolutely adore the house and everything in it. Don’t give the seller any chance to make a bigger profit put of the deal and don’t settle down except for the price that’s in your budget range.

Hi I’m Jay Seville, the owner of JustNewListings.com Realty and I wanted to cover with you a really interesting and dramatic subject today and that is earnest money deposits. The acronym for that would EMD for short and it brings a number of issues to the table and especially from a buyer-agent’s perspective. How to protect your client? How to protect their money from being trapped and in limbo if there’s a disagreement between the purchaser and the seller etc. What can you do? And if you’re the buyer, how can you educate your own agent on these matters since probably one in a thousand are doing anything to protect you and your earnest money Deposit which is a sad state of affairs. I’ll just leave it at that.

For example, let’s say that the home you are buying is $750,000. You will be depositing quickly about $15,000 in most cases and it is part of your down payment. This causes you to be invested financially since that if you break the sales contract you stand to lose your earnest money deposit (EMD). It makes the contract stronger in essence and gives the seller confidence in working with you that you are serious about buying his home.

One of the primary fiduciary duties of the selling agent (buyer agent) is reducing his clients’ risks throughout the contract. An example of this is trying to ratify the sales contract with as small as possible of an earnest money deposit. That way if the buyer voids the contract within his rightful contingency window for a valid reason the money on the table is as low as possible to try and get refunded back to the buyer. Can the buyer get his earnest money back right away and move on after voiding the contract or is it more complicated?

It would be great if refunding earnest money deposits was so simple as sending the money back to its rightful owner who even was within the boundaries of the contract in voiding the sales contract. But the real world and the paper world (contracts) are often strikingly different in how things play out. As a general rule brokers cannot just refund the earnest money deposit back to the buyer.

His hands, he is essentially handcuffed. He cannot release the money back even though everybody knows it’s supposed to go back to that buyer unless he gets it in writing from all parties. And essentially every one fills out their form and says, “How much of the pie, the earnest money deposit is supposed to go to which party, the buyer or the owner of the property?” Now in most cases, 9 out of 10, everyone just signs real fast and will put the full amount of the Earnest Money Deposit. It goes back to the buyer and it’s all done in a day. Once in a while though, if the seller is upset or if there are any questions whatsoever where they feel like they’ve lost time on the market a few days, therefore they should at least get a thousand dollars of that earnest money deposit. They will not sign off on the release, the release for the earnest money funds. And instead, will try and split it with the buyer or negotiate it. And therefore, the broker cannot give the money back to the buyer. Legally, his hands are tied.

If the seller will not sign the release sending the money back to the buyer, then the buyer’s broker must send notice in a letter to the seller stating he is going to release the funds back to the buyer in 30 days unless he (buyer’s broker) receives a written protest disputing that release from the broker to the buyer. If the seller does make this dispute within that 30 day window the buyer’s broker will not be able to release funds. The courts will take it from there likely in most regions.

This scenario where the seller refuses to sign the release of the funds means your earnest money is held hostage practically whether it be for just that 30 days or much longer should the seller dispute in writing the release after being notified by the broker. There is a lot of room for drama. Not having your earnest money available would make it hard to move forward with the search for a new home.

What is the solution? How can the buyer’s agent and his client protect themselves from the scenario of an embittered seller refusing to sign a release of the earnest money deposit should something in the home inspection cause the buyer to exercise his right to void the contract? They way around this is an addendum stating that no earnest money will be deposited all parties have signed the negotiated home inspection addendum. It is at this point the money will be deposited as there is now no window for the buyer to void the contract based on a home inspection issue. This really limits the potential drama related to the deposit and a messy home inspection which can lead to the seller being angry at the buyer.