With certain exceptions, FHA rules prohibit insuring a mortgage on a home owned by the seller for less than 90 days. In 2010, however, FHA temporarily waived this regulation through January 31, 2011, and later extended that waiver through the remainder of 2011. The new extension will permit buyers to continue to use FHA-insured financing to purchase HUD-owned properties, bank-owned properties, or properties resold through private sales. It will allow homes to resell as quickly as possible, helping to stabilize real estate prices and to revitalize neighborhoods and communities.

The extension announced today is effective through December 31, 2012, unless otherwise extended or withdrawn by FHA. All other terms of the existing Waiver will remain the same. The Waiver contains strict conditions and guidelines to prevent the predatory practice of property flipping, in which properties are quickly resold at inflated prices to unsuspecting borrowers. The Waiver continues to be limited to sales meeting the following conditions:

•All transactions must be arms-length, with no identity of interest between the buyer and seller or other parties participating in the sales transaction;

•In cases in which the sales price of the property is 20 percent or more above the seller’s acquisition cost, the Waiver will apply only if the lender meets specific conditions, and documents the justification for the increase in value;

•The Waiver is limited to forward mortgages, and does not apply to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) for purchase program.

This is good news for investors looking to purchase homes and sell them quickly to owner occupants using FHA financing such as the 203K program. The FHA 203K program allows an owner occupant to purchase a home and have funds added to their FHA mortgage to rehab the property after the mortgage closing.

To get more information on the FHA 203K program, reach out to Alicia MacPhee Realty Group today!

Chuck MacPhee of Alicia MacPhee Realty Group earns the OwnAmerica Investment Certification and joins the OwnAmerica Network, a national affiliation of real estate investment specialists. This move allows Chuck to offer analysis tools, tutorials and a video training series to clients during one of the biggest real estate investment booms in history.

Using the Investor Center on www.aliciamacphee.com real estate investors can learn how to best capitalize on the struggling housing market by researching and acquiring quality real estate assets as a long term wealth creation strategy. The Investor Center guides new real estate investors down the right path and streamlines the process for more seasoned investors.

“The market is great for investors, but investing in real estate is quite different than traditional home buying and selling,” explains Chuck MacPhee, “It’s a more complex process requiring additional levels of expertise. The Investor Center provides the resources to make investing in real estate simple, profitable and even fun.”

OwnAmerica and the Investor Center were created by Greg Rand, a twenty-year real estate industry veteran and author of the book Crash Boom!. It includes a 4 hour video based investment training course, news and information, and the Case Study Calculator, a tool for analyzing the potential of investment real estate.

“We’ve seen too many people giving bad advice about ‘getting rich quick’ in real estate. It truth, real estate is a long term wealth building asset. It works when you do it right. We want to show our clients how to do it right,” says Rand, CEO of OwnAmerica and host of WABC’s Rand on Real Estate.

To learn more about the Investor Center, contact Chuck MacPhee at chuck.macphee@prudentialgeorgia.com or visit the website at www.aliciamacphee.com

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Homeowners in metro Atlanta got a small reprieve Wednesday from bad housing news: Sales of existing single-family homes were up 26.2 percent in August compared with August last year, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.

The uptick isn’t a miracle or a reflection of a real recovery, however. Home sales had slumped after June last year when a homebuyer tax credit expired.

And as is true to form in the still uncertain economy, there’s bad news with the good: Median home prices in metro Atlanta fell again, by 7 percent, to $103,300 in August, compared with $111,100 in August a year ago.

Steve Palm, president of SmartNumbers in Marietta, said that sets area home prices back to 1999. And the pace of sales still is down 35 percent from the 2005-2006 peak in metro Atlanta.

Homes selling at a faster clip, even for a lower price, is a good sign for homeowners because it means investors and others are depleting the inventory of distressed homes, said Wight Mixon, president of the Atlanta Board of Realtors and a Realtor with Beacham & Co.

“People seem to know if they don’t act now, there’s not going to be any good deals left,” Mixon said. “The other thing is that the good inventory goes very quickly.” She said Beacham & Co. listed a well-maintained, well-priced home last week in Garden Hills, an Atlanta neighborhood near Buckhead, and had two offers within several days.

Palm believes that with the low inventories of homes — levels last seen in 2002 — if demand increases, home prices will “pop back up.”

Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, said rising apartment rents are combining with low home prices and low interest rates to motivate buyers.

One factor that could bode well for an uptick in September home sales is the average fixed rate, 30-year mortgage fell to a record low of 4.09 percent last week, according to Freddie Mac.

Nationally, sales of existing single-family homes increased 22.4 percent, though the median home price fell 5.4 percent to $168,400 in August, compared with August 2010.

Atlanta has the potential for 47,317 new houses a year, followed by Phoenix with 46,485 and Dallas with 33,997, Jeff Meli, Vincent Foley, Cedric Morris and Robert Tayon, analysts with Barclays, wrote in the study. Phoenix leads 16 metro areas examined for potential revenue with $4.45 billion in new home sales. It’s followed by Washington with $3.94 billion and San Diego with $3.31 billion.

“The reality is that housing is a region-by-region story,” Foley said in a telephone interview fromNew York. “And most of the big public homebuilders are reasonably positioned to benefit from an upturn because they’re in the right markets.”

The projection for revived home construction in Phoenix, which the Barclays analysts called “surprising,” is based on the city’s growing population and speedy absorption of distressed real estate, according to the report. Barclays gave no time frame for its sales forecasts, which will occur after the cities “clear themselves of distressed inventory and excess supply,” it said.

“Regions that have pushed foreclosures through the pipeline quickly should see demand for new homes earlier than those that have allowed their backlog to grow,” Meli, Foley, Morris and Tayon wrote.

Second-Highest Foreclosures

Phoenix-area home prices are 56 percent below the June 2006 peak, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index, compared with a 32 percent decline for the 20 cities tracked by the index. The Phoenix metropolitan area had the second-highest rate of foreclosure filings in the first six months of this year, behind Las Vegas, with one in 28 households receiving a notice compared with a national average of one per 111 homes, RealtyTrac Inc. reported July 28.

“After falling to a low of 1.1 percent in 2009, population is expected to grow 2.6 percent annually in Phoenix for the next five years,” according to the Barclays report. “Such renewed inflows should support demand for new homes, leading to a recovery in several of the top 15 largest builders that have a presence in the region.”

Meritage Homes Corp. (MTH), a Scottsdale, Arizona-based builder, has about 53 percent of its home sales in markets with the best outlook, the most of any company, Barclays reported. It’s followed by PulteGroup Inc. with 39 percent, D.R. Horton Inc. and MDC Holdings Inc. (MDC) with 32 percent each, and KB Home (KBH) with 31 percent.

Beazer, Ryland

Homebuilders with the smallest share in the best markets are M/I Homes Homes Inc. with 8 percent, Beazer Homes USA Inc. (BZH) with 18 percent, Ryland Group Inc. (RYL) and Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL) with 19 percent each, and Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. (HOV) with 23 percent, according to Barclays.

The 12-member Standard & Poor’s Supercomposite Homebuilding Index has fallen 26 percent this year.

“While improved operating performance may take several quarters to materialize, the recent selloff provides a potential entry point for some of the long risk recommendations that follow from our analysis,” the Barclays analysts said.

For first-time sellers who have never been through the process before, it’s a different world. One where the value of the house isn’t measured in the profit made on the sale, but by the enjoyment the owners had from living in the home.

Here are three things experienced sellers would tell you, if they could.

Price it realistically from the start

“Your largest number of showings will occur in the first two to three weeks,” says Mark Ramsey, a broker in Charlotte, N.C. One reason: “The (multiple listing service) systems and the Internet tend to drive the majority of showings,” he says. Many buyers are plugged in electronically. So the minute something new pops up that meets their criteria, they want to see it.

Take advantage of that sweet spot by pricing the house competitively right out of the gate, he says.
When first-time sellers James and Emily Foltz put their Oklahoma City home on the market last summer, their agent gave them a comprehensive list of the initial asking prices of nearby homes like theirs, along with the final selling prices. “Some varied by $30,000,” says James Foltz.
It gave them an X-ray of their market.

How you style the price is important. The Foltzes first marketed their home for $155,000. But lowering it to $150,000 meant the listing appeared within the computer search parameters that buyers commonly used in that price range, Foltz says.

The result: A few weeks after the price change, they had a winning offer.

Be prepared to lose some money

Want to sit with a house that won’t move? Be the first-time seller who insists you can get the appraised value, the tax assessor’s estimate or whatever you paid a few years ago.

“It seems like there’s no relationship between your assessed value, taxable value and the actual market value of our house,” says Pat Vredevoogd Combs, past president of the National Association of REALTORS®. “There doesn’t seem to be any correlation.”

The truth is that your house is worth what buyers are willing to pay. No more. “This is a true market that Adam Smith would have loved—totally based on supply and demand,” Combs says. That means many buyers should be prepared to lose some money or hang onto the home until the price rises.

“We did end up taking a loss,” says Foltz, who wrote a check for $3,000 at the closing table. The good news is that the couple sold their home in less than two months.

Beware the agent who promises big profits, Combs says. That person may just be after your business. “Don’t go with anyone who doesn’t use comps,” she says. And study sales prices, not asking prices, for real estate.

Promotion, promotion, promotion

One question to ask yourself and pose as you interview agents: How will you reach the home’s target market?

“You have to consider who your most likely buyers are for what you’re selling and cater to that group of people,” Ramsey says.

Targeting 20-somethings who live on their smartphones? You need to effectively access the networks your buyers are tapping to find their next home. One big trend: QR (or “quick response”) bar codes that allow smartphone users to access property information electronically, he says.

The typical starter home can also appeal to downsizing empty nesters, says Ramsey. To serve their needs, you might also want to have a phone number that instantly reaches someone who can provide details and answer questions, he says.

And don’t neglect the modern version of curb appeal: using lots of photos on real estate listings’ websites. However you market your house, you need a good number of clear, well-lit, professional-quality pictures that show your house at its best. ]]> http://www.aliciamacphee.com/2011/06/14/first-time-selling-three-great-tips/feed/ 0 http://www.aliciamacphee.com/2011/06/03/now-is-a-great-time-to-buy/ http://www.aliciamacphee.com/2011/06/03/now-is-a-great-time-to-buy/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:02:55 +0000 cmacphee http://aliciamacphee.aios1.agentimage.com/?p=712 An index measuring metro Atlanta home prices slid to its lowest point in 11 years in January.

According to the latest Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index, released Tuesday, existing single-family home sale prices declined by nearly 7 percent in January compared with the same month in 2010. Atlanta’s index sagged to 99.59, just below the 100 benchmark score representing prices at the start of 2000. It was the first time metro Atlanta’s score was below 100 since December 1999.

Still, local real estate experts say they see improvement in some market indicators such as sales volume and pending contracts.

“This is a moving target,” Steve Palm, president of the real estate data company SmartNumbers, said recently.

Locally the index, which tracks repeat sales, was down .5 percent from December 2010, which also saw a record low. The index has been in steady decline since August.

Nationally, the 20-City index fell 3.1 percent in January from a year earlier.

“Looking across some of the markets, we see that . . . Atlanta has joined Cleveland, Detroit and Las Vegas as markets where average home prices are now below their January 2000 levels,” said David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s.

Nationally, Blitzer says, the worst case scenario is that a double-dip “may be materializing.” But local experts like Palm aren’t willing to call what is happening in Atlanta a double dip.

“You have to have . . . made some improvement to double-dip,” he said earlier this year. “We’ve been pretty much declining, so without some appreciable improvement, there can be no double-dip.”

Blitzer said S&P previously defined a double dip as seeing the 10- and 20-city indices set new post-peak lows. As it stands, the 10-city index is 2.8 percent above its April 2009 low and the 20-city index is 1.1 percent above, he said.

“But both series have moved closer to a confirmed double-dip for six consecutive months,” he said.

Atlanta home price index for past year

(100 represents value at start of 2000)

Jan. ‘10 — 107.04

Feb. — 105.65

March — 103.73

April — 105.69

May — 107.86

June — 109.72

July — 110.02

August — 108.95

September — 106.39

October — 103.30

November — 100.83

December — 100.03

Jan. ‘11 — 99.59

By Michelle E. Shaw

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

That’s the warning offered from Todd Drowlette, Chairman of classified listing site Move That Block. Drowlette says that his research into the consumer-to-consumer advertising space on the Internet revealed a wide variety of practices that exist for the sole purpose of deceiving the consumer.

“We all tend to have faith in the ‘truth in advertising’ laws protecting us from bait and switch scams,” Drowlette comments. “The problem is that the Internet is so saturated with bait and switch sites, the government would never have enough resources to prosecute them all. So, it’s really up to consumers to beware and be aware of the kinds of sites that are out to get their money, get their email addresses or just flat out rip them off.”

Drowlette’s tips include:

• Free or Premium: Before signing up with a listing site, surf it carefully to ensure that all their user listings are free. It’s common for them to charge companies for display ads and banners, but that’s only one of their revenue models. Many sites advertise free user listings, but in reality, only the first one is free and only after you sign up for a paid membership. Make sure you understand exactly what you will be getting for free before you sign up.

• Credit Card for ID Purposes: Some sites will ask for your credit card information to determine that you are of legal age to place an ad. Don’t believe it. If someone wants your credit card information, it’s because they want your money, not your ID. In some cases, you’ll find an unauthorized charge on your card, but because you didn’t read the fine print when you signed up, it’s impossible to get the charge reversed.

• The Fine Print: When you register on a classifieds or pay-to-use site, don’t just click through all the registration procedures. Each click constitutes an agreement with the site, so read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policies carefully. This is not just fine print. These documents spell out your legal rights, and the site you’re visiting is counting on the fact you won’t read them. In addition, the privacy policy spells out whether they will sell your email address to spammers once you sign up. Sure, the ads are free, but you’re actually paying with your email address and personal information, which may be sold to spammers and other promotional companies who will inundate you with junk mail.

• Free to Post: Sure, it might be free to post, but that may be all you can do. Many sites use that as the come-on, and then advise you that only premium (paid) members can see your listing, or that you cannot get responses until you pay for a premium membership yourself. Make sure everything is free before you post. After all, what’s the point of posting if you can’t communicate with anyone who sees it?

For more information visit www.movethatblock.com.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to:realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com. ]]> http://www.aliciamacphee.com/2011/05/12/top-tips-to-avoid-online-scams/feed/ 0 http://www.aliciamacphee.com/2011/01/23/tools-%e2%80%b9-norm-andrews-real-estate-%e2%80%94-wordpress-2/ http://www.aliciamacphee.com/2011/01/23/tools-%e2%80%b9-norm-andrews-real-estate-%e2%80%94-wordpress-2/#comments Sun, 23 Jan 2011 23:56:16 +0000 normandrews http://www.broomall.com/?p=215 “Norm made suggestions on how to make our home more salable to the eyes of the buyer. Through his outstanding expertise our home sold in 7 weeks in spite of the economy at an all time low.  His outstanding personality and sincerity made the sale a breeze.”     Pat Huster

“I wanted to provide a brief letter stating my overwhelming appreciation of Century 21 and most importantly Norm Andrews. We had a the absolute pleasure of working with Norm on the sale of our home. His experience and guidance was invaluable. ” Jason Gilbert

“Norm is the hardest working Realtor that I have ever seen and is a definite asset to Century 21.” Pat Meyers

“Norm Andrews is a great Realtor! He was always very professional and well informed. His constant encouragment was greatly appreciated during a very difficult sales market.”

“Norm explained every step of the process since it was our 1st time selling a home- everything with the sale went perfect.” Liz May