Holland, MI

The Feds this past Wednesday started to buy back those "Junk Mortgage Securities" to the tune of $500 billion dollars.

For most of us that is not a comprehensible number...but on a national basis it is $3333.33 dollars per household based on Bloombergs 2007 estimate of 1.5 million homeowners in America. That is how much it will cost each homeowner...now the next statistic is as many as 80 million homeowners could be in jeopardy!

Now you want the good news!

These loans are part of the bundled mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...whom we just bailed out! This all has contributed to the lowest home mortgage interest rate average since April 1971 at 5.14%.

The goal is to make loans more available for homes, cars and consumer products. This buy back is supposed to continue from now until the second quarter of 2009.

Here is the rub....who is watching the watchers? The people in charge of overseeing this huge bundle of cash is BlackRock Inc., Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Pacific Investment Management Co. and Wellington Management Company LLP.

So they are the players who are handling the buy back...then what. The idea is to create some interest in these worthless or nearly worthless mortgage securities and have investors buy them and then re-sell them. Mortgages are attached to homes!

Does this give you the feeling that 2009 could see some real foreclosure bargains for the public?

Bargain priced homes and low interest rates could mean a very good year for those positioned to take advantage of the opportunity.

Are you ready?

If you are a licensed Realtor in the State of Michigan and want he opportunity to excel in a down market give me a call or email me for a confidential interview. It is only talk but it could change your career!

Call Toll Free: 877-667-4699 or
Email: garywhite@FlexItRealty.com

The Lake Michigan Beach house is a great development on Lake Michigan offering a chance to be a partal owner of a Lake Michigan Beach cottage. I would check this property out.

The Beach House is situated across the street from Lake Macatawa in Holland, MI. With eight, cottage-style town homes to choose from, a private pool, housekeeping and concierge service, your vacation home dream can come true at The Beach House.

http://www.lakemichiganbeachhouse.com/

If you have question contact me or the builder Randy Bouwkamp

randy@bouwkampbuilders.com

David Medendorp

www.sellmuskegon.com

2312063367

Say what you will about the government takeover of Fannie and Freddie (and I am sure there is a lot to be said!) but I am loving these new low interest rates! I really hope a lot of people take advantage of them while they can, I am sure they will be going back up.

Really, it is the perfect time to be a first time home buyer! In addition to the great interest rates, there is the $7500 first time buyer tax credit. While the credit is little more than a loan from the government to the buyer, it is interest free. I know I certainly could have used an added $7500 to my tax return to:

- pay for my wedding

- make improvements to my new home

- new furniture

- take a vacation (or just pay off the honeymoon!)

On top of that, you may have heard (and who hasn't!) that it is a buyers marker. I think that we may be seeing the lowest home prices we are going to be seeing (thats a whole nother post) and there are plenty of homes and condos on the market.

Seriously, what are you waiting for? Get out there today and buy that home of your dreams!

Need some help?

Call me at 616.502.0367 or email me at mslager@greenridge.com

Check out www.MikeSlager.com for the home of your dreams in West Michigan!

It has been a while since I have posted anything on here! Thats what happens when you get wrapped up in a wedding, honeymoon, etc.

My wife, Kelly, and I were married August 1st on Windmill Island here in Holland, MI. We were lucky and had perfect weather (although very hot in a tux!). Windmill Island is already absolutely beautiful, but our caterers (Via Maria) did an awesome job turning the Celebration Pavilion into a reception even better than our dreams!

After the wedding we stayed the night at the new City Flats Hotel in downtown Holland. It is a LEED certified Hotel, which means it is very energy efficient and heavily uses recycled materials. The stay there was WONDERFUL, we didn't want to leave!

For our honeymoon we went up to Petosky for a few days. The last day we were there we spent at the spa at Boyne getting massages and relaxing.

After our massages we hopped in the car and headed for Mackinac Island. We did the usual tourist things (took the buggy ride around the island, bought fudge, etc.) before some nasty looking clouds rolled in (thunderstorms were predicted). We still needed to get to our campsite and set up our tent so we decided to leave before we could tour the fort.

Hopping back in our car we traveled over "the bridge" into the U.P. and headed west on US 2. We stopped at a State Park just east of Naubinway by the name of Hog Island Point State Park. It was very rustic but incredible beautiful. Our site was right on the shore of Lake Michigan! We literally looked out our tent onto Lake Michigan! It was serene and incredibly relaxing, just what we needed after the busy pre-wedding weeks.

Because it was such a rustic campground it had no showers, therefore my wonderful wifey decided we needed to leave the next morning for our final destination of our honeymoon: Taquamenon Falls. If you don't know anything about Taquamenon Falls (as I didn't) it is actually a set of falls (the Upper and Lower Falls). Check out the wiki page for it here.

Nearest to the campground is the Lower Falls. It is very wide with an island in the middle of it. The Lower Falls isn't a very high fall, in fact there kids playing in part of it, they were barely shorter than the falls.

The falls are sometimes are known as the Rootbeer Falls because of their distinctive color. The water isn't dirty at all, quite the opposite, but it is stained by the soil which is heavy in peat and iron.

The Upper Falls are about 4 miles from the Lower Falls. There is a very nice trail made so you can hike from one to the other. We (I) decided that a 4 mile hike doesn't sound that bad...until you have to hike back, so we drove. This fall is about 50 foot high and was altered back in the logging days because it was ruining the lumber as they were trying to float it down the river.

All in all, it was a very relaxing time.

It dawned on me how stressful the whole wedding thing is, and many buyers (and some sellers) are going through all of this while trying to purchase (or sell) a home! If you are a buyer (or seller) looking to for someone who can understand and help take some stress out of your experience I would love to help! I can be reached via call or text message at 616.502.0367 or via email at mslager@greenridge.com. I especially love helping first time buyers!

The Holland area, and really most of West Michigan has been hit really been hit by rain within the last week. Yesterday was OK and today has been very nice (thankfully!) but before that it was terrible, flooding many areas. It was especially terrible because there were casualties due to this downpour. See some articles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. I know, that's a lot, and I also know there is a lot more. It's amazing to me how much rain can really affect our area.

I was out yesterday showing homes to one of my clients and of the 4 homes I showed him 2 of them still had serious water issues inside. The two were foreclosures, and my guess is that the agents had no idea of the problem (I of course left them a voicemail). One of the rooms in the first home was under a half inch of water!

In both cases I am pretty sure under normal circumstances we would have never found those issues prior to closing on the home. There is also a good chance home owners insurance would not have covered the issue simply because we don't generally carry flood insurance in this area. As unlucky as many were with this rain, my client ended up kind of lucking out!

We ended up submitting an offer on a nice HUD home, with no flooding, just outside of Park Township (my favorite area of Holland). Hopefully we will have an accepted offer by the end of this week!