About Gloucester County, NJ

Parking During the Snow and Snow Removal in East Greenwich, NJ

Being a resident of East Greenwich, NJ I have subscribed to their newsletter. Today there was a friendly reminder of the protocol to follow for snow events. We just had about 2 feet of snow dumped on us this past weekend, and another foot or so is scheduled tonight.

Below is the information pertaining to the township's view of the snow events and keeping roads clear for the trucks to plow.

NO PARKING ON PUBLIC ROADS WITHIN THE TOWNSHIP UNTIL ALL ROADS HAVE BEEN PLOWED.

This ordinance will be enforced to enable the Public Works Department to safely and efficiently plow roads. Violations can result in fines up to $300.00.

The ordinance is below for your convenience.

10.16.021 Temporary parking prohibition for snow removal plowing and removal.

A. Whenever snow has fallen and the accumulation is such that it covers the streets and highways, an emergency shall exist and no vehicle shall be parked on the streets or highways or portions thereof within the township. B. The above parking prohibitions shall remain in effect after the snow has ceased until the streets have been plowed sufficiently and to the extent that parking will not interfere with the snowplowing operations and with then normal flow of traffic. C. Any person violating the ordinance codified in this section shall, upon conviction in the Municipal Court, be fined in an amount not less than fifty dollars ($50.00), or more than three hundred dollars ($300.00). Each such motor vehicle and trailer parked in violation of the ordinance codified in this section shall constitute a separate violation of the ordinance codified in this section. (Ord. 2-05 (part))

Steve Kappre is a mortgage loan officer in New Jersey. For more info or questions feel free to contact Steve.

• NJ First Time Home Buyer
• NJ Reverse Mortgages
• Purchase, refinance, rehab loans
• Conventional, FHA, USDA, VA, HMFA, First Time Home Buyer, Police and Fire, Live Where You Work, and more

Call direct @ 856-419-3561 | Subscribe to Steve's blog via e-mail

In today's current market many real estate agents have to look to other areas to help them earn revenue to augment their home marketing income. Some agents have spouses that earn a steady income that helps pay the bills during the time that listings are waiting for acceptable offers or a market campaign brings fruition with new home buyers. For myself, the decision was based on trying to find soemthing that was complimentary to my main business focus, real estate. To that End I ended up with doing Broker Price Opinions (BPOs). BPOs are very similar to Comparative Market Analysis (CMAs) except that BPOs are more detailed and are done for a fee, while CMAs are at no-cost for a home owner and prospective home seller. After spending a considerable amount of time doing these BPOs I have come to the conclusion that they are a two-edged sword. On one hand, if you do enough of them for the right price, they are a good source of extra income. However, on the flip side, they are very time consuming and not very cost-effective to do if one does not set some initial ground rules in doing them. But the key question is - are they worth doing? Before I can answer the question, I should go into a bit more detail in what is the process of getting and completing BPOs.

BPOs can be a steady source of additional revenue if you can be assured of getting them each and every month. This may not always be the case due to many factors. One of the biggest factors is the lending institutions. I tend to work with third party servicing companies that go out and solicit business from these lenders. If they are successful, then the service company has quite a lot of orders to fullfill, which they need real estate agents (known as Field Agents) to complete for them. Basically, lenders hire these service companies to give them financial marketing information on a specific property. I can't go into what details/services the service provides them, but one of the components is the details market analysis of the property, known as a BPO. The Field Agent (FA) is assigned an order to complete a report on. The report is very similar to doing a CMA for a home owner except there is more detail in writing. The FA must go out and take pictures of the property, view the property and the neighborhood. It is of tremendous help if the FA also knows the market area extemely well. This may sound like a no brainer, but there are real estate agents that will only focus on the money (fee paid for order), take the order, and then try to put together whatever they can to get the report accepted. So, now you have a basic understanding of the the BPO process with third party service

So, to answer the question of are BPOs worth doing, my answer is Yes and No.

For Yes, it is as long as you can be assured of getting a relatively large number per month. Because of this uncertainty, I have relationships with many different service companies that assign BPO orders. This way I can track my revenue from BPOs each month and see how well I am doing. If one servicer is low in assigned orders for me, I can then accept orders from other service companies. Now, one of the rules that I have established for myself in completing BPOs is that I do not accept any drive-by order (referred to as Exterior Orders) for anything less the $50. Anything less is not cost effective for me to take; I have to contend with wear and tear on my car and my time in conducting the research. In that the BPO will not end with me getting a home to list, the fee is the only benefit I can expect to get from them.

The other advantage for me in doing BPOs is more of a non-monetary issue. And that is that BPOs allow me to learn, on almost an on-going basis, what the market is doing in any specific area. If I get a BPO order to complete on a luxury home in a specific development, my research gives me knowledge about what is going on within that specific market segment. This gives me an advantage over other agents in the area who rely only on doing CMAs for home owners. For one thing, the agents need a willing home owner who is interested in the agent's CMA. Without that home owner, why would the agent do a CMA? I, on thr other hand, always have a willing recipient of my detailed market analysis with the mortgage lenders and banks.

As for the flip side of doing BPOs, the No side, is that they are very time consuming. Even though you are getting a fee for completing a BPO you still need to take the time to drive to the property to take photos and to do the detailed research that the lenders/banks require (i.e. number of vacant homes in the neighborhood, how many homes in the neighborhood are bank owned/foreclosed, the potential rental amount, etc.). This all takes time. And if you are doing a large number of BPOs each month, the time needed can add up very quickly.

So, the question remains. Should agents do BPOs or not? There is that trade-off. While an agent is spending time doing those BPOs they are not farming/soliciting new customers. Their client base can possibly dwindle. If they don't have time to get on the phone to prospect for new homes sellers, their inventory will shrink.

On the other hand, doing BPOs is an ideal way to keep ones fingers on the pulse of the market. To be ahead of the curve as to what is going on with prices. Because as an agent does more and more BPOs they will tend to get orders from lenders/banks for homes in a cluster of areas over a period of time. I, myself, have done numerous BPOs within the same development many times over the course of a month. Don't you think that I pretty much have the idea of what is going with prices there? I also see what other agents are doing with their marketing of the homes and the mistakes they make. I'm getting pretty good at predicting if an active listing is going to be a candidate for expiration. I also see the trend of what is happening with the short sale market and where it is heading. Not only do I have to complete the research for the market pertaining to the home I am contracted to do an valuation on, but I am expected to give a detailed analysis of that market area and the homes within there.

So, in a nutshell, it does take quite a bit of time to complete a proper BPO but it is well worth it because my experience and insight helps me serve my customers that much better. When I give an opinion of the expected selling price of their home it is because I have done numerous valuations of homes in their area and I have been watching the trends of prices over a longer period of time. Not like many of the other agents who ran a CMA in the last couple of days because they had a listing appointment. I have watched the market for months while the other agents have had to cram the data and make some verbage up so that the prospective seller will be impressed that they use all the right buzz words and have some fancy charts (that the agents really don't know what they mean).

The whole BPO activity has only added to my level of knowledge along with my years experience in marketing to better serve my clients/customers.

Terry Iwaniw
REALTOR Associate
ReSales & Investment Realty, LLC
Off: 856-795-3111 x263
Cell: 609-417-1086
http://www.sellmysnjhome.com
http://snjrealestate.ning.com
http://www.snewjerseyhomes.com
Connect on Facebook - http://profile.to/terryiwaniw

The following are the Market Statistics For Gloucester County NJ Residential Homes Sales for 2009

Information Gathered from TReND MLS

Monthly Statistics

Date	Units Listed	Listed Volume	Listed Average	Pended	Units Sold	Sold Volume	Sold Average	Average DOM
Dec 2009	276	64,799,345	234,780	134	182	38,860,429	213,518	98
Nov 2009	357	85,877,469	240,553	166	291	60,428,934	207,659	93
Oct 2009	439	103,107,894	234,869	278	231	47,891,380	207,321	115
Sep 2009	485	118,101,854	243,508	238	214	46,067,214	215,267	119
Aug 2009	488	117,414,431	240,603	232	238	52,884,246	222,202	99
July 2009	520	134,453,953	258,565	243	226	49,614,190	219,531	104
June 2009	531	136,663,541	257,370	241	232	54,018,019	232,836	103
May 2009	497	124,185,295	249,869	207	197	45,814,903	232,562	95
Apr 2009	505	128,090,180	253,643	210	163	34,669,628	212,697	105
Mar 2009	508	123,286,844	242,690	206	138	29,014,654	210,251	113
Feb 2009	490	122,115,312	249,214	152	146	31,170,949	213,499	95
Jan 2009	505	127,699,766	252,870	151	128	27,368,007	213,812	108
Totals:	5601	1,385,795,884	247,419	2458	2386	517,802,553	217,016	104

Average Prices

Original List Price: $239,080

Sold Price: $217,016

South Jersey Wildlife: White-Tailed Deer

If there is one thing South Jersey has enough of, it is deer. With the development of new homes and neighborhoods throughout South Jersey, deer only have so many places to go.

The other day I was able to count 19 in my backyard, all at once. We had fun looking and laughing, including a young deer that decided to run the full length of my yard and ajoining field, full speed, several times. (Once I get a chance to edit the video I will post it).

Take a look at some of these shots, including my favorite, the deer's tongue sticking out from eating from my bird feeder!!

 

 

Steve Kappre is a mortgage loan officer in New Jersey. For more info or questions feel free to contact Steve.

• NJ First Time Home Buyer
• NJ Reverse Mortgages
• Purchase, refinance, rehab loans
• Conventional, FHA, USDA, VA, HMFA, First Time Home Buyer, Police and Fire, Live Where You Work, and more

Call direct @ 856-419-3561 | Subscribe to Steve's blog via e-mail

Where do you go for your information on MORTGAGES & REAL ESTATE?

Yes, Active Rain offers 100's of groups in so many different fields. Right now, there are over 6,200 groups. So where do you start if you want to find some good posts on a specific topic? Or if you wanted to place you post to a specific group that has high readership. It could take you a while to weed through certain groups until you found what you liked.

I have been on Active Rain for 3 + years and I like to post to the larger groups that have a large subscriber base. It usually becomes a great place for me to start my day when I want to read about those same type of topics. I wanted to share some of these groups that I think are beneficial when it comes to mortgages and to real estate.

Mortgage & Real Estate related groups :

Top 4 real estate related groups (based on my opinion) :

Realtors® - 19,062 subscribers - basically anything real estate related, top news, trends, and mortgage related news.

Mortgages - 2,644 subscribers - just as the title indicates, mortgages. Basically anything mortgage related.

All About Mortgages/Mortgage Networking - 1,444 subscribers - same above, just another good source for mortgages when all mortgage related posts aren't placed in both groups.

1st Time Buyers - 1,191 subscribers - Very good for the consumer - here is a great place for 1st time homebuyers to get some good home buying tips.

More specific type of groups for mortgages :

The FHA Mortgage Group - 718 subscribers - A great place to find many current updates and opinions when it comes to FHA loans.

USDA Rural Development Loan Group - 152 subscribers - This is a great place to find up to the minute updates and opinions when it comes to USDA loans.

VA Loan Group - 62 subscribers - an very good group for anything related to VA loans, those veterans once in the service or those with any type of active duty service. God Bless those that have served and who still protect our country.

Real Estate Trends - 210 subscribers - a place with today's real estate trends and changes.

FHA 203-k and FHA 203-k Streamline Loan Group - brand new - the original founder has left the business and Active Rain. I searched and didn't find this group available. If anyone would like to take this group over from me and or to be a moderator in the group, please let me know by e-mail. thanks

Realtors Needing the services of the Lending Powers - 763 subscribers - A place where realtors and other like professionals can bounce ideas off of loan officers and or a place to share new mortgage related topics.

MORTGAGE PRO Week in Review - 135 subscribers - This group has become inactive and I have plans with a few others to bring this group back. It's a great place to get weekly mortgage & real estate blogs all rolled up into one review that is done once a week.

Summary : As I have stated, I have been on Active Rain for over 3 years. I know we all have our ways of posting to certain groups or going to certain groups for specific information. What I don't get is why would you want to post to a mortgage group that has only 50 subscriptions to that specific group, even though the name of the group has mortgage in it. This is how I look at it....

Jeff's opinion - I want to get more readers to my general mortgage and real estate posts. Some of these larger groups are still active with the founder being active and some moderators within the group, who still feature specific related posts that might seem to be important. So when you go to the group, you will usually see the top 5 posts of that week. Yet, I have seen many groups that have been abandoned and the last feature was 5/10/08 or 1/23/09. Once you place your post into that group, it will slide down the list of other posts when a new one is inputted into that group. If it has less subscribers and the good important posts don't get noticed and or feature, aren't you losing some possible readers? Just food for thought.... think about it. Yes, many of the posts that we write get indexed by Google, but why do you go to a specific group? What do you look for? Wouldn't you rather be recognized in front of a larger audience than a small one?

Disclosure & Input Needed : Again, this is based on my opinion. If you think you know of a really good mortgage or real estate related group, please don't hesitate to place a link to it in your comment. I would be glad to include it in this post of it fits what I am talking about. thanks

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Experience & Knowledge at its BEST !!!

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For more information on FHA loans, please go to this link. The FHA Expert

For more information about the 2009 Tax Credit for First Time Homebuyers : 2009 Tax Credit

For important mortgage insight to watch for, please read : Consumers need to be aware of these Red Flags!

Copyright © 2010 by Jeff Belonger of Infinity Home Mortgage Company, Inc