About Sacramento County, CA

So I have gotten to the point where I have closed so many Sacramento short sales, I figured I would share my experiences with different lenders. The last short sale lender profile I did was for Bank of America. I figured this time I would profile a lender at the opposite end of the spectrum: Wachovia.

Let me just tell you - if you are a Sacramento buyer or seller dealing with Wachovia Bank on a short sale, you have stumbled upon the golden goose!

Wachovia has one of the smoothest short sale approval processes I have witnessed. They actually have a local representative that personally meets with the short sale seller and the listing agent, who personally views the property, and issues short sale approval in a short time - usually within 3-5 days. Wachovia commonly offers the sellers incentives to move out and leave the property in good condition. Ocasionally a Wachovia short sale can be "conditionally" approved before it is listed in MLS. The seller generally does not have to supply much financial documentation - rather the seller must be prepared to discuss their financial / hardship situation with the local rep during their in-person meeting.
I would post the local Wachovia short sale rep's name, telephone number, and email address, however since I have her direct contact information, I am going to refrain from posting it so that she does not receive an onslaught of communication.
Click here if you are thinking about doing a short sale of your home. Click here if you are thinking about buying a short sale home.

Learn the key fair housing laws, federal and state protected classes, prohibited activities under the fair housing laws, and the possible consequences of fair housing violations.

Presented by attorney Gary Link 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. at the RHA office (201 Lathrop Way, Suite C, Sacramento) $29 RHA members / $49 non-members Learn the key fair housing laws, federal and state protected classes, prohibited activities under the fair housing laws, and the possible consequences of fair housing violations.

Call RHA at (916) 920-1120.

Elk Grove Real Estate Investment Club has a new website!

Are you a Sacramento Investor who is looking for an investment club to join? Check out our new website for the Elk Grove club!

Check out the new website at www.ElkGroveREIA.com! Don't forget to check out our first meeting of the year!

Our official first meeting as a new Sacramento investment club will be on Tuesday, February 16th.

We will still meet at the same location in Elk Grove below on the 3rd Tuesday of each month! We are looking forward to starting this new chapter with you! THERE IS NO MEETING TONIGHT!

Join us for our first meeting of the year!

DATE: February 16th, 2010
TIME: 6:30pm Networking 7:00pm Main Meeting
LOCATION:9275 East Stockton Blvd #100, Elk Grove, CA 95624
COST: $15

Is Your Financial House in Order? The number one key to wealth building is getting control of your money! It does not matter how much you make or how many rentals you own... At the end of the day cash flow and reserves will make or break you.

Our panel consisting of a CPA, book keeper, and a mortgage professional will help you see which areas of your current financial plan needs some editing.

In this economy... We all have to figure out how to do more with less! Every hole in your plan means less money to invest in real estate.

We are dedicated to providing you information you can use! See you at our first meeting of the year... February 16th!

This article recently ran in the Los Angeles Times and I thought is might be interesting to those of us in Sacramento still scrambling through the home-owning and selling maze:

New rule affects homeowners in foreclosure avoidance program
The U.S. Dept. of the Treasury and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced changes to its Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The changes, designed to help improve the conversion from trial loan modifications to permanent modifications, take effect June 1. Mortgage servicers may elect to implement the changes sooner.

MAKING SENSE OF THE STORY FOR CONSUMERS

• Under previous guidelines, homeowners were not required to document their incomes prior to receiving a trial mortgage modification. The trial modifications typically lasted three months, during which time the servicer was supposed to collect documents to verify the homeowner’s income. If the borrower met the monthly obligations, and submitted the required paperwork, the modification was supposed to be made permanent. However, many homeowners failed to provide the necessary paperwork, or the loan servicer lost the paperwork, resulting in just 66,465 permanent modifications out of the nearly 1.2 million trial modifications.
• The updated process requires that servicers collect three documents prior to granting a trial mortgage modification: A formal application, including a description of the hardship created by the mortgage; proof of income, such as two recent pay stubs or the most-recent profit and loss statement for self-employed borrowers; and a form authorizing the Internal Revenue Service to release tax data to the servicer.
• If the borrower meets the modified payment requirements for three months, the modification automatically will be made permanent. The Treasury Dept. also said it will allow servicers some discretion in making loan modifications permanent only if minor paperwork is missing. This discretion will help address a large backlog of incomplete modifications.
• Under the plan, servicers also will be required to respond within 10 days to an initial request for a modification. Once documents are provided, the servicer will have one month to let borrowers know whether they qualify for a trial modification.
• Servicers also must calculate whether the lender or current owner of the loan will benefit from a mortgage modification, or if foreclosing on the property is in the loan owner’s best interest. If the loan owner will benefit from a modification, the servicer is required to grant the modification. Requiring borrowers to provide financial documents upfront will enable servicers to decide if a modification or foreclosure is the best option.

To read the full story, please click here.

Source, California Association of Realtors (www.car.org)

ta ta for now,
Tamara

Agents often ask me: how is it that I can write a daily blog? They want to know if I sit at my computer staring at a blinking cursor and wondering what to write. I suppose they wonder if I ever get writer's block. The answer to that question is in the negative, Spock. The thing that I struggle with on occasion is not that I have nothing to write about, it's which topic or situation I want to tackle. There are so many to choose from. Stuff happens every day. A lot of stuff.

The truth is I just write. Sometimes, when I pick a subject, the blog doesn't end up being about that topic at all. I go somewhere else with it. And you know what, that's OK. It's all right to make a U-turn in the middle of the road because I'm a real estate agent.

The way that I handle such a huge volume of real estate business, especially as a Sacramento short sale agent, is to be organized. I'm organized almost to a fault. For example, I rarely retire for the evening without filing away every single document that I've thrown on my desktop during the day. Each downloaded document has a destination. I don't want to get up in the morning to be greeted by a computer desktop littered with files. It would make my head spin.

I like a fresh start to each day. I wake up wondering what fresh new hell lies in wait. What will I tackle next? I know that I am subject to the attention span of a cocker spaniel, so I generally deal with situations immediately; that way nothing is overlooked or misplaced.

For example, when I receive documents that require signatures from both the buyer and seller, I file those documents in a "holding doc" folder, which I check daily. It tells me immediately if I've received executed contracts. If not, I follow up. I maintain a listing tracker spreadsheet in Excel to monitor progress on my listings. Every buyer has a separate folder with the buyer's name on it, not the property address, because all of my buyers are special individuals. I would never want them to be identified by the address of the home they are buying. They are people first, transactions second.

On the other hand, my short-sale seller folders are labeled with both the sellers' names and address for fast tracking. I never know when a negotiator will call and I'll need to immediately access the file. In fact, I was a little surprised yesterday when a Bank of America negotiator indicated that one particular short sale is about to be approved after working on this file for more than a year. Granted, it wasn't entirely Bank of America's fault. The first buyer had walked away sometime last fall upon short sale approval. But a new buyer immediately replaced the previous buyer, and the file was resubmitted in November. The new buyer says she'll wait indefinitely for this home because it's the exact model she wants.

Well, unless a replica comes on the market. Yeah, right. The person I feel for is the poor seller who has been waiting more than a year to put this horrible nightmare behind. For every 10 Sacramento short sales that close within a 90-day window, I'll generally get a Bank of America short sale that seems to drag on and on. But I never give up because eventually they do close. I have a digital record of just about every single action that has occurred on this transaction, which is how I know that when approval arrives, it will have happened before 90 days. Bank of America is improving its timeline for short sales.

In fact, I'll take all of the Sacramento Bank of America short sales that other agents don't want. Once you know its systems, Equator and Titanium, a Bank of America short sale isn't that much more difficult than any other short sale. They just require organization, a bit of patience, tenacity, persistence and the ability to laugh at yourself once in a while.

Photo: Big Stock Photo