About San Leandro's Washington Manor

Despite the difficulties in obtaining financing for a home purchase, there are great rewards for those who dare step into home ownership. You will need a couple of qualified people to help you navigate through this obstacle course: A Lender and a Professional Realtor. Open your eyes to today's opportunities! Here are 7 proven strategies to help you navigate to a successful home purchase.

• Begin by gathering all your financial documents first. You will need among others: current pay stubs, copies of tax records from the last two years, recent bank statements for all your accounts, copies of Divorce decrees if applicable. If you have funds in CD's or 401Ks or other income, you will need to bring copies of those documents too.

• The next step is to talk to a lender about your finances. Find out what you qualify for, how much money you need to have for a down payment plus closing costs. You can do this by simply asking your lender to do a pre-qualification for a loan. After this meeting you should know what your price range is and how much your monthly payments will be.

• Make a list of what is important to you and your family when is comes to housing. Do you really need to have 4 bedrooms? is a pool an absolute necessity? Keep in mind that the First Home is not exactly your Dream Home. Buy below your maximum qualifications if you can, that will leave you room to save money by applying a small amount each month to the mortgage payments to reduce the principal amount borrowed.

• Meet and interview a local, Professional Realtor. Choose a person that specializes in the area that your are interested in. You can do a lot of research on your own online, but a professional Realtor's help is absolutely necessary. Remember this: Realtor's commissions are paid for by the home seller. There is no cost to you when you buy a home. Use his/her knowledge and expertise... for Free!

• There will be other professional trades people that will get involved in a typical real estate transaction. your Realtor will assist you here and on your behalf, he/she will contact home, roof, termite and other inspectors. The lender will take care of having the house appraisal done for you.

• Once you have made an offer on a house, you will make a cash deposit into a title insurance company. This neutral company will not only run an escrow for you, it will also ensure the title of the house in your name after escrow closes and you become the new owner of the house.

• Read and understand all documents handed to you and the time elements involved during the transaction. The more you know the better it will be for you. if you take these steps in order, once you have picked the right house and made and offer that has been accepted, you will have about 30 to 40 days before you can get the house. If the house, however, is in a short sale, it might take months before you can close the escrow and call that home your own.

There are plenty of reasons to buy your first house. Beginning with pride of ownership, appreciation, mortgage interest deductions, property tax deductions, capital gains exclusion and build up of equity just to name a few. The cycle of real estate will continue, just as when prices went up and then come down, we will see in the near future this trend reversed. Buying a house in the long run is far better than renting.

In our last closing, our colleague, the listing agent went for a minor surgery and... did not come back! As the selling agents, we were left wondering for days who would take over and finish the transaction. We had sent signed documents via email that could not be retrieved for days. We understand the broker of record is actually the responsible party, but I wonder, what would happen when the broker is the listing agent... and he dies in the middle of the transaction, who would take over then?

The fact is that we all will go sometime, and even though, we do not like to think about it, we must have a system in place that could allow somebody else to step in and take over, at least on the business part. An assistant is good, but when dealing with clients, (like in our case) there apparently were conversations between the seller and her Realtor that altered the transaction. Seller implied a promise from his dead Realtor to her, that his broker had to actually pay for. A promise of free rent for 15 days! no, there was nothing in writing about that. But there was no way to verify that.

Stop and think for a minute... If you die right now... could someone sit on your desk and know what were you doing? What were you thinking? Do you have your passwords written somewhere where a trusted person can have access to them if needed? If there is a deadline (no point intended,) that will go unnoticed and because of that your client could be harmed?

As I write this post, I can think of the myriad of passwords that I use for almost everything, my computer actually reminds me of some of them, which could be helpful for someone taking over my desk. They will need a passord to get into my computer! But the fact is, it will take weeks for another person to know where and where things are in my little desk. and that is only for my business life! Yikes, I now remember that I do have a personal life that includes bank accounts, social security numbers and of course more passwords.

If you have a system that could help in a situation like this one, I really would like to know, you would think that a husband and wife team would have an advantage, yes we do, but I think it needs to be more organized, and maybe one day, do something similar to a fire drill: Honey, I just died! what would you do? Show me!

I believe that when we are born, we are given a secret number that is tattooed somewhere in each one of us, and the almighty plays a big Bingo Machine up there, that when it spits our number out! we just drop dead. Period, no request, no permission granted, nothing. By the way, how is your business today?

Most lawsuits in real estate transactions, are the result of buyers feeling that the seller did not tell them all they knew about the house, before they bought it. Most home sellers have no idea how easy it is to land in court with their home buyer. A few steps outlined here can help, if followed properly.

When selling a home, by law, the home sellers have a very serious obligation of disclosing in writing to the home buyer any and all defects that they know about the property. Buyers look at a problem that was hidden from them as cheating them, once they get legal counsel, the nightmare begins, not only does the seller gets sued, most of the time, everybody that was involved on the transaction gets named as co-conspirator.

In court, the attorneys for the buyer will paint this picture of the seller and his agent, and the home inspector and everybody else getting together and plotting their strategy to hide problems with the house from the buyer. They will use ugly words like Deceit, Misrepresentation, Fraud, etc, to describe what you did or did not write in your disclosures. The new buyers will swear that they would have NOT bought this house had they known the many "defects" it had.

Your Realtor will provide you the right forms, it is up to you to fill them out, completely, truthfully and seriously. If you want to keep your money and stay out of court, follow these simple steps with care:

• Spend time looking over the Real Estate Transfer Disclosure Statements and make sure you understand every question before you answer it. The questions in these forms are geared towards making sure you don't miss anything important. Keep in mind that there will be a lot of people reading what you wrote: the home buyers, the Realtors, attorneys... event the judge!
  

• Make sure you use the most updated forms available for these disclosures. There are changes to these documents every year, those changes are prompted by the new court decisions of the most recent cases. There are thousands of dollars awarded to "injured parties" and their attorneys every year because these disclosures were not filled out properly. One check mark in the wrong box could spell trouble.
  

• Do not allow anyone to fill them out for you, not the Realtor, or your children or anyone else who is not on title. These are legal documents, treat them with care. Even if you know the buyer is a "friend" who you think you know. You still be treated as a "defendant" if your friend sues you.
  

• Tell the buyer everything you know about the house, specially if you are the typical DIY (Do It Yourself) type of guy/gal. The rule is simple: "If in doubt, disclose it." A disclosure should be written in a clear and specific way: "... In 1997 there was a leak under the kitchen. We called ABC Plumbing and they fixed it" or "... around 2002 during El Nino rains, the basement flooded, a sump pump was installed by a plumber"
  

• If you did not take permits for any additions or structural modifications you made to the house, disclose that very clearly. These types of additions or modifications without permits is what puts the new occupants of the house at risk if they do not know.

• I always suggest to my sellers/clients to order a home and a pest control inspection before we put the house on the market. These reports, when provided to the buyer do not only offer a professional opinion, but also act as additional disclosures that you, the seller, provided to the buyer.
  

• When it comes to disclosing neighborhood noise problems or other nuisances, don't be shy, if you don't disclose that the area has problems with airport noises, or garbage odors from a nearby dump for example, not only would the new owners of the house will find that out within days of moving in, your friendly neighbors will spill the beans just as they greet the new owners with a courtesy visit to welcome them into the area.

• Always make sure that you get a copy of your disclosures signed and dated by the buyers BEFORE ESCROW CLOSES. These signed documents are YOUR protection against future liability.
  

Buyers do not like to be surprised by material facts that they did not know. In my office, every transaction has at the end a file that contains at least 30 different documents of disclosures. In my 25+ years as a Professional Realtor, I have had to accompany once, one of my clients, a home seller to a lawsuit regarding the answers he gave to a question in the Disclosures that read: Are you aware of any problems with the house before or during your ownership? He answered: NO. The key word here was: before

The previous owners had disclosed to him that the house has had a problem with the foundation when it was being built... 35 years before!,The result of that problem was that the foundation was reinforced better than any other home in the area, and the previous owner nor my client ever had a problem while they lived there. The buyer, however, sued him for non disclosure.

After 2 years of depositions, thousands of dollars in lawyers fees, and countless sleepless nights, the arbitrator awarded the buyers $120,000. Which they used to upgrade the entire house, because there was nothing wrong with the foundation. The legal fees for both parties were paid by the home seller.

But how did the new owner knew? The neighbor across the street come to greet the new owners, and as they unloaded their belongings, she told them the history of the house, and how the foundation gave way, and how it was fixed. The new buyers felt they should have been told, consulted an attorney who made a case and got some money from the seller.

As you can see, you do not have to necessarily do anything wrong, all you have to do to get into legal trouble is to not pay attention when filling out The Real Estate Transfer Disclosure Statements. If you are in the middle of a transaction and escrow has not closed yet, go back and do an ammended document if you found out that you missed something. Even if you have to renegociate something with the buyer, it is a lot cheaper than facing him in court. Good Luck... and good reading too!

A Sunday afternoon Open House Tour can give the serious home buyer the right information about the neighborhood the buyer is interested in. There are many benefits to opening a house for sale on a Sunday afternoon. It saves having to make an appointment to see it and it makes it convenient for everybody in the family to come together to tour properties, the seller benefits by having more people see the house in one afternoon instead of individual appointments.

Home buyers unfortunately miss a great opportunity to gather information that can help them accomplish their goal of buying the best home available for the best price at the most convenient time in the right neighborhood. Most of the time they dismiss the help offered by the Realtor hosting the Open House and are reluctant to provide any information or ask any questions.

When visiting my Open House, don't be shy! ask questions and listen carefully, the information you need to make an informed decision is right there in front of you! I am the "Mobile Real Estate Information Center" and I am here for a reason: I want to give you all the information you need to help you purchase a home, maybe even this one. I know this house very well, I know when it was built, how long it is been on the market, what type of inspections are available, what type of work is needed, why the seller is moving. I also know the neighborhood well, ask me about proximity to schools, shopping centers, public transportation, demographics, theaters, I also know exactly how far is the library or the post office for example.

Before the Open House I print and bring with me a CMA (Comparative market Analysis) of the property so not only I can show how this house compares to others in the same area, but also what other houses have sold recently in the proximity. If this particular house is too big or too small, I have a list of other homes available for sale, I can share some addresses with you right there and then.

I might even have valuable and timely "inside information" of homes about to come on the market, bank owned or foreclosed properties that I know are going to be listed soon. This information is potentially profitable for you Mr./Ms. home buyer... Just talk to me!

Even thought I am not a loan officer, I know what the prevailing interest rates are and can quickly calculate your monthly mortgage payments with taxes and insurance, I can give you an idea of what your closing costs would be, I can even prequalify you on the spot! If I know what type of financing you need, I can tell you what type of documents you will need to get ready.

I am NOT just a Door Greeter, I can talk to you about investment properties, I can tell you some of the biggest tax consequences and/or benefits of owning a residence or an investment property. I can highlight to you the benefits of a tax deferred 1031 exchange and much more. For me being at an Open House is like bringing my real estate office out on a road trip... Who benefits the most from my experience? Those who dare to talk to me about their real estate goals and dreams, you can pick my brain, I am committed to stay on that house for 4 hours so take your time!

Studies have shown that people are far more relaxed and willing to communicate with others on a weekend, they are more autonomous, they have time to slow down and smell the flowers... so don't rush through the Open House, slow down and take full advantage of my 25+ years of experience and knowledge, it is all there for the taking!

One of the most difficult parts for a Professional Realtor to do, is to have the buyer write an offer to buy a house on an "as-is" condition, without asking the seller to do any repairs at all. The obvious fear of having to spend money fixing items that they did not expect, is a reason why home buyers are reluctant to pay full price on a house they have not inspected. But inspecting a house prior to buying it, is not a feasible possibility either.

But when the buyer is competing with others for the same house, an "as-is" clause on his contract will make a huge difference for the seller when choosing which offer to accept. The seller will always take that offer, instead of one that has an inspection contingency.

Most properties on the market have some deferred maintenance, especially listings that are in foreclosure or are bank-owned. Home buyers would like to know what the true condition of the property is before they buy it, hence the inspection period of about 10-15 days from the moment the offer is accepted. Here is where the seller can speed up the sale of the house by getting a complete home inspection before putting the house on the market.

If the buyer reads the home report before writing the offer, then he can waive the inspection period and speed up the closing. These reports should be offered at the property so the buyer can examine them while looking at the house. I suggest EVERY HOME SELLER take the following steps BEFORE the house goes on the market:

• Order a complete inspection from a local reputable, Professional Home Inspection Company.
• Call a company that DOES NOT DO OFFER TO PERFORM WORK. Just inspections
• Choose a company that offers the reports via e-mail. This way it can be disseminated faster
• The report should include multiple color photographs within the body of the report. These photos, help the average home buyer "see" the problem areas and understand them better.
• The home report should also include an evaluation of the roof WITH PICTURES INCLUDED
• A pest control inspection should be done at the same time and a separate report should be issued.
• The Pest control report should include an approximate cost of all repairs called for.
• One final but important step: Make sure the inspector has access to ALL AREAS OF THE HOUSE.

Buyers will pay better prices for properties that are in good condition, and only a recent full home inspection report from a Professional Home Inspection Company can tell them that. The cost in the San Francisco bay area for a home and a pest control reports is around $550. If the property is in good condition and those reports confirm that fact, the buyers will probably pay good prices and haggle less.

The buyer, of course, reserves the right the call his own inspections. This is when the professionalism of the home inspection company the seller chooses comes into place. It must be reliable, stable and professional enough to stand scrutiny. After 25 years of experience I use one of the most Professional companies I know out of Walnut Creek, CA. 1 (800) 466-2466 National Building Inspectors. The photos in this post are from an actual report from NBI.

Home Buyers: don't go at it alone, this company will be your best ally when purchasing a home. Home Sellers: When it comes to disclosing to the buyer the overall condition of the house, these reports will be your best protection.

Antonio & Alexia Cardenas, "The Realtors In Motion" CRS, GRI, E-Pro Certified. Serving the East Shores of the San Francisco Bay. Alameda and Contra Costa counties; San Leandro, Castro Valley, Oakland, Hayward, Pleasanton, Dublin. Visit us on line at: www.listedbyantonio.com Call us, we'll come and TANGO with you! (510) 326-4263 Bay-O-Vista, Estudillo Estates and Assumption Parish especialists.