Bev Boeck

"So Bev, what happens to my credit if I short sale my house?" --I can't count the number of times I've heard that question...

Ugly signs all around you? Feel lost? Bewildered? Confused? Don't know what to do? Boise, Eagle, Meridian, and Star Area Homeowners who are facing words like "foreclosure," or "default," perhaps "auction" --or all three, don't get overwhelmed, and don't let your questions go unanswered. You can get answers, and you can decide what is best in your situation.

Just as every house is not the same as the next, every homeowner distress situation is not the same. Short sale may or may not may not be the answer, and the landscape changes from day to day. ASK. Find a qualified, experienced, discreet, hard-working, responsive Realtor, who pays attention to details, to come to your aid.
HERE'S AN ABRIDGED CHART FROM FANNIE MAE GUIDELINES TO HELP YOU SORT OUT THE POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF THE ACTIONS YOU MAY DECIDE TO TAKE--IN YOUR DISTRESS SITUATION--ON YOUR CREDIT (knowledge is power, even if it is power over stress!):

...The popular question posed during last summer's visit to smoke-clearing California, and while there, I plunked down in the Folsom Borders for a few minutes and perused about 4 paperbacks. One of them was Rich Dad's Advisors: The Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing: How to Identify the Hottest Markets and Secure the Best Deals by Ken McElroy, and immediately I thumbed to the chapter on the hottest markets. Readers can correct me if I'm in error on the number, but #7 or #8 (I think it was...) was--you guessed it--Boise! Looked like an interesting, fairly easy read, and I believe it was released just this June. Maybe Rain readers could post some comments if they've read it? I did see mention of the Kiyosaki books, which consistently hit on real estate for solid investments. Hang in there...the smoke will clear...

Question for BevBo: Can you tell me if the decrease in my county property tax evaluation reflects a decrease in the actual market value of my property?

Jackie - June 1, 2008 at 4:53 pm

WOW! Great question Jackie...
Yes, I can tell you, and the answer is NO, not necessarily-but there are a few layers to this answer.
Layer 1: your property taxes are essentially a math problem:
Levy x Value = Tax
So if either the Levy (all of the "little" taxing districts like school bussing, mosquito abatement, etc., and the charges that come with those services are levies) or the "Value" (in this case, the "assessed value" -which is different than the actual market value-of your land + improvement(s)) goes down, the product of the equation, or the tax, goes down.
You can compare all years of the assessor's point of view of your assessed value by going to: http://www.adaweb.net/departments/assessor/default.asp and clicking on "property search" to look up your property. Generally, you will see an increase here, and I strongly suspect that the decrease you may have seen was caused by the levy decreasing. Please visit http://www.adaweb.net/Departments/Assessor/ResidentialCommercialAppraisalFAQs.asp to find out how real property is assessed by the county, as well as many other helpful tidbits on property taxes.
Layer 2: "Actual Market Value," you may have noticed, is not what the assessor's tax equation is based on. You've heard the expression, "It's worth whatever someone will pay for it." Well, I subscribe to this addage very heavily. Market value is what the market will yield; what someone else will pay for the property, and the assessor does not figure that out. Who does? A qualified appraiser and/or real estate broker can give you excellent opinions of price, and the real estate broker should be able to supply this information for free BEV Boeck, Broker Associate, SW Idaho Real Estate

1. Buyers are cutting to the chase, and not quitting their day jobs to look for a house. Instead, they're making a wise, bold move right out of the chute, and getting in touch with a market-savvy agent/broker to get the "job" done right. Why? Most likely because time is money (and taking time off of a day job is a pretty tough proposition right now), knowledge and experience in your local, ever-changing market is key, and the realization is that in most cases it's the seller who pays the agent anyway. Not to mention, our skills and training are utilized in the long run, since the majority of home buyers do not write up their own purchase and sale agreements and other written contracts.

2. Contrary to the latest "homebuyer-humor" heard lately at the Spud, there are more buyers hitting the streets with agents than one might think, even after (unfortunately) carefully watching "the news" every night. The joke? Extracted recently from the air around a handful of local real estate industry (not agents) gurus: "Hahaha; yep, buyers will buy, just as soon as the interest rates go back up!" The moral of this story: push back from the tube, call your broker and tell her you want to see listings via email (saving gas!), make a list, check it twice, and head out for some of the best deals we'll ever see. --There are more buyers than we've seen in recent months; they're just more cautious, have a lot of inventory to shop, and obviously moving at a slower buyer pace than we were used to in recent years.
3. The recent real estate vocabulary is morphing, however slowly. From "psychological recession," and "mortgage meltdown," we'll eventually move to "buyer-boom." From "short sale," to "REO, with the BPO complete." FYI, these terms now officially show up as searchable categories or criteria on the Intermountain MLS, and if these boxes are not marked, you can still interpret some of the listings that may not want to come right out and declare that it is a distressed property by words like, "corporate addendum required," with, quite often, many warnings about how to prove how qualified you are financially show up in the remarks section of the listing. Either way, the "bank owned" term may change a little bit, but the prediction is that the concept's here to stay for awhile. Perhaps until the buyer-boom kicks-in to start absorbing some of the REO, we'll just have to wait and see what the term "bank owned" changes to. --Any input from the Rain?