Jason Burkholder, Sales Manager Assoc. Broker, Realtor, e-Pro

Welcome Back Everyone! Today we have a Web Trek Online video Open House for 20 Upper Green Lancaster, Pa 17602! This spectacular home is located in the award winning Millcreek neighborhood in Lampeter Strasburg School District. With 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths and over 2400 square feet this maintenance free home will wow you with all of its amenities! Click through to check out the video tour!

As you enter the home, polished hardwood floors greet you and lead you to the spacisous living room with cathedral ceilings, a cozy gas fireplace and a door to the balcony with a beautiful view! The large bright kitchen is perfect for entertaining next to the open dining room and you’ll have more space than you’ll needs with loads of cabinets. This four bedroom home features a huge master suite with private bath that features a large soaking tub and seperate shower, not to mention a huge walk in closet. the first floor also features a convenient powder room located next to the laundry room where plenty of counter space makes your chores a breeze! Upstairs you’ll find two additional bedrooms with their own large closets and a Jack and Jill bathroom. The finished lower level features a family room with bright full size windows, an additional bedroom and a third full bath along with a large unfinished storage space.

The community of Millcreek offers a care free lifestyle where the modest monthly HOA fee covers lawn and landscaping care, snow removal and exterior home maintenence. The Home Owners Association is managed by the friendly professionals at Boyd/Wilson Property Management , who maintian the communities many walking and biking trails. You can also walk to the Sugar Plums & Tea bakery for coffee, baked goods or a wonderful meal!

If you would like to see this Lancaster Home for Sale give me and call and we’ll set up a time that suits your schedule! You can see more details about this home (pictures, property details, tax information, printable brochures and more) at www.JasonsHomes.com!

Welcome Back! Today we're taking a look at 2007 Stonemill Road Lancaster, Pa 17603! This beautiful brick rancher has a new kitchen and bath, gleaming hardwood floors and tons of space! Click through to watch the video and find out more!

From the minute you walk into the spacious living room with a wood burning fireplace, this well built rancher will feel just like home! The polished hardwood floors lead to a formal
dining room and newly remodeled kitchen with new stainless steel appliances. The tastefully painted walls lead you to three large bedrooms and a remodeled tile bathroom with upgraded fixtures. Downstairs, a partially finished basement offers both storage space and fun with a family room space large enough for a pool table and a craft room. A one car garage, plenty of closets, cabinets and full attic mean you’ll have loads of space to keep all of your things neat and organized! Outside, you can enjoy the expanded deck and above ground pool. 6 off street parking spaces provide plenty of room for visitors. Stop by and see this wonderful home today!

If you would like to see this Lancaster Home for Sale give me and call and we’ll set up a time that suits your schedule! You can see more details about this home (pictures, property details, tax information, printable brochures and more) at www.JasonsHomes.com!

It’s simple really. You can’t do one if you are just a licensed salesperson (in Pennsylvania). According to the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors (PAR):

"Broker Price Opinion" (BPO) is not a legally defined term in Pennsylvania, as are "appraisal" and "comparative market analysis." When a fee is charged for a BPO, it will either be considered an appraisal or a CMA. If it is determined to be a CMA (i.e., provided for the purpose of determining the asking/offering price for a property for the seller or buyer), then it falls within the scope of permitted activity for a real estate licensee. If, however, the BPO is determined to be other than a CMA, it will qualify as an appraisal, which requires an appraisal license to perform. To avoid confusion, the term BPO should not be used for any written expression of value for a fee. "Appraisal" and "comparative market analysis" are the terms that should be employed, depending on the purpose and scope of the valuation.

Yes, I know some of you might do BPO’s already. Yes, I know they are the primary tool banks use to try and place a market value on short sales and foreclosures. Yes, I know half of you have a different opinion and will come up with all sorts of ways you could try and justify the “legality” of your performance of BPO’s. But the fact remains that you can’t do them for the simple fact that they don’t exist in this state and further, the service the banks are asking you to perform when they order a BPO is considered buy the regulatory boards to be an appraisal.

Don’t believe me? Then refer to these articles written by the attorneys at PAR, who are more knowledgeable on the subject than I am:

http://www.parjustlisted.com/archives/2421

http://www.parjustlisted.com/archives/142

or page 7 of this newsletter from the PA Real Estate Commission

http://www.appraisalinstitute.org/newsadvocacy/downloads/PennsylvaniaBPODocument.pdf

This presents quite a conflicting message to what you may be hearing from even our own industry. There are courses out there being sponsored by NAR that encourage you to perform BPO’s as a revenue stream. Go back and read those articles in the links again. According to the opinions stated there, if you performing BPO’s for the purpose of generating revenue you are risking prosecution by not only the Real Estate Commission but also the State Board of Certified Appraisers.

The other statement I might make is that the very definition of the term itself would preclude the majority of you from being able to perform a BROKER Price Opinion if you aren’t actually licensed as a Broker. This could lead the Real Estate Commission to charge you with not only performing unlicensed appraisals but “conducting the business or acting in the capacity of a broker or salesperson without first being licensed or registered?” Heavy stuff and nothing I’d want to risk being prosecuted for.

Yes, I know that some of you do BPO’s in order to obtain listings. According to those articles in the links up there, nothing is wrong with that if you actually get the listings (or at least some of them) and you call it a CMA and include the appropriate disclaimer. Anything less puts you right back at risk of prosecution.

For my last nail in the coffin of the BPO, I read recently that within the next year banks will require a UAD (Uniform Appraisal Dataset, a standard grading system for valuing properties) to be included in all BPO’s. The UAD is already a requirement for any BPO’s when the mortgages are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Adding them to all BPO’s pushes them even farther toward the realm of an appraiser.

This post doesn't even begin to touch the additional undelrying problem of half the BPO's being done are just simply inaccurate. My market area is about 2 1/2 hours from Philadelphia and yet we recently had a short sale agent done by an agent from center city Philadelphia, who wasn't a member of the local MLS and had no access to the comparable property data. How again is was he qualified to perform a BPO on the local market?

I was reading an article on CNN Money.com today titled “How to rescue the housing market: Foreclosures!”. Not a great title I would say and more importantly in my opinion not a great concept at all.

The gist of the article is that the government needs to reverse the policies of the last 4 years since the housing downturn and actually encourage foreclosures as a means of “stabilizing” the housing market. They included this interesting graph (above) showing how more home owners are becoming delinquent for longer periods of time. (read on after the jump for more)

I get the idea. With the downturn across the economy, banks are suffering bigger losses than they otherwise would due to the increased time it takes to foreclose on the property. Theoretically, if the banks foreclosed “faster” on properties, they would suffer smaller losses as there would be fewer missed payments, less accrued interest and unpaid late fees, fewer legal fees, etc. While that may be true and may be better in the short term for the banks, foreclosures are not the solution to housing market woes.

In fact, foreclosures cause a large amount of “damage” to the local real estate community as banks leave properties to fall into disrepair, which affects the desirability of the entire neighborhoods. They also can, in large numbers, decimate property values as studies show that buyers expect to buy foreclosed properties on average 34% below market value. All those distressed homes sold as foreclosures/REO properties today become the “comps” appraisers use to establish value on the sale of non distressed Joe and Mary Homesellers’s property to Bobby and Sue Homebuyer, who now can’t get a mortgage for their purchase because the home won’t appraise at the price both parties agreed to.

So, if foreclosures aren’t the answer, what is? Something has to be done about that problem illustrated in the chart up there, doesn’t it?

The answer is …. the short sale! If banks want to move delinquent loan off their “balance sheets’ without the negative impact the lengthy foreclosure process brings, a short sale is the way to do it. The problem is though that banks many times are just as ill equipped to approve short sales as they are to deal with foreclosures. Whether it’s due to taking too long to respond to offers, denying a short sale based on an incorrect market value estimate or just plain screwing them up, there are many cases each day where banks miss an opportunity to avoid foreclosure by approving a short sale.

Here are 5 things I think the banks can do right now, today, to improve their short sale process and avoid foreclosures:

1. Hire more people. Many short sale departments are under staffed, leading to over worked negotiators who simply are too busy to handle the volumes expected of them.
2. Educate your people about the true cost of foreclosure and loosen up a little. I was working with a bank negotiator recently who was rejecting a very reasonable offer, one which would have resulted in a loss of about $14,000 for the bank. I told them that in the neighborhood the home was in, a foreclosure would result in a loss of at least $20,000 more (on top of the $14,000) for the bank. The negotiator’s response? “That’s not my concern, I can only approve a short sale with a net loss of X% to the Bank XYZ”.
3. Get the Mortgage Insurance companies out of the decision making process. These MI companies are in the business of insuring losses. They underwrote these buyers. The buyers paid the insurance premiums. Now that the bank is facing a loss, they won’t allow a short sale without a cash contribution from the seller directly to them to offset their loss. What were the mortgage insurance premiums you collected for if not to offset this loss?
4. Get the mythical “investor” who has to personally approve a short sale to work faster. Many of these deals are lost because the buyer gives up and walks away. Many buyers walk away after hearing for the last 3 weeks that the file was sent to the investor for approval and “I’m sorry, but they haven’t gotten to your file yet”
5. Understand that in this market that the current buyer, the one who submitted the reasonable (assuming it’s reasonable) offer, the one who was willing to wait 90 days for approval, if that buyer walks away, another one might not come along in time to prevent a foreclosure and a larger loss from the bank.

Short sales are the answer to improving the housing market. The question is: are the banks ready to work with the real estate industry and the real estate consumers to make them a success?

If you are interested in selling your home as a Lancaster County Short Sale, or in purchasing a Lancaster County Short Sale or Lancaster County Foreclosure give me a call. For as many times the problems I outlined above happen, I can give you just as many examples of short sale approvals I have obtained for my clients, some in as little as 30-60 days! You can find success with selling or buying short sales, call me and I will be happy to help you find it!

Welcome Back Readers! Today we are bringing you some particularly awesome news, Zillow has recently ranked Lancaster County PA as one of the top places in the nation to buy a home 2011! We hit the list at Number 7, which considering we were competing with literally thousands of places across the nation is pretty spectacular!

The best thing about this ranking? It takes into account what is happening NOW. In this economy, with the current unemployment rate, interest rates, affordability levels, etc. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if it's the right time for you to buy, there are great opportunities out there right now.

One of the first things they factored in was Affordability. If you click on the link above you can read the full text on Zillow's site, but the interesting thing about affordability isnt just that homes in Lancaster County PA are affordable, it's that the study found that they have been historically affordable and predicts they will stay that way in the future.

Second, Zillow considered the Unemployment percentage. If you're currently unemployed, I guess the fact that our unemployment rate is lower than most of the rest of the nation isn't much comfort. On the other hand though, Lancaster County has always been fortunate to have a varied employment base and easy access to most of Central and Easter Pennsylvania, as well as Maryland job markets. If you want to see housing numbers across the nation improve, jobs must first improve and in Lancaster it would appear that we are improving. I'm hoping it stays that way and if you're currently looking for a new career, call me, let me tell you about the benefits of a career in real estate!

Third, they considered Foreclosures. I wrote a post on this subject recently ( here) and again, foreclosure is never a good thing but in Lancaster County PA our foreclosure rate is very low, according to Zillow only 0.438% of all of the homes in the county. This again is linked to the relatively stable employment opportunities in Central PA.

Finally, they considered Price Appreciation. Homes in Lancaster County actually experienced a marginal decline in average sales price as compared to previous years, but this was significantly better than most of the nation. Historically, while prices gain and fall on a year over year basis, over time Lancaster County homes appreciate in value and represent a solid investment. Also, I have said it before, homes aren't investments, they are homes. Anytime you buy a home with the intention of moving in the first 5-7 years, you should project a break even situation at best when it's time to sell. After you get beyond the first 5 years is when you begin to realize the benefits of appreciation.

Check out the chart to the right from Zillow for all the details of the top ten.

Kudos to Lancaster Newspapers for covering the story, I always appreciate positive press for my industry. Considering though that the negative headlines always make the front page (like for example an article in the front of the Business Section today about how the drop in Transfer Tax revenue impacts budgets of local schools and municipalities), it would have been nice if this article wasn't buried in the back of that very same Business section. I never would want to offend our friends in the local media, but stories like this deserve front page coverage just as much as the negative ones do. Sorry LNP, I still like you and am a daily subscriber, but someone needed to say it.

So there you have it. With historically low interest rates, a great selection of inventory to choose from and a nationally recognized media outlet study that demonstrates the stability of the Lancaster County Real Estate Market, it's a buyers market. If you think its the right time for you, the market is full of opportunity.