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Jessica Dodge

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Things are moving

07-10-09
Jessica Dodge

Well, things are moving in the San Francisco Bay area (also known as Silicon Valley), especially REO's (Bank Owned Proeprties). If you want a deal, you'll have to move fast. It amazes me the amount of cash that has recently come out of the woodwork. Most buyers for these types of properties are putting 50% or more down or just flat foregoing financing all together and paying cash. The competition is getting stiff and the inventories are drying up. With interest rates slowly rising and as the summer months pass us by, more than the weather is heating up.

A word to the wise...if you want to be ready to catch a good deal, have your ducks lined up ahead of time. Get that pre-approval (OR BETTER YET) approval letter in your hands now, before you go out and shop for properties. Also, make sure your Realtor addresses some special verbiage in your offer that states that the financing contingency will not be lifted until the close of escrow. Due to recent times, lenders are ordering a second appraisals right before the close of escrow. If that second appraisal comes back lower than the sales price, you, the buyer will be in breach of contract for specific performance if you fail to make up the differennce in order to close. Now that would really steal the joy that surrounds the purchase of a new home wouldn't it?

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Out for a walk in Willow Glen

07-03-09
Jessica Dodge

I've been hitting the streets the past couple of days, knocking on doors, looking for a one story home on a 6000 square foot or larger lot in Willow Glen (San Jose, CA) for a Buyer client of mine. Presently, nothing in the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) matches her criteria and I need to find her a house, so what's a girl to do? Exactly! Ask those who have that type of house, in the area she wants if they want to sell. My results...so far, after knocking on about 80 doors, I've come up with a big fat zero.

These days, it seems that everyone who lives in Willow Glen is happy there and have no plans for leaving. It would take more than 30 fingers for me to count how many times I heard "We've lived here for (you fill in the blank) years and we're not going anywhere!", "We know all of our neighbors and we love it here", or "They're going to have to take me out of this house in a box before I leave." Now that's a pleasnt thought, right?

Why am I going to this level of effort you ask? Well, I come from the school of thought that all properies are for sale, not just the ones with signs in the yards. After all, the approach worked well for our family back in 1988, right after the birth of our youngest child. Baby made four children in our household and three weeks after our little bundle of joy came home from the hospital a Realtor knocked on our door. It turned out that he had a Buyer client that loved our little San Jose neighborhood and more specifically, they loved our little corner home. When he asked if we had ever considered selling, our first answer was "no" because we loved that little house. We were emotionally attached to it. However, it was only a day or so before we found ourselves calling him back with a "yes" to replace the earlier "no". We had been so busy adjusting after the baby's birth, we hadn't realized how much we had outgrown that special little house. The great news is that we were able to sell it without ever having to put a sign in the yard and we didn't have to deal with the staging and the showings. He also helped us find that wonderful and much larger home in Morgan Hill on La Paz Court that eventually became just as special to us all..

I don't remember your name, but if you are out there somewhere, reading this now, the Dodge family would certainly like to say "thank you" again. I'm sure we would have eventually figured it out for ourselves, even if you hadn't knocked on our door, but you helped speed up the process and made it so easy for us!

Post Script...

If you are one of the home owners in Willow Glen whose door I knocked on the past couple of days and either spoke to you or left you a card...I really do have a Buyer client who would love live there, so please call me if you change your mind!

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Zoo of an Open House in Sunnyvale, CA

06-30-09
Jessica Dodge

Zoo of an open house



An example of what's happening with bank owned properties (REO's) and short sales in Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) these days. I held open a house in Gilroy (bank owned) today and within 1 hour I had over 25 groups come through. I learned that the subject property has 25 offers on the table that the bank is looking over and considering. Values did go down, but it seems that things are rebounding. This is great news for the rest of the country!



"This open house I met a client at was crazy. Turns out its a short sale that is priced $160 below the 90 day median home price for the neighborhood for the size of home. At one point I counted more than 30 people in the 1100 SqFt home and about 50 outside with a traffic jam of people trying to park. Plus there was one traffic accident." (Louis Stone-Collonge- Keller Williams Realty, 6/27/09)

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