Janice Petteway

If you are at risk of foreclosure, you still have options. One is to quickly sell your Orlando home before foreclosure. This is a good plan if your realize that you can't afford to stay in your homea and you want to move on. Just because you want to sell it doesn't mean it will happen on your timetable, but as a seller you still have control over a few things that might help it sell more quickly.

First, correct pricing is essential. Keep in mind that regardless of what you paid for the house in different times (or even what you owe on it) may have little relationship to the fair market value of it now. Make sure to get your Realtor® involved early to show you how other homes in the area have sold. Experts say you should lower the price by 10% to give your home a completive advantage. Painful as this is, you must keep in mind that the goal is to sell the house so you can avoid foreclosure and move on. Without a foreclosure on your record, you will have more options in the future. If you find that the proposed asking price won't cover your loan, it's time to contact your lender for a short sale application. A short sale will still hurt your credit though perhaps not as much and will save you from the devastation of a lengthy foreclosure

Your home should be neat and clean, even if you can't afford to make any major repairs. Focus painting and doing the little things that could detract from the home in the eyes of buyers. Get the commitment of every family member to keep the house neat during the selling process. Your Realtor® will help you make the choices you may need to make the home look its best on a limited budget, as well as stage it to increase buyer appeal.

The agent you select should offer you an aggressive marketing plan that includes plenty of internet exposure. Upwards of 80% of potential homebuyers pre-shop for home online, so your home needs to be there - and be there with lots of pictures that show your home in its best light. Newspaper ads and even open houses aren't where the action is these days. Sites like Craigslist, FrontDoor.com, Yahoo, Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com offer free or low cost listing options, plus syndicate to other sites.

Your ideal buyer will have good credit and be ready to move quickly on the deal. If your buyer needs help to finalize the purchase, your agent can suggest ways to assure the sale, such as helping the buyer with closing costs or letting him assume your loan if your lender permits.

At Exit Real Estate Results, we are prepared to help you sell your Orlando home quickly. If you need help with any real estate issue in Central Florida, call Janice Petteway today. We can help you beat the clock and move on.

Short sales offer hope for troubled Orlando homeowners who need to get out from under high payments with dignity. With a short sale, the lender makes an agreement with the homeowner to accept less than what is owed on the home. The owner is sorry to give up the house and the bank is very sorry to take a loss, but both end up winners, of sorts. Short sale is less damaging to the owner's credit record and less costly to the bank than foreclosure. Though a short sale might reduce the owner's credits score, the hit for foreclosure much greater.

As we have discussed here before, foreclosure is a costly process for banks and not just because of the legal fees. A foreclosure turns the home back to the bank, which then has to maintain it in inventory until sold. Often times the home has been gutted or damaged by former owners. Many vacant homes are sitting ducks for vandalism, squators, and animal invasion; in Florida, homes with pools offer breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Too many vacant homes in a neighborhood further pull down property values, so the bank gets even less at sale.

A short sale almost always guarantees that the home will be left in better condition. On the average, the lender stands to lose 19% of the value with short sales vs. 40% for foreclosures. With a short sale, the current owner finds a buyer who is willing to pay market value. On a $300,000 home, with a mortgage balance of $275,000, the market price might be $195,000. The seller will deliver the home intact to the new owner because it is in his self interest to do.

Once the lender agrees in principle to consider a short sale, the wait time is the biggest obstacle. What is making a long and tedious process even more long and tedious is that banks are slammed with requests to process short sales. Countrywide and Washington Mutual averaged 1,000 short sale applications a day in April, 2009.

The idea behind short sales is such a good idea that Fannie Mae partnered with Countrywide (now Bank of America) to offer a pilot program in Orlando and Phoenix for the first three months of 2009 to speed up the process. Even if the bank agrees to consider the offer, it can take months to process. In Florida, the pilot program was set up in 11countires, including Orange, Seminole, Lake, Osceola and Volusia counties and covered about 300 homes that were preapproved by Fannie Mae for short sales. The goal was to lower waiting time to days or weeks. If successful, the plan was to expand it throughout foreclosure-locked America.

There is no news on expansion of the plan, but Countrywide will soon implement a new online interface to help Realtors with the short sale processing and streamline sales. The interface is expected to help Realtors by allowing them to upload and update information while at the same time communicate with Countrywide negotiators and receive updates during the short sale process. The new system will be exciting for Realtors as it will give them another way to answer any requests from Countrywide negotiators without having to wait for faxed items to enter their banking system. (You can find information on this by calling (800) 262-4218, the bank's Home Retention Department.)

Modifications of President Obama's Making Home affordable Program also offer lenders financial incentives to accept short sale offers and deed in lieu of foreclosure. Since the program was just announced in mid-May, there's little data available yet to indicate that banks are more willing to consider short sales and consider them promptly.

The key to a successful and hopefully quicker short sale still lies with your agent, who takes the lead on negotiating with the lender. Janice Petteway and her team at Exit Real Estate Results are experienced at working through this effective alternative to foreclosure in Orlando and Central Florida. They can also help you if you want to buy a short sale or bank owned home.

These days, when the dollar is weak in world market and homes in the U.S. are plentiful, it's not surprising that property in the United States is a hot commodity among foreigners. A recent survey in 2008 of 200 members of the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE) revealed how desirable property in the states is considered:

• 56% of respondents judged the U.S. to be the most stable and secure country for foreign investment, distantly followed by Germany (11%), United Kingdom (8.8%), Australia (8.8%), and Japan (5.3%.)

• 26.2% consider the U.S. to offer the best chance for capital appreciation, followed by china (21.4%), India (18%) and Russia and Mexico (tied at 7.1%.)

• 50% of respondents' planned real estate transactions will be in the U.S. The dollar value of investments here will be up 16%, with a 20% overall increase planned throughout the world.

• Most popular U.S. cities are New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle.

• Of this group, the most popular types of foreign investment in the U.S. are retail, hotels, industrial, multi-family, and offices.

• Surprisingly, 85% said the fluctuations in the dollar have not influenced their investment decisions. A year later, these stats might be different on this point.

If you ask David Michonski, former CEO of Coldwell Bankers International Realty, foreigners looking for a single family houses as personal homes or investment property echo the sentiments of the small group of AFIRE members. "America is on sale!"and value-minded foreigners come here for cheap housing, not politically unstable third world countries.

The most interesting parts of the country to foreign buyers are coastal areas with beautiful waterfront property; not surprisingly, Florida (particularly South Florida) is an ideal destination. Miami -Fort Lauderdale is the most popular area (21%), but Orlando (11%), Sarasota-Bradenton, Tampa Bay, and Fort Myers-Naples are popular as well.

A survey by the National Association of Realtors, in cooperation with the Florida Association of Realtors, attracted 4,800 responses. Over half said that international clients brought in 25% of their business, while 10% said the number was 50% or more. More than half said they had worked with an international client in the past year. Who are the most likely foreign buyers? Buyers are most often are Canadian (25%), British (21%), other Western Europeans (25%), or Latin Americans (25%).

Foreign buyers may help alleviate the housing surplus, but this type of client will require cultural awareness, sensitivity, and new skills on the part of Realtors®.

At Exit Real Estate Results, we welcome all clients in our changing markets. If you need help buying or selling a home in Central Florida, call Janice Petteway today.

There was a time when people had more common sense and even in the absence of that, an innate sense of what you should be packing up when you move from your home. Whether you are going by choice or moving after foreclosure, the same rules apply.

No question about it, the foreclosure crisis has resulted in a rash of trashed, smashed, and stripped-bare homes for the next set of owners to deal with. Many homeowners, strapped for cash, have ripped out counters, appliances, light fixtures, or cabinets to sell and may have intentionally damaged what's left, out of anger. Vandals have often come into to finish the job of gutting the home of anything of value.

Even people who are not moving under strain have liberalized the definition of what should go, what should stay. In the old days, the rule was basic: anything that is attached to the house should stay.

This would include:

• Counters tops and cabinets
• Furnaces and air conditioning unit
• Built in appliances
• Electrical wiring
• Doors and windows
• Floor, ceilings, and walls
• Built in medicine cabinets, sinks, toilets, and showers
• Sink drains, and faucets
• Built in shelving and bookcase
• Landscaping, fences, built in pools and spas

If you as a seller want a favorite light fixture, you should be swap it with another suitable fixture before buyers come in. Make sure to tell your agent if free standing appliances, custom-made drapes, or other appointments are included in the house, available for sale, or going with the seller; these exclusions should be noted in the contract so there is no misunderstanding.

On the other hand, owners can take

• Furnishings and personal property
• Mirrors
• Arts work and photographs
• Pets and their things, including dog house, aquariums, or bird cages
• Refrigerators, televisions, computers, stereos
• Thrw and area rugs
• Indoor plants
• Portable fans and heaters.

If sellers take more than they should or if they damage the home and take the bathtub and copper pipes, they or their insurance companies can face consequences Banks often file claims against the home owners' insurance of former owners who have damaged the home - or come after the former owners.

Regardless of why you're moving, the last thing you want following you to your new home is a lawsuit or an anger insurance company. Even if moving is not your choice, do the classy (and LEGAL) thing. Leave your home intact for the next owner. You may not care about the bank, but the next owner is a person just like you who only wants to be a homeowner.

Looking for a home? Janice Petteway and the Exit Real estate Results Team will work with you to find an affordable Central Florida home.

You hear a lot these days about "affordable housing." Five years ago, lenders aided and abetted home buyers into stretching the definition of what was affordable to a figure far in excess of the traditional formula: buy a home three times your annual household income. The emphasis was put on the monthly payment, which is why people who should have bought $200,000 homes were buying $500,000 homes because some crazy mortgage packages made their payment "affordable" until the interest rate adjusted or some other term of the loan kicked in.

Now, many lenders are going back to basics. With housing prices coming down to earth, due to market adjustment, foreclosures, and a big supply of bank-owned homes on the market, this will not impair a buyer from getting a home. This is especially true in the Orlando area. As we noted in our previous blog Turning Up the Heat in Orlando Real Estate, the median price of home in Orlando according to the Orlando Board of Realtors ranged from $89,000 for bank-owned homes to $146,000 for home in foreclosure to $162,245 for conventional homes. Frontdoor.com pegged the average price at $208,900. The median income there is $52,307 for all buyers and $35,569 for first time buyers. The Board of Realtors sets an affordability index for the area, which holds more closely to the 3x your income role for first time buyers than for more established buyers. First time buyers can typically afford a home valued at up to $155,306, while other buyers at the median income can buy up to $257,840.

Aside from the cost of the home, lenders look at housing debt to income and total debt to income ratios. The goal is to keep monthly housing costs (mortgage, home insurance, taxes, mortgage insurance) under 30% of income and total debts (housing, car, credit cards, other loans) under 36-43%. Interest rates, which vary by the borrower's credit rating, affect the amount of the mortgage payment.

Current interest rates help define what is affordable. Someone with a 680 credit score, a 40% debt-to-income ratio, and a household income of $50,000 would qualify to borrow $180,000 at 5% rates. At 5.5%, they could borrow only $168,000, while at 6.5%, the amount would drop to only $158,000. These days, 620 is the credit score floor where it likely a lender will grant a mortgage - but at a much higher rate on a cheaper house. For credit scores over 720, excellent financing deals are available - especially now when the government is helping keep rates low.

With housing prices so reasonable, there is a home for you in Orlando if you meet the basic income and minimum credit score requirements. Janice Petteway and the Exit Real estate Results Team will work with you to find an affordable Central Florida home.