Roy Kelley

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY MD LENDER OWNED FORECLOSURES (REO)

There are 368 lender owned foreclosures (REO), priced at $150,000 and ABOVE, available for purchase in Prince George's County MD. Click on the listing number for full details on each property. Sort by column headings.

Click the following URL to see the listings:
http://mrislistings.mris.com/Matrix/Public/Portal.aspx?k=1135923XDLVP&p=DE-96073089-271

There are 327 lender owned foreclosures (REO), priced at $150,000 and BELOW, available for purchase in Prince George's County MD.

Click the following URL to see the listings:
http://mrislistings.mris.com/Matrix/Public/Portal.aspx?k=1135923XDLVP&p=DE-96073047-633

Where is the best place to search for homes for sale in Maryland? You will want to use Homes Prospector at www.roykelley.com This is a service of MRIS, the regional multiple listing service, and you will find the most accurate up to date information on properties that are available for purchase. Foreclosures will be included in the results of your searches.

Most of the homes that are sold at trustee sale auctions at the court house entrance are purchased by the secured mortgage lenders. The lenders then offer the homes for sale when they become part of the REO inventory. All of the lender owned homes are listed with area agents and are available on MRIS.

Why are buyers focusing on the REO inventory? The simple reason is that is where the purchase bargains are being found. Lenders are highly motivated sellers and they reduce the prices until the properties are under contract.

All home buyers that plan to use mortgage financing should obtain pre-approval for financing as the first step in the purchase process. Please ask us for a referral to a loan officer if you do not have an existing relationship with a mortgage lender.

Do you qualify for the new tax credit? The Home Buyer Tax Credit now includes current home owners as well as first time buyers. This link provides the highlights of the program: http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/glance.php

New Home Buyer Tax Credit video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1leN8E8BKTo

Real Estate Investors Zero In on Short Sale Homes video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMUZSPSrtuI&feature=related

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY DOWN PAYMENT ASSISTANCE PROGRAM First time home buyers can take advantage of the county's Down Payment on Your Dream Program, in which buyers can receive down payment and closing costs assistance when purchasing a vacant foreclosed property in Prince George's County. This website outlines specific guidelines for the homebuyer, realtors and lenders as well as the necessary steps families must take in order to qualify. http://www.co.pg.md.us/dream/index.asp

FHA Loans To Get Costlier

By Nick Timiraos The Wall Street Journal

"It's about to get more expensive to take out-and a bit harder to qualify for-a loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

Faced with rising losses and falling reserves, the FHA is preparing a series of tweaks to its underwriting guidelines and increase in fees in order to stave off a taxpayer bailout of the traditionally self-funded agency, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told Congress in testimony Wednesday afternoon."

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2009/12/02/fha-loans-to-get-costlier/

"Among the changes under consideration:

• Raising the annual insurance premiums that borrowers must pay. This is the easiest place to start, but it would raise borrowing costs for home buyers. The FHA charges an upfront insurance premium of 1.75% of the total cost of the mortgage which most borrowers can roll into their loan, and then they pay additional annual premiums of either 0.5% or 0.55%, depending on their down payment.
• Setting a credit score floor for borrowers. The agency hasn't decided what that minimum might be, but it says it is looking at requiring borrowers with minimum down payments to have higher credit scores. While the FHA doesn't currently have a cutoff, most of the nation's top lenders have instituted a minimum 620 credit score for FHA borrowers.
• Requiring buyers to bring more money to the closing table. The FHA says that it will limit the amount of money that sellers can provide for closing costs on home sales to 3% of the home price, from the current level of 6%. Agency officials say they are also considering potential increases in down payments, but such a move could face heavy opposition from the real-estate industry. The head of the National Association of Realtors says such an effort as would "disenfranchise" FHA borrowers.
• Making FHA-approved lenders more accountable for loans that they submit to the agency. The FHA doesn't make loans, but it instead insures lenders against losses on loans that conform to its standards. In recent months, the agency has moved more swiftly to expel lenders that it says are putting the agency at risk. For example, on Monday, the agency terminated its approval for Ideal Mortgage Bankers, Ltd. and affiliate Lend America to make FHA-backed loans. Lend America on Tuesday said it would cease operations but that it plans to appeal that decision."

HOME BUYERS AND THEIR AGENTS SHOULD BE ALERT FOR THESE CHANGES. SOME BORROWERS WILL HAVE THEIR PURCHASES DELAYED BY THESE NEW GUIDELINES.

Gaithersburg Holiday Giving Program Helps Hundreds of City Families
Posted 12/2/2009

Thanks to the generosity of the entire community, more than 800 households in Gaithersburg received donations and free meals to help them celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. Referrals for this program came to the City's Community Services office from area schools and nonprofit counselors and the program operates in tandem with the countywide Holiday Giving Program to ensure non-duplication of services. Countywide this effort is coordinated by Interfaith Works in conjunction with the Montgomery County Volunteer Center.

Locally, the City of Gaithersburg works with representatives from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Derwood Bible Church, Grace United Methodist Church, St. Francis of Assisi Parish, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, Chicken Basket Restaurant and Journey's Crossing Church to serve its residents. Numerous City businesses, individuals, schools and families also provide tremendous support each year.

A very special thank you is extended to the Chicken Basket restaurant for serving over 600 people on Thanksgiving Day at both Gaithersburg Elementary School and at Forest Oak Towers, and to the Flaming Pit Restaurant for donating meals for 65 senior residents at The Oaks apartments.

With generous donations from individuals, businesses and organizations in the community, an additional 250 Gaithersburg households received donations of Giant Food gift cards, canned foods, stuffing and rice. Donations were also used to purchase meal gift cards that the City's Homeless Advocate distributed to men and women living on the streets of Gaithersburg this Thanksgiving. Over 150 City households were "adopted" by area congregations, businesses and organizations, who provided Thanksgiving dinner to these families directly.

"This outpouring of support is really what the holidays are all about, especially in these economic times" said Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney Katz. "It is truly rewarding to see a community come together with so much caring and concern."

Donations are now being accepted to help families during the December holidays. To learn more please visit www.gaithersburgmd.gov/communityservices or call 301-258-6395 x2.

http://www.gaithersburgmd.gov/poi/default.asp?POI_ID=309&TOC=307;309;&id=4144

CHARACTER COUNTS IN GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND

Facebook to lose geography networks, add privacy features

An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

by Mark Zuckerberg Yesterday at 9:23pm

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we've built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook's current privacy model revolves around "networks" - communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We're adding something that many of you have asked for - the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we'll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we'll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You'll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you're finished, we'll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you're done you'll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We've worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone's needs are different. We'll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you're sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.


Mark Zuckerberg

DO YOU LIKE OR DISLIKE THE CHANGES TO FACEBOOK?

Option-ARM Borrowers Facing Resets

About 93 percent of option-ARM buyers chose to pay a minimum amount less than the interest due, according to a report released last week by Standard & Poors. That means that nearly all of the 350,000 option-ARM borrowers now owe more than they owed when they first purchased their homes.

Many of these loans were written in 2004 and are close to their five-year reset when the loans convert to a standard amortization. Some more recent loans will reset early if the accumulated interest has pushed the loan-to-value ratio above 110 percent.

In one example outlined in the S&P report, the payment on a $400,000 mortgage goes from $1,287 to $2,593.

The authors of the report say that many ARM borrowers aren't good candidates for refinancing or modification because their loan-to-value ratios are too high for the government's Making Home Affordable program. Also, about 80 percent of option-ARM loans were stated-income loans and borrowers could be held legally liable for deliberate inaccuracies on their original applications.

Source: CNNMoney.com, Les Christie (11/26/2009)

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