The first-time homebuyer tax credit is a thing of the past and the market definitely shows it. Prices continue to fall and housing starts are down which does not bode well for the real estate market as a whole. HOWEVER, it is really a great time to purchase a home. If you are one of the lucky folks that has equity in your home you might consider purchasing the move-up home you want or down-size depending on where you are in your life needs. In real estate you make your money on the buying end of the transaction. If you buy it right, you can sell it right in any market.
My older brother is here from Australia and we were discussing the fact that when he leaves Australia at the end of this job they will require him to cash out his pension. He has talked about purchasing a home in this area as a rental to have a place to shelter his money. This is the first time for as long as he can remember that he even considered purchasing a home in Southern Oregon. It appears that on the family wages paid in this valley that folks can afford to purchase a home again!
Short sales are still a difficult proposition no matter who the lender is. I can sense the frustration of the sellers who feel that they have bent over backwards, sometimes for years, trying to work out something with the lender so that they can afford to keep their homes, only to be ignored, I recently had a home listed as a short sale as my client had been out of work for two years. I listed the house and within two months I had an offer to bring to the bank on their behalf. My clients needed to write a hardship letter and give them a written budget to get this offer to be looked at. My clients flat-out refused to ‘do another thing to help the bank out when we have been through all of this with them ten times already’. I explained to them that the foreclosure department was a totally different department than the others but they didn’t care. They were fed up and had had enough. Sad to say I had to take the property of the market and it will proceed to foreclosure. It was just a case of the bank just not ‘hearing’ the sellers for months on end leaving the sellers what they felt was no way out.
I feel that unless the government puts some sort of regulation in place where the lenders are required to HONESTLY attempt to work things out with the buyers, and unless short sales become more manageable we will continue to see people opting for foreclosure rather than dealing with the hassle and stress. It is a difficult situation we are in as a nation. If we don’t learn to manage money better as a people this can happen again. There are always those circumstances where jobs are lost, illness and divorce cause the loss of a home and those things cause great hardships on a family. We are in uncharted waters here. Hopefully there will be good economic news as we move into the fall months!
About Jan Garcia