Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate

The guidelines for this carnival.

As always, I arranged the entries that met guidelines into three levels, based upon originality, usefulness to the consumer, and how much thought and effort and research went into an entry.

There were no strongly recommended articles this week, and hence, no Host Choice Award.

RECOMMENDED

I know zero about mortgage and property markets and procedures in the UK. But Avoiding Home Repossession from Finance Blog covers some of the high points.

Trusted Advisor sends us Decaying Social Trust and Moral Indignation. For the record, HR 3915 was a bad bill. But he's right that people looking to evade the consequences of their own actions is a large part of the problem, and it's hurting others. The woman described is on the hook for $200,000 of other people's money she could afford to pay but is protected from collection by California law intended to protect primary residences only, has likely been bailed out of the tax consequences by special legislation, and is griping that her credit score is going to drop? Brother Maynard! Bring out the Holy Hand Grenade!

5 Mortgage Lessons to Learn from the Rich makes some points worth making, even if it was mostly pulled (with credit) from another article.

7 Reason You Fail To Sell Your Home is nothing new or original, but some things just cannot be said too often. PS: I wouldn't list with an agent who sold 20 properties per month. I wouldn't even list with an agent who had 20 listings, and probably not one who had 10. There aren't enough hours in the day to understand that many transactions. But the principle remains valid.

Real Estate broker Issues Why would an agent recommend a post that debunks the usual agent talk about what a great investment real estate is? Quite simply, because it takes the focus in choosing an agent off general market return an onto "how good is this agent?" Had he taken it a very small amount further this post had the potential to earn a "strongly recommended"

MET GUIDELINES

Reba Haas submits The psychology of setting a list price?

American Consumer News sends us Practical Tips for Staying Safe in A Winter Storm

The Financial Bullet sends us Mortgages & Credit Unions. Credit unions aren't very competitive on first mortgages. Every time my wife brings home one of their "specials" to talk about I've got a better loan available. The same applies with the other two credit unions I'm a member of. Furthermore, the study cited is misleading because credit unions originate relatively few loans, and sell almost everything they do originate to banks. Once those loans are sold - so the credit unions can originate more loans for their other members - they count as bank held. Credit unions actually hold only a small fraction of 1% of first mortgage loans in the country. However, the home equity market ("second mortgages", or home equity loans and lines of credit) is a market in which credit unions can be very difficult to compete with, and you should definitely shop your credit union if you're a member of one. I'm not ashamed to say they beat the best HELOC I could do for myself a few years back, so I got theirs instead of mine.

A site named Cubicle Dropout submits Secrets to Real Estate Success. Note: The public cannot access the actual MLS for an area because it contains sensitive information. But there's a public version without the sensitive information that can be accessed by anybody, and this is what most non-agents are talking about when they say they've accessing MLS.

What is the State of The Housing Market? (Multiple Choice) makes a decent point about how it depends upon who you pay attention to, but nobody buys or owns property in a national housing market. Any time you start talking about one specific property, you need to consider the local market. Some local markets are doing well, others less so. Consider what is going on in your local market, not the effect of a national index that will mislead you as to what's going on in your local market.

San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble #10 - The House of Cards is Coming Down gives some very erroneous advice at the end - don't ever simply mail the keys back to the lender. Even if you're going to lose the property, there are better ways to handle it. Furthermore, lots of people get surprised by how much property costs them after they walk away. Don't ever think you're done until everybody involved agrees that you're done.

SPAM AND OTHER RIDICULOUS SUBMISSIONS

I'm not even going to name the site, but I did get a submission advising people they may be able to keep the property even if they stop paying the mortgage due to lender confusion. This is either pure ignorance or a deliberate lie. All you can do by taking this tack is delay the inevitable slightly while making it worse. And I was really hoping not to have a post in this category for a while.

For those who might object to the treatment their submission received, the relevant information has been in the guidelines since before submissions were being accepted for this carnival. Having been told to read the guidelines, you willingly submitted these posts. Live with it.

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate will return in two weeks (March 12th, 2008), here at Searchlight Crusade, unless someone else wants to host. Deadline for submissions will be March 10th.