Buying and Selling: March 2009 Archives

As a good buyer's agent, I love a challenge. When someone comes to me trying to make a budget stretch just a little bit further than it would usually go, that's the kind of client I love to have. My goal is always to make at least a ten percent difference to the price the client pays, the value of the property they get, or some combination of the two. Nonetheless, the ones who can almost but not quite afford what they want without me (or someone equally good) as an agent are the ones I really get off on working with. The single mom of two who I can help get into the three bedroom condo or PUD instead of two, so everybody gets their own room. The huge family (or multiple family) where everybody pitches in together for the house they're all going to live in together. The young newlyweds who are just getting started and may only intend to hold onto the property for a few years, but they're going to start their family there. One hopes you get the idea, and of course, preventing the "mistake" properties that are just going to suck a budget dry and be an ugly problem to sell.

There is nonetheless a thin but sharp divide between someone like that and someone who will only buy the Taj Mahal at a cut rate price. Someone calls me and asks for something that doesn't exist and isn't going to at a price they are willing to pay, I'm going to be completely upfront about telling them that what they're asking for is not realistic, and any agent worth a damn is going to do exactly the same thing. Anyone who can swing it is eager to buy the Taj Mahal at a cut rate price.

I did use the phrase "cut rate Taj Mahal" deliberately. If it's beautiful, people will want it. That's the way people are wired; women especially so, and women are the ones that make the "buy" decision. The only thing that prevents it from selling is if they can get more for their money out of some other property. An attractive property that is not significantly over-priced will sell in any market. Of course, it will sell for significantly more in a hot market than a buyer's market, but that's an entirely different subject. The property is on the market when it is on the market, and whether a seller could have made more by waiting is a subject for a different article. The point is that beautiful properties will sell, there is always demand for them, and if they are priced even close to the right level, you will get people lining up to buy them. The probability of a cut rate offer being the one that is accepted is about the same as winning the lottery with a single ticket. An ethical listing agent won't let it go for less than it's worth. Heck, a crummy listing agent won't let it go for less - even they are paid on commission!

I just checked the statistics on MLS. As I'm writing this, the San Diego area is down to 12099 active listings, while 946 have gone Pending in the last seven days, giving us about a 13 week theoretical supply (89 days) in inventory. That's a balanced market, no longer the buyer's market. But a sample of actives in a couple of diverse zip codes yields that about 20% of the theoretical actives are short sales with an accepted contract that are allowed to remain on the active list. Looking at 80% of the actives number, and assuming that a short sale takes about ten weeks on average, that means the real numbers are about a 57 day supply of inventory - just over 8 weeks. This means we're edging down to a full fledged seller's market, and we're not to Easter yet.

So what does this mean to buyers? The first thing to consider is that the above numbers are the statistical mean. You're lumping the beautiful property in a great neighborhood with fantastic schools with the cluttered, trashed, falling apart piece of garbage in an area where the schools mostly teach "Hanging out with an ankle bracelet", and then taking the middle course between the two. Assuming you don't really want the cluttered trashed falling apart ghetto property, this means you're competing for the property at the other end of the spectrum - by which I mean the highly desirable properties that are going quickly and for good prices. Just this morning, I called the listing agents on two such properties that have been on the market less than a week, and got believable responses that both properties have already gotten multiple offers. Those properties are not going to go for a cut rate price, and buyers putting in low-ball offers to see if they work are wasting paper and wasting time. The days when I or anyone else could "steal" an attractive property like that for thirty-five percent under the appraised value are over, at least for now, as I must have predicted on at least three or four occasions - not that there was any great predictive ability involved.

If you're wealthier than Midas and don't mind spending your wealth on housing, this article just isn't relevant. For those looking to buy significantly below the limits of their means (and I do seem to get a fair number of clients in this category, for which I am profoundly thankful, and I can make an even larger difference than usual), large parts can be ignored because they have the alternative of increasing the budget if they don't like their choices at the current dollar limit. For those who want to stretch their budget and make every dollar count, it is critical, and failing to follow something very close to this model is a recipe for disaster. The idea is to make rational, informed choices that you will be happy with later.

The first thing to consider is your budget. In order to buy within a budget, you have to know what that budget is. There are no more "Make Believe" loans - and this is a Good Thing, as I'm certain the vast majority of the millions of people facing defaulted Make Believe loans right now would agree. They could have afforded something good enough with a sustainable loan, and instead they chose a Make Believe loan in order to get the Taj Mahal, but now they're losing the Taj Mahal, and can no longer qualify to buy the eminently suitable property they could have had if they had chosen rationally in the first place.

I compute what every single buyer client can afford, whether or not they're planning to do the loan with me. I sit down and discuss the questions that need to be answered: "How much cash do you have for the down payment and closing costs?" and "how much income can you document for (the relevant period)?" and "What is your credit score?" I sit down and go over what those numbers mean in terms of purchase price in the current market, and then both the prospective buyers and I have got to agree upon a maximum purchase price we will consider. If the property cannot be obtained within that purchase price, it is a non-starter. There may be a certain amount of gray area as asking price is not the same as sales price, but the bottom line is that if I cannot persuade someone to sell for a price within the budget my client and I have agreed upon, we're going to put that property out of our minds. Most of the trouble I do get arises because there is a lot less slack in the asking price for beautiful properties new on the market than there is for less physically attractive properties that have been sitting a while. I have a choice as to where to put the dividing line as to what the clients see, and my default is always to allow them to see all the properties within a set mark-up of the agreed upon budgetary maximum, even though that may have attractive properties new to the market where the price is not that negotiable, or not that negotiable yet. Transparency, always transparency - even when it causes me problems.

The next thing to consider is "what does the property absolutely have to have?" The hard part here is cutting this list to the bone, if not all the way down to the marrow. You have got to focus on no more than one or two things at this level. It can be a good school district, it can be a certain number of bedrooms or certain size of lot, it can be a certain section of town, it can be a lot of other things but the critical thing is to get that focus laser-sharp. One thing, or at the very most, two. To paraphrase the immortal Monty Python, three is right out, and for reasons similar to those given in the Book of Armaments. You have got to be clear, and you've got to mean it. If it doesn't have this one thing, it's off the list of possibilities, no matter how beautiful it is. That's pretty easy for most folks. The logical corollary of that, however, is much more difficult: that if it does have that one attribute, the property is a serious possibility no matter how ugly, no matter how trashed, no matter any number of other undesirable factors. If you're not serious about this one point, you're not serious about stretching your budget. I'm not going to say that there's nothing a good buyer's agent can do for you, because it wouldn't be true, but you have become, to whatever extent you can't abide this corollary, your own worst enemy. This is at the heart of why there is money in fixer properties. If someone else has already made it beautiful, people are going to line up to buy it at a very competitive price. If you want a budget stretching price, you've got to be willing to some degree to be the one who makes it beautiful.

This applies no matter what else you want. The ultimate expression is that if I run a search and there is one property that meets your budget and your "must have" list. This has never happened to me yet, but there's nothing that says it won't happen tomorrow. At that point, you have Hobson's Choice: that property or none at all. Mind you, "none at all" (i.e. continue renting) is likely to be the superior of those two alternatives in this situation, but it would certainly cut down on my time requirements. Also, there is always the option of "wait and see". Just because nothing on the market today fits the bill doesn't mean that there never will be. It's not for nothing that "patience" is the number one item on my list of Top Twelve Things That Help You Buy a Bargain Property.

Things usually aren't that cut and dried, however. Usually, there are several dozen possibilities, sometimes hundreds. This is because I will either keep badgering people to expand their criteria until there are enough possibilities to give a real selection, or I will tell them point blank that the list of possibles is short and once we have seen what's available, they're going to need to make a choice. It doesn't take very many properties on the alternatives list before there will be at least one worth buying whether they like it or not, and if they choose not to buy anything available within their budget, I have to reconsider whether I'm able to help them.

Keeping in mind that thin line between my favorite clients in the "challenging but possible" camp and those in the "want a bargain on the Taj Mahal" camp, there are only two choices for an ethical agent who believes he's got someone in the latter category: Have a frank talk with the client in which these folks convince me that they have seen the light of what is realistic, or I must stop working with them. If I continue working with them when they have unrealistic expectations, I'm wasting my time, their time, and the time of every listing agent and seller whose property I want to show, because it's not going to happen, and it's my fault if I don't put a stop to the wishful thinking. I'm wasting money and gas and nice afternoons that we both could be spending doing something else and keeping myself from helping other people where I might make a real difference. My point is this: People looking for something unrealistic are not going to turn into happy owners. I can tell them they're not realistic, or I can put them into a property they are going to be miserable in. In the latter case, they're not going to be happy with me. If I tell them the truth in the first place, they might be able to respect my professionalism and refer someone else I can make into a happy owner. If I put them into a property where they are not a happy owner, then I might get one paycheck, but I'm going to be paying for it forever when those people tell all of their circle of influence how miserable they are and whose fault it is.

I'm not a wealthy broker running a transaction mill. Yes, I'm busy, partly because I'm good and partly because I earn my pay. I spend a lot of time and effort doing the best I can for each and every client, and I don't accept clients if I haven't got the time to do a good job with them right now. You really want an agent who follows this business model, by the way. Firing a client has real consequences to me and my family, and I don't do it lightly or often. Nonetheless, I will do it if I need to because the consequences of not doing so are worse.

Starting from a point where there are several dozen properties that potentially fit the bill of being within budget and possessing the absolute "must have" quality. This means the client has a range of options, and usually more properties coming onto the list by the time we've looked at all of them. We don't have to look at all of them, and in fact I don't think I have ever shown every single property on their list to anyone, but we could. In the meantime, if something catches their eye as being something they think they'll be happy with, especially once we've discussed downsides and potential downsides, it's a good idea to make an offer on it right away. In my experience, hoping for something perfect is more likely to net you frustration than a good property you'll be happy with at a good price. Beyond a certain point, the more you try for perfection, the less happy you're likely to end up.

The real point is that there will be a set of trade offs the client can choose between. This one will have more square footage, while that one will be beautiful, but have a homeowner's association that comes with it. This one will have some significant extras but need lots of cosmetic work, while that one doesn't have a lot of the lesser qualities they want but be move in ready. It's the client's money, therefore it's the client's choice. My principle jobs as a buyer's agent are to 1) Differentiate the obviously unacceptable and those with problems that laypeople may not spot from those that are real contenders, 2) Make certain that the client understands the ramifications of their choice before signing away hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and borrowed money, 3) Negotiate as effectively as I can for a better deal, 4) Be aware of everything about that transaction and 5) be willing to take action, up to and including counseling my clients to walk away if something is wrong enough.

The more you require in a property, the more it will cost. There is a measurement for how desirable a property is, and the unit of measurement is the dollar. If you've only got a certain budget and you're looking to buy in the best neighborhood in town, it's going to cost you more than the same property in the ghetto. The difference is that value of the neighborhood. The same property in the district with the very best school system (or best school) is going to be more valuable than the otherwise identical property down where schools are just a taxpayer subsidized babysitting service where the kids learn undesirable behaviors. People seem to soak this up easily, but they aren't usually as fast on the uptake of "holding the neighborhood constant, you can have a beautiful turnkey property or you can have an extra bathroom, two bedrooms, and four thousand square feet on the lot by being willing to beautify a solid property or you can have a huge lot with a better zoning where the existing building needs to come down completely." All of these, and many others, are potentially valid choices and I can see where making any of these choices could be the most rational choice if your needs and resources match the right profile. It's my job to help you with that, too, but the final choice has to be yours. Nonetheless, there will be tradeoffs involved - you can't have it all. If I were some corporate or NAR flack, I'd be telling you otherwise, but the fact is that you're going to have to choose what's most important to you, and either create the rest yourself or do without. The more you have to spend, the broader your choices and the more you can expect to receive for that money, but even the richest man on the planet has alternative uses for the money that he's giving up to buy this property. Nobody has an unlimited budget.

Putting up with things that others are not willing to is worth some money - often enough for a major shift in the question of whether they're being realistic. I just had some clients who were relocating from the primary flight path of a major jet airport. They laughed every time I talked to them about traffic noise as a negative factor, and that was fine. They had told me they didn't care, but they had also told me that this wasn't a forever property for them, which means that when they go to sell it, it's going to be a factor for them. They wanted to consider a property on what was essentially a frontage road to an interstate. I convinced them otherwise for a number of reasons that include that street might as well be a drag strip because mild mannered housewives with their hair up in curlers turn into testosterone fueled racing junkies there - all within feet of where children are playing in their yards. But if the traffic noise had been all there was to the issue, they could have used it to snare a bargain property because they would be willing to put up with something nobody else would. They were also shopping well beneath the limits of their means, so I was also able to put them into something in a better location with a lot more upside for the same money.

The bottom line is that more money buys a better property. Like any other good buyer's agent, I can stretch your available dollars, but there is a limit to how far I can stretch them. I'm aware of that limit, and so are my buyer clients because I will make certain that they are aware. There comes a point where a given set of search criteria flips from "challenging but possible" to "not likely to happen on Planet Earth." If that happens to you, you are wasting your time and everyone else's. Most buyers have to accept compromises in order to get what they need within their budget, and it's only going to get worse as we finish working our way through the problems that caused the meltdown. If you understand this in the first place, you're in a much stronger position when you start looking.

Caveat Emptor

Article UPDATED here

Quite a while ago, I wrote Top Ten Reasons You Bought The Wrong House and Top Ten Reasons Your Home Isn't Selling. In that vein, I'm going to write a list of the most important things when you're shopping for a property. Lots of folks shoot themselves in the foot, and it's easy enough to see why in retrospect - but isn't it better to not make those mistakes in the first place? I'm going to count down from twelve to one and try to inject what humor I can.

12)Short escrow periods, but only if you can perform. That seller is out money every day of the escrow period, and every day that passes while the property is Pending is another day that other potential buyers aren't looking at it. This daily racking up of costs has been known to cause seller panic. Knowing that there's a limit to how many days the property is going to be tied up is certainly something that can be useful in convincing a seller that this is a better offer. Warning: The deposit is always at risk, so if you cannot perform within the time period you agreed upon, you could find yourself out the deposit money.

11) Short term leasebacks: If the seller is living in the property, accepting your offer means that they have to get on the stick to find their next home. This can cause them quite a bit of anxiety, especially if they're not certain the transaction is going to close. The sellers can sign a lease and risk not needing the leased property while still having to pay a mortgage, they can enter into another purchase contract and find themselves unable to perform, they can find themselves living in a hotel because they didn't allow enough time, and with the problems in the market today, they can often be risking homelessness. If you're not in a particular hurry to move in (and you shouldn't be!), offering to lease the property back to them for up to thirty days after closing is a major anxiety reducer for the seller. Delaying your own gratification - the ability to turn that key and say "Mine, mine, all mine!" like Daffy Duck - can be a lever to get a better price or something else you want out of the seller. Short sales are a particularly good time to offer this - you're looking at an extra six weeks, possibly three months or more, before the lender gives their blessing to the transaction, then usually wants to close faster than the speed of light while the buyers are trying to get their loan done and the sellers are stressing about the tax implications and whether anyone is going to be willing to rent to them along with everything else. To add both parties suddenly having an urgent and immediate need to pack up for a move that they're not certain is going to happen and sign a new least or give thirty days notice when they're possibly going to be without a place to live doesn't make things any easier. As long as the move happens within thirty calendar days of closing, loan standards for "owner occupied" loans are still satisfied, making it a win for everyone.

10)Buyers have liquid cash - Sellers have an illiquid property. Cash money is the universal problem solver - everybody takes cash, everybody needs cash. What most buyers have isn't the full price in actual cash - but the seller gets cash proceeds from the loan as well. That seller isn't sitting upon the crown jewels of the world either - they have the most illiquid investment there is, and they are attempting to exchange it for cash - that universal problem solver. Otherwise you wouldn't see that property listed for sale. The buyer is the one with access to the universal problem solver, and if that seller wants that problem solver, they had better be cognizant that their problems are not the buyer's problems until the deal is done. If the property has problems, it is the seller's challenge to persuade the buyer that it is worth the buyer's resources to deal with those problems. Otherwise, that seller is stuck with those problems.

9) Be willing to do without meaningless contingencies. The appraisal contingency is the prime example of this. By requiring an appraisal contingency, you're saying that you don't want the property unless everything is absolutely perfect - unless some appraiser can pretty much arbitrarily be persuaded to say the property is worth at least the official purchase price. That's a weak offer, and it puts a lot of sellers in the position of resistance because they "don't want to sell for less than it's worth". If more agents explained what the appraisal is and is not, this would be a much smaller problem. I am always looking for value, and always mindful of the minimum necessary appraisal amount, but I'm also pretty much always willing to give up the appraisal contingency if I even put it into the offer in the first place. If there's a loan, the loan contingency is going to cover my clients. If there wasn't a loan, why would you care if the appraisal came in? You shouldn't ever offer more money than the property is worth to you, so why should you care if the property appraises? Being unwilling to give up the appraisal contingency is the sign of a weak offer from a buyer who isn't really sold on the property.

8) Zig when everyone else is zagging. The time to buy a property is when nobody else is willing or able. If potential buyers are waiting for the market to bottom, if they're scared they'll lose money on paper, scared they'll lose their job, or just don't want to move right now because it's Christmas, that's the time to be out buying. On the flip side, as this whole housing bubble and Era of Make Believe Loans should have made clear to everyone, when everyone is convinced that prices are going to keep going up 25% per year and therefore real estate is selling like hotcakes is probably the time to sell yours and go rent until the bubble pops. Don't confuse mass psychology with the fundamentals of the market. This applies in reverse as well.

7) Know what cannot be improved or fixed. Location is the first item on that list. If the property is already the best in the neighborhood, it's not a bargain. If everything around it is selling for half the price, it's not a bargain, it's a misplaced improvement. The area is what it is, and while sometimes they do improve, it's not under any individual's control unless you're a corrupt public official capable of zoning that airport out of existence. There are other items here - environment, view, desirability, etcetera - but what I wrote about location finds a good analog in each of them.

6) Look for properties you can improve: If they're the cheapest property in the neighborhood, that is an opportunity for profit. The beautiful turn-key property where everything is already perfect is not an improvable property - at least not at a price that's worth it, not only because everything easy has already been done, but because those properties are in high demand. When everybody wants it exactly as it is, that's not a bargain property. If you look at it and fall in love with the beautifully done kitchen and bathrooms, that's not a bargain property because most buyers are willing to pay a premium for those sorts of things. Which leads us into-

5) Look for solid, not beautiful. Even if it hasn't been updated in fifty years, a good floor plan is a good starting point. Most people will not look past an outdated surface to what is underneath - solid foundation, good floor plan, good location, lot with plenty of usable space. Yes, you're going to have to do some work to make it shine, but you're looking for a bargain property, not the one that's already been over-improved by a devotee of one of those house-flipping shows. The people that have done that work expect a premium for all that effort. If you want already beautiful, you can expect to be the one paying that premium. If you're willing to take something solid and make it beautiful, you're going to be the one getting that premium.

4) Don't fall in love with one particular property Be willing to walk away if the negotiations don't work out, or if you discover something about the property that's worth walking away from. I see people get all worked up over the possibility of losing a $3000 deposit and sign on the dotted line for things that are going to take ten times that much money just to bring the house up to where it should have been already. I tell buyer clients that the ideal time to fall in love with a property is as I am handing them the keys - something that doesn't happen until escrow has closed and they actually own it.

3) Have a plan Why are you buying this property? Is it a starter property for a few years, are you trying to flip for a profit, or is the home you're going to live in the rest of your life? Are you planning to hold onto it and rent it out once you're done living in it? Is it the basis of the plan to use leverage in your favor so you qualify for a better property when you sell this one? Is this the end property, or is it a shortcut for getting where you want to be? Each of these possibilities has consequences and implications that make it advantageous to do one thing and not the other. A good agent knows what they are. Plan ahead for what you want, and the right things to do to achieve it are a lot more definite.

2) Good buyer's agent. This is the expert who will help you with how best to make the transaction in your favor, as well as reverse engineering what the sellers and their agent are trying to do. Everything about a real estate transaction happens for a reason. You want someone who can take the what and figure out the why from that, as well as the how of getting from where you are to where you want to be most efficiently and effectively. It is easy to find a good buyer's agent if you make the effort. But this is not number one because the best buyer's agent in the world can't do you much good if you haven't got the

1) Patience If you're only willing to look at a few properties, if you're not willing to investigate the property and the market, if you're not willing to consider that maybe another property might be better for you - if you're going to get your heart set on one beautiful property because it's the most upgraded one in the neighborhood, there's not much anyone or anything else can do for you. The more patience you have, the more I and other buyer's agents can do for you. If you're not in any particular hurry, we've got time to make things happen your way. If you need to be under contract in two weeks, you've got about a week to start negotiating an offer, and no plan B available if that first negotiation fails. This weakens your bargaining position, to say the least.

Bonus item: Higher Deposit People are funny about cash. Perhaps it's because they had to earn that cash dollar by dollar, not spending it on other things. Every dollar in that deposit represents something that they could have bought, fun that they could have had, but didn't. A large deposit is therefore indicative of someone who has made some serious sacrifices and is putting that money on the line in the pursuit of this property. That says a lot of positive things about how serious they are, how certain they are that they want the property, and how certain they are that they can make the loan happen. A large deposit is also (usually) indicative of someone who's in the habit of saving and therefore really does have good credit. The deposit is always at risk, but there are steps you and your agent can take to minimize that risk. Look at it from the seller's point of view: You've got someone willing to put thousands of dollars of their own money potentially on the line, versus someone who's scraping together change out of the seat cushions of their couch. Which of those two offers would be more attractive to you?

Caveat Emptor

Article UPDATED here

When Israel invaded southern Lebanon a couple years ago, this picture from Reuters ran worldwide

The problem was that it was heavily photoshopped by a Palestinian stringer trying to make it appear like the Israelis were setting the entire city on fire indiscriminately. This was original photo:

It shows one fire and smoke from it drifting as it dissipated, presenting a far different picture of the situation. Instead of shelling everywhere, Israel was making precise strikes at locations where there actually were terrorists firing at their troops. Reuters got a lot of bad publicity out of this, and it cost them a fair amount of money because it wasn't what they were representing it to be. Reuters claims to be reporting the news as it really is without an agenda to grind, and items like this (of which there have been many) punch significant holes in their credibility with people who really pay attention to what's going on. (If you care, I got the photos from an article Little Green Footballs did on it)

So what's this got to do with real estate?

Unlike Reuters, listing agents don't have any sort of obligation to report the news as it is. Theoretically, agents and Realtors have a duty of fair and honest dealing with all parties, but this is more honored in the breach than in any other way, and they figure that if you can come out and see the actual property, doctored photos don't matter. It's their job to make the property look attractive. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake. People lie, cheat, steal, commit felonies and risk jail to sell real estate for a higher price - on that scale, the minor dishonesty of doctoring photos just doesn't register. Result: Lots of photoshopped pictures.

I do not understand why people pay attention to online photos. Actually, I do. I'll admit to being a bit slow on the uptake - it must have taken two months back when I first started being an agent for me to stop paying attention to them. People think they're saving the time and gas of driving to ugly properties. The truth is that there really isn't a lot of actual correlation between ugly photos and bad properties, or good photos and worthwhile properties. I usually don't look at photos at all unless clients want to talk about them - I look at several other factors that tell me whether there's a possibility of finding a bargain here.

Most buyers, however, won't listen until they've had a certain amount of bitter experience with cold hard reality, which is that somewhere between the camera lens and the online listing pictures, there have usually been alterations made. I tell my clients point blank that I never look at photos, but when people are starting to look it seems they just can't help but shop for property by the photographs. After all, this apparently saves the effort of driving to the property! Even when I ask people point blank whether they've heard of photoshopping, they won't connect it to this situation - until they've dragged themselves to a couple dozen properties where the photos did their subjects entirely too much justice, if you know what I mean.

Instead of pictures, I tend to look at things like price (especially as compared to nearby properties), showing instructions, whether the listing acts like it really wants to sell or is doing the peasantry the immense favor of offering it for sale, whether the listing agent works within a very few miles or is from further away and a few other data points that most clients never do figure out the importance of. Are they telling us it's a "fee simple" title while admitting there are HOA fees? If they're trying to play buyers for saps, chances are that property is not going to be a bargain or even so much as worth looking at. That listing agent is hoping to get a sucker to come in and via Dual Agency make an offer based on an undebunked rose-colored picture of the property. Not only is this another reason buyers want to find a good buyer's agent before they start looking at actual property, but it's a sign that there are likely to be other games going on once you make an offer as well.

Sometimes pictures not only haven't been altered, but don't do their subject properties sufficient justice. It is just as silly to toss a property from consideration for a bad photo as it is to include it because of a photoshopped one. The only way to see what it really looks like is to go look at it with your own eyeballs - there are no acceptable substitutes. I've seen just as many real pictures taken with bad cameras from poor vantage points as I have photoshopped ones. As I've discussed, just because flinty eyed buyer's specialists like myself have learned to ignore online photos, or at least take them with an appropriate amount of salt, doesn't mean everyone has. Good photos can bring people out to the property to look.

I do advise against photoshopping in significant ways. If the photo doesn't match the reality, most people will figure it out at some point. It's fine to choose a good angle that shows the property to advantage, but if you change an entire room full of clutter to what George Orwell would have called unpersons, people who actually come look at the property, which is what you want pictures to cause them to do, are going to be turned off. If you simply showed things as they are, someone might have thought it was good enough. It really is a matter of managing expectations. Lure people with a promise of something super, and the merely satisfactory doesn't cut it, but if they're only expecting the satisfactory, they might be happy with it.

I don't trust any real estate photos I can't vouch for personally, which means that I have learned not to pay a whole lot of attention to them. Similarly, doctoring photos doesn't really help. If potential buyers are obsessing about the cool pictures of the bathroom, the kitchen, or the backyard pool, they're more likely than not going to be disappointed when they actually go to the property, and disappointed people don't make good offers, which is what the sellers (and their agents!) really want.

Caveat Emptor

Article UPDATED here

If you don't know, chances are your agent doesn't either. Even if you know, chances are that your agent is as clueless as a newborn about loans.

I and my clients get asked for all kinds of nonsense (to put it very kindly). Every single one of them has some kind of idea what makes a good lender letter, and none of them are correct. As of this moment, not one single agent (other than me) has asked for anything in the way of a lender letter that means a damned thing.

The first thing to get into your head is that there is no such thing as a letter that guarantees funding on a loan pre-purchase contract. No loan officer can write a letter that guarantees a loan will fund. The only guarantee of funding is a loan commitment written by an underwriter, which may or may not have conditions a particular borrower can meet. They are always written to a specific property, and require (among many other things) either already holding title to the property or a fully negotiated purchase contract to buy a specific property. You tell me how any buyer is going to get that before the purchase contract is negotiated. Go on, we're waiting.

The fact is that loan officers cannot be held responsible for preapproval and prequalification letters. Unforseeable things really do pop up, loan standards change (I got lucky and didn't lose anyone when Freddie and Fannie changed their standards on investment property in late January 2009 - but that was sheer luck. Skill had nothing to do with it. I can name loan officers that lost sixty percent of their loans in progress through no fault of their own), a full underwrite of the file finds that the borrower applicant has somehow misrepresented their situation. Upshot: there is no such thing as an infallible lender letter. Nor can you sue the loan officer who wrote the letter. Since you can't sue the loan officer, many loan officers get very lazy about writing their lender letters. There is no magic bullet for determining who is and who isn't doing full due diligence. The loan officer writing a preapproval or prequalification has got to show his work, and you (or someone you trust) has got to have enough understanding of loans to follow that work and enough understanding of current loan standards to know whether such a loan can be done. There are no shortcuts to this that work, for all of the illegal, unethical, and just plain wishful thinking for one that get tried.

Let's list a couple of the wrong methods. The first and most common is dictating that you have to have a lender letter from a particular lender or loan officer. This is illegal under RESPA. I don't care how many years you've been doing it, or how many times you've done it, it's still illegal. it doesn't matter if the client is dictating the choice of lender, it is still illegal under RESPA. I don't care who the specific lender or loan officer is, it is still illegal under RESPA. Everybody involved is breaking the law - whomever designates the specific provider, you for going along with it, and any lender involved if they are aware of it. I offer the client the option of whether they want to go get the lender letter from the specified source anyway as a way of not making waves in the transaction, but this is common enough that I've gone to the trouble of making up a template for letters to send to Department of Housing and Urban Development later. The folks at HUD are well aware that agents and Realtors do this for kickback and mutual referral purposes, and they frown on it severely. You can win the argument for the transaction if you're silly enough to insist, but six months down the line HUD is going to be knocking at your doorstep for a RESPA violation, and it's probably not a good idea to be telling them how long you've been doing it wrong and how. An agent might keep their license over one although they're going to be facing hefty fines, and I'm sure that as a client you'd rush right out and sign up with an agent who has broken the law, right? Better for all concerned not to do it at all. If you're an agent who does this now, stop immediately. All it takes is one complaint, and HUD will often subpoena back records of all of your former listings. Ignorance is no excuse.

Of late, the "must have letter from direct lender" has gotten more popular, although this is another way of simply ruining a piece of paper. No big loss, but it doesn't mean anything more from a direct lender than it does from a broker. Less, actually, as most loan officers working for direct lenders are a lot less experienced in the ways that loans get rejected. Nor are they any better at taking into account the effects of a specific transaction upon likelihood to qualify. They aren't any better at knowledge of lending standards, either. I've seen some pretty stupid letters from direct lenders that brokers with a broader knowledge of industry standards would laugh at. This requirement is useless if not counterproductive, and is usually practiced by agents looking for a cheap way to cover their backside in case the transaction falls apart, in which case they will show the client "See, they had a letter from National Megabank! If we can't trust them, who can we trust?" This entire line of thinking is what logicians call a Red Herring - an irrelevant distraction to the important question, and even counterproductive in this particular case, and if you have a competent real estate agent, they should know enough to know better.

Enough of what a good lender letter isn't. Let's talk about what it is.

First of all, a lender's letter must be specific to a given purchase offer. It has to be written in accordance with the purchase offer that is being made, and therefore written within no more than one business day prior to the tender of the offer. "Why" You ask? Because every single transaction is different. Rates change every day - or more specifically, the tradeoff between rate and cost changes every day. The purchase price being offered on this transaction is not the same as the purchase price they may have offered last time, and the down payment may not be the same, meaning the loan amount and the projected payment are not the same, either. The borrower may no longer have sufficient cash to consummate the transaction with all of these changes. All of this is basic, "hit the ball with the bat" level stuff. If any of it changes, so can the answer to the question of whether a loan is possible. There are still people wandering around with lenders letters that are months old; with the standards changes of the last three months the only things those are useful for is tinder for a fire or a good laugh.

Second, and even more importantly, the loan officer must show their work. What's the borrower's known and documented income? What are their cash reserves available for this loan? You want a lender's letter that testifies to the exact amount of cash reserves the borrower has shown, details where any additional funding is coming from, and how long of a period how much income is averaged over (at least 17 months), to give a figure for monthly income. It should also specify the actual FICO score reported by each major agency. You can't hold the loan officer who wrote the letter responsible if the loan fails to fund, but you can hold them responsible for specific statements about assets and income and credit score. Not only that, having this information gives you the opportunity to check their work! Indeed, the only advantage of not showing such information is that it gives weak or unqualified buyer/borrowers a chance to pull the wool over someone's eyes, and since those buyers are risking thousands of dollars that is clearly not to their benefit either. These numbers are what is really important, not the identity of someone who writes a "black box" letter - "I don't know how they're qualified, but this says they are!" Wouldn't you really rather be able to check and know?

A good lender's letter will lead you through the calculations of loan to value ratio and the specific rate, point, and closing costs of the loan being contemplated, as well as required reserves for prepaid interest and impound account and compare it to known assets to determine that the buyer really does have enough cash to close the transaction. If they don't and you accept their offer, you are praying for a miracle because that is what it will take to make this loan close.

A good lender's letter will also go through the computations for debt to income ratio based upon the loan quoted. They have determined income averaged over a period which leads to average monthly income. You should be able to determine within a very close range exactly what the other costs of owning the property are going to be. The lender's letter should state a number for monthly debt service for existing obligations - credit cards, student loans, car payments, etcetera. This number is available right on the credit report, and if the credit report is not used as the source of this number, there should be a good explanation as to why the number on the credit report was not used. You don't need to know the social security number and all of the account numbers, or even all of the individual payments. What you do need to know - what you are entitled to know - is whether they qualify for the loan, which means the total of existing monthly debt service is necessary. It is also sufficient unto the task, which means you have no justification for asking for more information. If the total cost of owning the property and existing debt service fit within appropriate debt to income ratio guidelines, you have a qualified buyer. If not, you are wasting your time accepting their offer because they are not going to qualify. Stated income loans are all but dead, and the rates for the few remaining providers are not anywhere close to normal rate/cost tradeoff - you can figure at least a two percent differential right now at the same cost as well as a rock bottom equity requirement of twenty percent - more likely twenty-five to thirty. Your buyer is going to have to document income to the lender in order to qualify for that loan, so they can bloody well tell the seller how much income they can document. That seller is making a decision of whether to grant credit, and if the buyers cannot qualify for that loan probably going to cost those sellers thousands of dollars. Therefore, the seller is completely justified in asking for this information - they are perfectly justified in requiring it.

The contemplated loan should have been priced within one business day of submitting that offer to purchase, and it needs to include both a rate and a total cost of that loan that you can check. Yes, the available tradeoffs between rate and cost vary every day, but the longer you go between pricing and submission, the more opportunity there is for change. I'm a lot more comfortable with lender's letters where the quoted loans priced with low to no points (if not a zero cost loan). Why? Simply because there is wiggle room on the quote. If rates go up a quarter of a point for the same rate tomorrow, or a week from now, the buyer can quite likely still make it work - particularly if they're not pledged right up to the limit of their available assets. Similarly, I like to see a lender letter that's built some wiggle room into the cash to close. It's the difference between a very qualified buyer who can still make the transaction happen if rates go up a bit or costs are slightly higher, and a marginally qualified buyer who is going to crash and burn if any little obstacle comes up (If the buyer was lowballed on their mortgage quote to use one all but universal example), or at least need the seller to bail them out with further concessions. If the loan officer who wrote the lender letter shows the work, it helps you know the difference between these two very different buyers, as well as between them and the completely unqualified bozo. It can be worth the risk of dealing with the marginally qualified buyer if you are getting a particularly good price and have the money to lose if the transaction falls apart, but it shouldn't be any surprise that the solidly qualified buyer is in a stronger bargaining position and likely to get a better price, thereby giving that solidly qualified buyer a reason to want to show all of this, demonstrating what a strong qualified buyer they are and what a strong offer they are making. Depending upon the seller's financial position, in San Diego this can be worth ten thousand dollars or more on the sales price of an average home!

I have shown that both the buyer and the seller are better off with a solid lender's letter that takes the cash and the income necessary to fund that loan and compares them in concrete numerical terms with the buyer's financial resources and liabilities. These aren't the only questions possible, and therefore the need for loan officer contact information. I call the loan officer on every single lender letter I get and ask questions - does this buyer own investment property being particularly important right now. If they're claiming something I don't believe can be done, I'm going to ask what lender is willing to fund that loan and then check if such a program exists to actually do so - and either I learn something new about the current loan market or I prevent my seller client from accepting an offer that cannot be consummated.

The important thing is concrete information being attested to, that allows any other person who knows enough about loans to retrace the work and verify whether a loan can be done under current conditions. If the agent can do it, great - agents should know enough about loans to do so! Even if they don't, any loan officer should be able to do the work. The identity of who wrote the letter is trivial - a distraction dreamed up by agents who are incompetent to judge, looking for kickbacks, or both. I will take a letter with the required information from any loan officer that I don't know to be a complete and utter bozo, and even then, I have the information they are using to make that determination, which is one hell of a lot stronger than reputation or lack thereof. The critical information is specific concrete numbers about the buyer's situation that enable anyone who knows loans to make an informed decision as to whether this loan is doable, not whose signature is on it, or which letterhead it's printed on. When I make a recommendation to accept an offer or even just pass it along without a recommendation against, I am telling my seller that I have a reasonable basis to believe that this potential buyer has the wherewithal to make it happen. If I'm not doing the necessary due diligence before I do that, I have failed in my fiduciary duty - and that means knowing the difference between what is important and what is not. Having all the numbers for me or another loan officer to trace and check the work is important. The identity of who wrote the letter is not.

Caveat Emptor.

P.S. If you're looking for an example of a good lender letter, you could do worse than The Qualification Letter I Use

Article UPDATED here

Reminds me of this gold rush movie (one that I recommend watching if you have a chance)

Okay, it's not quite like that, but correctly priced properties are flying into "Pending". It has to do with supply and demand. At $600,000, comparatively few people can really afford a single family detached property. But at $400,000 and under, there's a whole lot of offers going on.

There were signs of this turnaround all last summer, but it really hit hard after Columbus Day. All of a sudden, I was busier than the proverbial one armed paper hanger, and all the correctly priced properties were seeing multiple bids. I've put in offers on thirty-five or forty properties in the last few months, and I can count on the thumbs of one hand the times my clients' offer was the only offer. Yes, I know that listing agents often pretend there are other offers, but a good buyer's agent knows what to look for to indicate whether there really are other offers.

Sales prices aren't being negotiated down very often, either. If I'm representing the only offer, the sellers and their agents aren't in what might be considered the strongest of negotiating positions. If there are three or four other offers in play, however, the trick is to get the property without outbidding the other prospective buyers by any more than you have to. The best trick is not to offer more money, but to learn what things other than money influence an informed seller. These things vary from situation to situation. A short sale wants slightly different things than lender owned property who in turn want something slightly different than ordinary sellers. You can't reason with a seller who just wants the highest bid, but you can reason with a competently advised seller who understands that a purchase contract does not equal a consummated sale.

In all three cases, we have to deal with a paranoid lending environment. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have (within the last month) relaxed their standards to once again allow lending to someone with up to ten real estate loans, but the odds of this happening are essentially non-existent due to the fact that they have made it extremely difficult to get credit for rental income from investment property. Without rental income, debt to income ratio is too high for the prospective borrower to qualify under the standards for Fannie and Freddie, leaving your alternatives as portfolio lenders at a higher rate of interest, once again impacting debt to income ratio, or the high down payment requirements of commercial loans. A large part of the reasons for Fannie and Freddie cracking down thus are the prevalence of "buy and bail". Most people are not intending buy and bail, but it's very difficult to prove that you're not, and Fannie and Freddie's standards are about prospective borrowers proving that they can afford the entire situation. Even portfolio lenders are decidedly on the paranoid side right now, and for good reason: If you default, it's coming directly out of their pocket. There is no more selling the loans to idiots on Wall Street who are only looking at the interest rate because "real estate never loses value!"

Over forty percent of prospective buyers with a fully negotiated purchase contract here in San Diego have been unable to consummate the transaction because they are unable to actually get the loan they require. The fallback of stated income is gone except for a few portfolio lenders, and they've got pretty draconian rules themselves, like "You can't own any investment property!" at one. Equity requirements from maximum loan to value ratios on purchases are as hard as concrete, and they're even harder if you've got investment property. If you don't have thirty percent equity in every other property you own, you should probably plan on being forced to sell that property in order to buy another one.

As far as loans go, I'm just now getting comfortable with telling people I've got conventional loans for 95% of value - requiring 5% down. I've had one program for quite a while, but now I've got a second way to get it. Both require PMI, but better to pay PMI than not to get the property while it's cheap. Anything over eighty percent loan to value on a single loan is going to have PMI required - it's sourced in Federal Reserve Rules, and trying to evade the requirement is a recipe for trouble - legal trouble as well as a failed transaction. Since second trust deed lenders don't want to go even to 90% of value right now (and some are limiting themselves as low as 75%), your choice is basically a single loan with PMI or no purchase. You might as well take it into account before you make an offer - and if you're a seller, make certain that any buyer you accept based upon less than 20% down can afford the PMI as well as the basic payment. Pre-qualification and pre-approval letters have an ugly habit of not doing that.

FHA loans require 3.5% down payment, and they have their own mortgage insurance requirements - 1.75% of the loan amount up front plus 0.55% per year, and the basic debt to income ratio limit is 43% instead of 45%. Make sure your calculations of Can I afford this property include those figures. You would be amazed and disgusted how often buyers and their agents and loan officers base their "Can we qualify?" figures upon what's basically wishful thinking, because it doesn't take into account things they need to pay. Both FHA and VA loans restrict what properties they are willing to fund loans upon far more than conventional lenders. There is a laundry list of disqualifying characteristics that can mean you can't get a government loan on the property.

VA loans are still the magic bullet, as they will fund loans up to 103% of purchase price, meaning no down payment. However, they've got the same rules as FHA as to what they will and won't fund as far as property goes, and they won't permit buyers to be charged for many real, legitimate fees of getting a loan done, which means that lenders often have no choice but to make their money via yield spread or secondary market bond premium, which means that available rates may not be as low as other loan types in some situations. However, there's no mortgage insurance on VA loans, a fact that makes them inherently superior to FHA loans if you or your spouse have VA loan eligibility.

San Diego property has become affordable again. The most recent set of figures I saw said that seventy-three percent of all families in San Diego can now afford a median entry level property. Given this fact (particularly as opposed to the nine percent affordability ratio a couple of years ago), it's no surprise that people are looking to buy. Once current inventory clears, expect prices to be off to the races again. We may not get twenty percent per year for five straight years, mostly due to the investment property constraints, but I'm expecting solid noteworthy increases in prices before the end of the year. In some highly desirable areas, prices have already been rising for nine months to a year. Inventory is in the process of clearing out the backlog - we're down to just over 15,000 active listings from 18,000 a couple months ago. When we get down to ten or twelve thousand active listings, we'll see countywide price increases again.

The conclusion is quite strong: If you're a buyer, the time to move is now. If you're a seller, hold on if you can. If you're looking to sell so you can buy something else, talk to me. Prices are going up soon. Furthermore, with all the building restrictions we still have in place, I would bet serious cash that real estate prices are never going to be this affordable again.

Caveat Emptor