Seattle Real Estate:

There have been a couple of interesting news items over the past week relating to short sales. Think You Might Need To Do A Short Sale? The first item was a statement issued by Washington Realtors Attorney Annie Fitzsimmons. She states, A new trend is developing in which short sale lenders are establishing policy statements [...]

Real estate statistics are imperfect.  Spin ‘em one way and they lead you in one direction, spin ‘em another and you’d draw a different conclusion. I’ve documented my opinion in the past, but I’m not above displaying stats for the sake of looking at a trend over time.  We follow the daily real estate headlines [...]

There has been an unprecedented proliferation of loan modification offers and practitioners recently.  What is a loan modification?  It’s when a person that owns real estate and has a mortgage on the property asks the institution that holds the loan to change the terms of the mortgage – like reduce the interest rate temporarily, reduce [...]

You’ve probably heard by now that sales of homes in the Western United States improved in February.  Not to be a wet blanket….but while I think that could be an encouraging sign, we’re not out of the woods yet.  As always when it comes to real estate, buyers and sellers should be making decisions thoughtfully with information specific to [...]

Now what do we do?  Granted, crummy is a relative term.  Compared to other areas, our market seems absolutely peachy.  For some – sellers who want the darned house sold already – it feels like the pits.  What do we mean by crummy?  Upside down home owners, wannabe buyers without a big enough down payment, [...]

Bright and early this morning we received a call from a telephone number that showed as American Express on the caller ID.  Neither Alex nor I were available to take to call, but Alex called the number back when he was able.  The person that answered the call said that they were from American Express [...]

Congress passed the monster “stimulus” bill this evening.  It is anticipated to be signed by President Obama by President’s Day, which is Monday, January 16th, 2009.  The home buyers tax credit was a much reported, widely contested issue.  This is how the cookie crumbled: $6.6 billion to repeal a requirement that a $8,000 first-time home buyer tax [...]

What are property taxes like in Washington State?  Too high if you ask the folks behind the latest state initiative. (You can read about how property tax works in Washington State here.) There’s a new movement afoot to place a “Lower Property Taxes” initiative on the ballot November 9th, 2009.  According to the petition, the [...]

From Realtor.org: “Fannie Loosens Refinancing Rules Fannie Mae plans to eliminate some credit-score requirements, scale back income-documentation standards, and waive the need for appraisals in some cases, starting on April 4. The mortgage finance company believes the changes will allow more home owners to refinance into new home loans at near-record low interest rates. Analysts [...]

According to an article on Inman News this morning, we’re about to have an influx of bank owned homes hit the market.  These are homes that have already gone through the foreclosure process, are owned by the banks, and are being listed for sale. Here’s the original article: http://www.inman.com/news/2009/01/26/banks-unleash-flood-reos I’ll get back to our Bank Owned Properties [...]