If the bank is going to take your house a SHORT SALE may be the answer…

I’m sure by now you have heard the term short sale. But, do you know what it is or how you can do it?

Let me start off by telling you don’t fall victim to the scams. Only two professionals can negotiate a short sale with your bank for you. #1 an attorney #2 a REALTOR or real estate agent. How will you know it’s a scam? 99% the scammer will ask you for money up front. With Kiefer Realty as most professionals there is NO upfront charge or charge to you as the seller at all. The fact is your lender will pay your REALTOR and/or Attorney!

Here is what you need to know, and how Kiefer Realty handles a short sale. First and foremost, We are REALTORS not attorneys. We leave the legal stuff up to our real estate attorney who will work closely with you as the seller, Kiefer Realty as your REALTOR, your bank/lender, along with our title company; Brick City Title (or the title company of your choice), and anyone else who can help us get you out of a sticky situation.

The late payment and foreclosure…
As you may know after you are 10-15 days late the phone call start, then around 30 days the “threatening” calls start and on the 31 day you are officially late! Your lender can and will start reporting your delinquency on your credit file with all three credit companies. At the 90 day mark they start the foreclosure process. You will be served with a Notice of Lis Pendens (A lis pendens is a written notice that a lawsuit has been filed) this gets recorded at the court house putting everyone on notice you are facing foreclosure. These court records are available and open to the public to search and review.
****Special note for our readers… Want to stop the harassing phone calls? Google “Clark Howard Drop Dead Letter” and follow the instructions***

What is a short sale?
Simply put, your lender knows if they foreclose they are going to lose money when they sell your home. Then once they foreclose they have what are referred to as carrying costs these include, attorney fees, county fines, insurance, taxes, and paying people to check up on and maintain the house. These fees add up very fast. For these reasons your lender would rather lose the money in the short sale to save on these other expenses. Plus if you are living there you are maintaining the house, there is less of a chance of someone breaking in and stealing all the appliances, carpet, A/C and destroying it. All you need is someone to negotiate this for you! If you call Kiefer Realty at 352-861-6000 ext 151 we can get started today. The best part is as far as your neighbors, friends and family know you have just decided to move & they may never know of your financial situation.

We will be happy to meet with you for a private, personal and professional meeting to explain to you what to expect and how Kiefer Realty can help you. Don’t forget, when you hire Kiefer Realty to help Short Sale your home you get our attorney on your side too.

The rules of a short sale...
You will have to sell the house, and you will get nothing from it. Why would you want to do that? Well, if the bank takes it you get nothing anyway. On top of that, you never know when they (the bank) will show up with eviction papers and force you to move. With a short sale, not only can you live in your house for FREE, but because you are part of the sale process and working with your bank, you will have a negotiated moving date just like a normal real estate transaction when you sell your house. Since you are staying there for FREE, This allows you to save up money to find a new place to live.

Special notes…
-Your lender does NOT have to participate in a short sale.
-In some cases (mostly investor homes) the lender may ask you to pay some money or sign a note to -help offset the loss. Most of the time this is not the case with a good negotiator.
-The sale MUST be an “arms length transaction” meaning you nor your family can buy it back.
-You will not receive any money from the sale.
-You can live in the house for free allowing you to build savings.
-You will know when you have to move.
If you have further questions Please feel free to leave you comments or email KieferRealty@KieferRealtyPA.com we are here to help.

Florida was not designed for freezing temperatures!!!

Seriously now, all kidding aside…. Our retired Northern friends flock here during the winter to get away from the snow, ice & cold. Thus the term snowbirds. Florida is known know as the “Sunshine State” for a reason.

I know you think this is funny but, when the temperature in Florida gets to freezing we do crazy things! We run out side and cover our trees and plants with blankets, wrap our pipes, leave our faucets and hoses dripping for days, cover our wells, turn the sprinklers on to freeze our crops for insulation from the cold.

We do this because we are not set up for cold weather. We have tropical plants that are cold sensitive, our citrus groves & other crops freeze raising the prices for everyone. Our homes were built to withstand heat not cold, our pipes are exposed, and our wells for our drinking water are right out in the yard without protection. We even have landlord tenant laws about having A/C to protect us from the heat of the summer.

So you laugh when we decorate our palm trees for Christmas (see picture below), wear shorts in the winter and head to the beach at Christmas time. That’s what we enjoy about Florida. The cold and freezing is for the states North of us and we prefer it that way.

I guess the few weeks or month of cold weather we get is worth living in paradise, so we will deal with it and do what we have to, to survive. After all we have great beaches, awesome weather 90% of the time and paradise is right outside our front door almost every day of the year. So to our Northern friends… next time the snow falls, you have to drive on the black ice to get to work, or get snowed in just remember, Florida is just a short drive away and ya’ll are welcome in the Sunshine State. Just think if you pack up and head down now you too can enjoy a month of cold (25-40 degrees) then 11 months in a tropical paradise!!! You really should check out our home prices, we have some of the best values around. Start your free search at http://www.kieferrealtypa.com/ or give us a call 352-861-6000 we will do the searching for you. In the mean time bundle up and think of a warm tropical place like Florida.

See you soon.

Owner Financing vs. Lease Option - What's the Point

What is it?


People have been utilizing lease options and owner financing for many reasons. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Let’s start off with what they are and why they may work for you.

A lease option or Rent to own as you may have heard it called - With a typical lease option, A home owner / seller is willing to lease you a home for a period of time sometimes allowing a percentage of what you pay towards the lease to be credited towards your down payment on the purchase of a house. Then you would either bet a bank loan or the seller would owner finance it to you.

Owner financing or hard money loan - A seller is willing to sell you their house and take the position as the bank. The seller typically asks a little more for the house or a higher interest rate then you would pay at bank. Sellers that do this often ask for a balloon mortgage or a short term loan.

What’s the point?

For the seller - There are many reasons sellers choose these options. First the seller may be trying to defer taxes on the sale of the home by only collecting so much money per year instead of all at one time. They get to be in the position of collect interest on the loan instead of a low yield investment account. They get a down payment often used to purchase another investment property, thus building a real estate investment portfolio.

For the buyer - With owner financing the buyer usually wants a substantial down payment around 10%-20% and sometimes more. The buyer could be an investor hoping to be able to rent the home for more than their payment (be careful with this one). The buyer does not have good credit but can make the payment and is looking for a nice place to live.

With a lease option - The tenant/buyer typically has enough money to put down for rent deposits, first , last & security. They want to build equity in the home they are living in. The buyer can get in with a smaller down payment although the rent period is longer.

Now that you know the up side, let's discuss the down side.

For the seller -

Owner financing if the buyer doesn't pay you will have to foreclose costing you time and money while they live in your investment property for free.

Lease option - These follow the terms of a lease if the tenant doesn't pay they can be evicted (in Florida about 45 days) The tenant/buyer typically doesn’t ever purchase the house but if your contract was written correct, they paid for the repairs & taxes while they were in the home. Your best hope here is they don't destroy the house and the properly maintained it. But when you get it back you can do it all over again.

For the buyer - On the lease option you are typically responsible for any repairs, the homeowners and renters insurance and the property taxes. If you don't pay, all monies paid are considered to be rent only & you lose the house and your money invested.

Owner financing - You have invested a lot of time and money in the house and the improvements. If it goes to foreclosure you will lose it all.

Word to the wise - After your REALTOR draws up an agreement satisfactory to all parties. Take it to an attorney to draw up either a lease option or the owner financing agreement to make sure everyone is protected.

For some reason people think when they purchase this way they don't need a home inspection or survey. Trust me you should have them even though most of these types of properties are sold "AS IS"

Another few things you need to consider. Most terms are negotiable; the seller is taking a risk working with a buyer in this situation and is pretty much in the drivers seat. Not everyone is willing to consider giving a buyer a lease option or owner financing.

Where do you find these opportunities? Call Kiefer Realty at 352-861-6000 or email KieferRealty@KieferRealtyPA.com . We work with hard money lenders and investors that have many of these homes available and waiting for you.

No matter which you consider remenber you build equity when you are buying a home instead of  paying off someone elses home when you are renting

Who burst the bubble... Putting the blame where it belongs and where do we go from here

Over the past few years the restrictions on typical bank loans have become very strict. Not too long ago all you have to do was walk in to a bank, ask for a loan, find a house, and if it appraised you were golden. Yee Haw! New houses for everyone. Many knew they couldn't afford it. The loan officers knew you couldn't afford it! But, what the heck, you fell within the guidelines. Well, as we now know, this has caused a huge downturn in the real estate industry as people who were living paycheck to paycheck & credit card to credit card. Soon the equity in the homes was gone, the lines of credit were withdrawn, credit cards max out, limits were reduced and so on.

Who's fault is it? Well, it depends who you ask! Some blame the banks for giving the loans to people that couldn't afford it. Some blame investors or flippers for artificially inflating the market. Some blame REALTORS or Real estate agents for selling homes for such high prices. The way I see it everyone is to blame! The government for forcing lenders to give loans, the buyers for getting in to a payment they knew they couldn't afford. The lenders for approving the loans they knew the buyers couldn't possibly repay, the investors that didn't know when to stop and the media for talking it up then forcing ”the bubble to burst".
Some choose to call it investing, flipping, or creative financing. I, well... I call it greed. We all sat back & kept saying, "it can't keep going up, sooner or later it has to stop" well, at the end of 2005 it happened, the "bubble burst"

Where does this leave us now? We are now in December 2010, unemployment national average is at 9.5% Florida is near 13%-14% unemployment. Home prices have fallen back to the levels of about the late 1990's. A record number of people are looking for a place to rent instead of buy. Foreclosures are at a all time high. Banks are struggling to keep up with the carrying costs of all the foreclosures, local governments are trying to keep up with code issues and here you are wondering... when should I jump back in and buy or invest in real estate again?

Want know a little secret? Sales are climbing people are grabbing up deals everywhere. This is December, the real estate industry typically slows way down starting just after Halloween and doesn't pick up until about February. This year it hasn't! It’s almost reminiscent of 2004-2005 at the height of the market. Nothing seems to be slowing the deal hunters down. Believe it or not, people are once again "flipping" house and making money at it.

So, when should you start looking? I say... What are you waiting for? Real estate runs in cycles just like everything else. Whether we are at rock bottom or within 10% of the bottom, I say it's close enough buy a home and hold on to it, pick up a second home as an investment, heck buy one to help out a family member and hold it until the next time you hear the media say, The real estate bubble is back or your REALTOR says it can't keep going up, sooner or later it has to stop. Then you know it's time to sell.

HUD HOMES - What is a HUD property?

HUD Homes

I’m sure you’ve heard the term HUD Home, HUD Foreclosure or government foreclosed property. Did you ever wonder exactly what those terms mean? Well, hopefully we will be able to shed some light on this and maybe inspire you to consider a HUD home.

So, just what is HUD? The term refers to the Department of Housing and Urban Development , a branch of the federal government. A HUD home is a 1 to 4 unit residential property acquired by HUD as a result of a foreclosure action on an FHA-insured mortgage. HUD becomes the property owner and offers it for sale to recover the loss on the foreclosure claim. HUD does not like to call them HUD Foreclosures, they prefer the call them HUD Homes. Not only are HUD Homes single family residences, they can also be a duplex, triplex or a quadraplex. Multiple family units are great deals – you can live in part and rent out the rest to help pay your mortgage.

Almost anyone can purchase a HUD home if you have the cash or can qualify for a loan, of course subject to certain restrictions. First priority is given to buyers that will actually live in the home (Owner Occupants). If a HUD Home does not sell to an Owner Occupant after 30 days it will then be offered for sale to all buyers INCLUDING INVESTORS.

There are currently amazing bargains available through HUD and they sell quickly. If you would like to receive a daily list of HUD properties as they come on the market please contact Kiefer Realty at: KieferRealty@KieferRealtyPA.com or call 352-861-6000.