Soon To Come... More Honest Appraisals

On Jan. 9, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced revisions to their Home Valuation Code of Conduct. Starting on May 1, lenders that want to sell their loans to the two industry behemoths must follow new guidelines. Mortgage brokers and Realtors, for example, will not be allowed to choose appraisers.

Read the full story: http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/n1-011909.cfm

Be A Winner!

"First-time buyers are likely in a better position to buy a house than ever in recent memory. Low prices combined with rock-bottom interest rates means they can effectively run the table." Quoted from the Sarasota Herald Tribune: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090119/ARTICLE/901190302/2055/NEWS?Title=Housing_downturn_s_winners_and_losers.

Truth is... it is a great time to buy if you are a first time home buyer AND if you aren't upside down on your current home.

• There's plenty of safe and/or creative loans out there for first time homebuyers requiring very little money down. I have a long list of programs available if you're interested.
• Also, to qualify for a FHA loan, you only need 3.5% down and can purchase a home up to $292,ooo. You can buy a new or newer home for this price in a lot of communities including Lakewood Ranch and Palmer Ranch and many of the smaller communities in between. Just outside of Sarasota in Ellenton down through Venice, you'd be amazed at what's available.
• HUD homes can be snatched up for as little as $100 down!

Call me (941) 350-4411 or email me at Christina@YourHometownConsultant.com if you want to learn more about your options.... If you still doubt me about the fabulous deals available, then let me offer you proof!

Rent & Then Buy!?!

Falling house prices and a slow market are forcing more homeowners to consider renting their current properties when it's time to buy a new home.

Read the full story:
http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/n1-011309.cfm

Biggest Buck For You Bang

For the second year in a row, Realtors report that exterior remodeling projects return the most money as a percentage of cost, as detailed in the 2008 Remodeling Cost vs. Value Report.

Read the full story: http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/n2-120308.cfm

September's Sarasota, Florida & US Real Estate Sales Statistics

From the Sarasota Association of Realtors:
http://www.sarasotarealtors.com/StatsSept08.pdf

From the Florida Association of Realtors:
http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/n1-102408.cfm

From the National Association of Realtors:
http://go-to.realtor.org/r/IY67XN/EWV1D/S3NNA7/FQP6E/755QE/XL/h/

"August 2008 Sees Continuation of Summer Sales Slowdown"

Despite a late summer and early fall dominated by depressing economic news across the nation, property sales in the Sarasota MLS did not see a dramatic change from the previous month, continuing a traditional slower summer sales season.

Overall sales stood at 440 in August, only slightly lower than the 454 in July. In fact, sales in August 2008 were actually higher than in August 2007, when only 430 overall single family homes and condos were sold.

The biggest decrease from last year was in condominium sales, which fell to 84 this year compared to 122 last year. The August 2008 report continued to show strength in pending sales, which stood at 536, just off last month's total of 584. In August 2007 only 456 pending sales were reported, which forecasts a stronger market for the fall and winter months. Pending sales reflect contracts executed by buyers and sellers, and current numbers indicate more closings likely in the upcoming months.

Sales prices for single family homes decreased somewhat in August, falling to $226,250 from last month's median of $250,000. But condominium prices saw a resurgence to $295,000 from July's $252,500. This means most property is apparently holding its value better locally, which also means the local market is doing better than the statewide and national downward trends.

"The national financial crisis has obviously dominated the news this month, but fortunately our market appears to be weathering yet another storm very well," said Helen Sosso, 2008 SAR President. "These are difficult times for many businesses and industries, and the real estate industry is no exception. But the Sarasota market is blessed with many fundamental strengths and attractions, one of which is our highly skilled and professional group of real estate brokerages and agents. In difficult times, the guidance of member agents in the SAR is vital to achieving your most advantageous property transaction."

Inventory levels in August 2008 dropped for the sixth consecutive month, and are the lowest they have been since late 2005. There were 6,461 single family homes listed, compared to 8,677 in July 2008, and 2,407 condos listed, compared to 4,599 condos listed last month. However, some of this discrepancy is likely attributable to the new MLS system which became operational in early August and resulted in the elimination of much of the duplication in property listings between the five area member associations (including the Manatee Association of Realtors).

The current local market, despite the negativity in the national news, continues to demonstrate statistically that we have a great selection of more affordably priced housing for buyers to visit and purchase. In addition, declining inventory levels normally indicates the market is returning to a more historical balance, which eventually leads to normal, long-term price appreciation.

Source: Sarasota Association of Realtors

Alert: Food Bank Out Of Food!

We Need Your Help!

The Food Bank is currently out of food. Angels Attic, a local non-profit organization, is asking for help to collect food for the many hungry children who go to school without breakfast everyday.

The following items are needed:
canned fruit
canned tuna
boxed macaroni and cheese
Ramon noodles
cereal
spaghetti sauce
spaghetti noodles (all kinds)

Call or email me where I can meet you to pick up your donation!!! Please help.

How To Fight The Tax Assessor

2008 Trim notices are mailed this month for both Sarasota and Manatee Counties. You have 25 days to file a petition with the Value Adjustment Board. Try it! You could save some money....

Here's an article from the SHT about someone who did it and won: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080810/ARTICLE/808100304/2107&title=How_to_fight_the_tax_assessor.

Once the form is filed, you'll need to prepare info for your hearing date. PLEASE call or email me for help during this part of the process as I can collect verifiable data on values in your neighborhood to help prove why your home should be valued for less and save you money!

2009 Predictions

Property values in Florida declined $153 billion last year, or 6 percent, state economists reported Wednesday. But they expect the state's economic picture to start improving in 2009.

Read the full story: http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/n3-080708.cfm.

For a second straight meeting, the Federal Reserve has decided to remain on the sidelines and leave interest rates unchanged. In the opinion of many economists, that stance may prevail not only for the rest of this year but well into 2009.

Read the full story: http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/n4-080708.cfm.

NAR's Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in June, rose 5.3 percent to stand at 89.0 from May. "The rise in pending home sales was broad-based with all four regions showing gains," says NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. Further improvement is predicted for the months ahead, and the report notes an upswing in Fort Myers.

Read the full story: http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/n2-080708.cfm.

Green Features on New MLS!

The Sarasota Association of Realtors' Green Realtor Alliance of Sarasota committee was amazingly able to have 4 green feature options added to our new Mid-Florida Regional Multiple Listing Service system's listing form. This makes us one of a small handful of Realtor associations and multiple listing services in the country to offer green features (1) as a way to distinguish your home for sale and (2) as an option to look for in your home. Go Sarasota!

Check out our new listing form: http://www.mfrmls.com/uploads/MFRMLSresidential.pdf. The green features can be found on the bottom left corner of the first page. My contribution is the last option which I felt was important since a lot of homes have some green elements (energy efficient appliances, window upgrades, skylights, low impact yards that may not yet be Florida Certified, etc), especially considering that every little bit helps!

Thanks for all the hard work, GRAS!

"Home-Value Web Sites Miss the Mark"

I often hear from clients or folks "on the street" that their home is worth X amount of dollars according to some online home valuation site and, therefore, should sell for more than the current market conditions seem to allow. While I'm generally a fan of free access to information and go out of my way to make sure my buyers and sellers are as informed and aware of the current market conditions as possible, I feel it is important to take a moment to share with all my opinion on these sites.

Although websites like Trulia, Zillow and Cyberhomes CAN give you an estimate of your home's value, I encourage you to remember the source. These sites pool public (county tax records) and private (MLS figures) information and use computer programs to generate their figures. These computer programs, for example, simply can't account for granite counter tops versus crumbling composite counter tops that need to be replaced. As everyone knows, your home is very different from your neighbor's or their neighbor's or the eyesore a few blocks over that is on a major road.

When a Realtor creates a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) to assess a home's value, factors such as condition, location, recent sales and the currently available inventory are taken into consideration. A good Realtor will even go so far as to verify the facts used to compile a CMA by accounting for a home's unique details in pictures, virtual tours and general descriptions. A great Realtor will make phone calls to find out why nearby homes sold for the amount they did and will even preview homes for sale in the neighborhood before they suggest a listing price.

In summary, check out these sites as you should stay informed about the biggest purchase in your life to date. However, please remember that although computers can replicate on canvas Van Gogh's Starry Night down to the direction and width of each brush stroke... they lack creativity and critical thinking skills.

If you would like a more accurate and human generated valuation of your home, email me your property's address.

For a second opinion on these websites, here's one from The Associated Press: http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2008062402?OpenDocument

Sarasota's May Home Sales Statistics

While most areas throughout the state continue to struggle, home sales in the Sarasota MLS hit an all time high for 2008 in May with a total sold of 627 single family houses and condos--the most properties sold in one month since March 2007. This marks the fifth consistent increase in sales this year: January 329, February 423, March 514 and April 567.

Inventory levels were also lower in May for the third month in a row with a total of roughly 9500 homes and 5100 condos currently for sale.

There's still a lot of truly affordable housing available out there, including great deals on foreclosures. If you're interested in receiving automatic updates of newly listed homes and price reductions--or need help finding your dream home--email me at Christina@YourHometownConsultant.com.

National Homeownership Month

"This year commemorates the 40th Anniversary of the historic 1968 Fair Housing Act. On April 11, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson urged congress to approve the Fair Housing Act just one week following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a tribute to Dr. King's legacy and commitment to civil rights. One of the Act's central objectives was to prevent discrimination based on race in the sales or rental of housing. This historic Act has since empowered people from all races and ethnicities to pursue the dream of equal access to housing.

"In 2002 President George W. Bush enhanced our nation's commitment to equal housing opportunities for all by designating June as National Homeownership Month, with the goal of increasing minority homeownership in America by 5.5 million by the end of the decade," National Association of Realtors.

Just wanted to share. :)

Sarasota County Tax Appraiser?

Friday I attended the Sarasota Association of Realtors Quarterly Luncheon which presented a forum for both county tax appraisers to debate their qualifications and ability to affect a positive change for Sarasota County. Other county candidates (for school board, commissioner etc) were also invited to “meet and greet” the Realtors in attendance. I’m glad I came, but not only because the food and company was fabulous, because I was glad to be introduced to and learn more about so many folks who make or will make importance decisions on behalf our county and folks.

My main motivation for attending, however, was to find out what sort of freewill is allowed in the role of county tax appraiser otherwise I didn’t really understand how a change in person will make a difference in our purses and wallets. Before the luncheon, I assumed it was a position of management, accounting and networking, with the latter being the only viable way to impact change by involvement with state politics. Indeed, my assumption was partially correct except for the candidates interpret the impact of state laws and regulations for our county. Jim Todora claims these to be the law of the land to be adhered without exception and is very knowledgeable as to their specifications and even exact language, some of which he drafted. Bill Furst claims there is room for interpretation and it is the role of the tax appraiser to infer from these “guidelines” for the greatest benefit of the county and folks represented; and deal with any ramifications later. I honor and respect both approaches and generally meander through life with a bit of both, but as far as for this position I suppose I need to do a bit more research.

Which candidate will I support? Both are incredibly qualified though in different respects. Furst, a former Realtor and broker manager, has experience with the many varied aspects of real estate and Todora obviously has been our tax appraiser for the past twelve years. To learn more about each candidate, visit their websites: www.jimtodora.com and www.furstforfairness.com.

To learn more about exemptions for your property, the appraisal process and the recorded details of your home or commercial property, visit the Sarasota County Property Appraiser’s official website: www.sarasotaproperty.net.

Wouldn’t Life Be Great If We Each Had a Genie In a Bottle?

All the time, I am engaged by folks who desperately speculate and pontificate real estate speculation. I have been told by an easy one hundred self-presumed experts in the past six months that they know just how long our “bust” will last and exactly how much thousands of property values will be impacted. I read local and national publications try to figure out a way to report on the economic events of late with a spin attractive enough to maintain and hopefully increase their dwindling subscription base. Similarly, real estate professionals, and so often agents, can be found chattering amongst ourselves incessantly in search of a voice that interprets and represents the current market in such a way as to motivate our clients to actually close on a contract. We are all in it for the money. Buyers and sellers too. It’s the mutually beneficial and sometimes detrimental catch-22 of capitalism.


More importantly, the fact of our real estate matter is that a home sold yesterday—now available for far less today (with perhaps a couple incentives thrown in at closing)—is a good deal in the least. Add the fact that the price of a rather significant portion of both residential and commercial properties has already adjusted well enough to be far more than reasonable to many more pockets and purses. Is this what “bust” means to you?


Furthermore, I am personally not against the encouragement of home ownership among as many folks as possible. In fact, it is an American right I feel we should all strongly defend. The home I sell to the newlyweds today WILL turn into their children’s college funds in the future and that’s all good, pending we avoid World War III, devastation of the environment and global infection by some deathly contagious virus. Otherwise, there is no reason why the first real estate “bubble” of the 21st century will shortly create ghost towns with dust bowl crossings, thousands across the country, and millions of displaced folks now so poor they bury their dead in someone else’s backyard.


Today… is the time to buy, especially if you are secure in your current position and able to put in the effort of making money work for you, though it may no longer be made quite so easily.


ps. The days of countless flippers and mover-uppers who took great risks in order to reap great rewards, remind me of shopping at the mall with my parents when I was a kid. Although I wanted money to buy cool things, I didn’t always get what I wanted and sometimes we drove home empty-handed. No worries though, my parents owned their own house.

Solution To Low Appraisals

Do you own research if the appraisal comes in too low

Much to their chagrin, many buyers, sellers and owners are finding out that, in today's down market, their homes aren't worth what they thought. At least, not in the eyes of the professionals hired to tell lenders what the places could fetch on the open market if borrowers failed to make their payments.

In a perfect world, the value of a property is what a ready, willing and able buyer will pay for it. But the housing market is imperfect at best. For one thing, values rise and fall with the tides, maybe not on a daily basis but over a period of several months. For another, market forces do not act as freely as they should. For example, buyers sometimes will pay whatever the seller asks just to get their hands on a house they've come to love, whether or not the price has any basis in reality. And in a few instances, buyers and sellers intentionally conspire to inflate the agreed-upon price to defraud the lender and line their pockets to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Consequently, an appraiser, a trained valuation expert who can give the property the once over and give the lender his or her opinion of its true worth, is needed. But the art of appraising is just that, an art, not an exact science. And even though those who practice it hold the fate of sellers, buyers and refinancers in their hands, they are not gods. Indeed, they are fallible, just like everyone else. If you honestly believe yours has made a mistake, you can appeal his finding to your lender.

Start by finding out whether yours is a full-blown appraisal or an electronic one. More and more lenders use automated valuations, particularly in the home-equity sector, to speed up the process and cut costs. But they are notoriously inaccurate. AVMs, or automated valuation models, are good enough to give lenders an overview of local housing values, especially when they are lending only 75 percent of what the house is really worth. But they just won't do it on a house-by-house basis, when lenders are putting up 95 percent or more of the home's value.

Whether you are seeking a home-equity loan or a primary mortgage, if your lender is relying on an AVM, ask to have your place valued by a human being who actually looks at your specific house, compares it to others in the neighborhood, checks out the community and does all the things an appraiser is supposed to do. In most cases, lenders will bow to your wishes, especially if you are willing to write the check to cover the several hundred dollars a full appraisal will cost. If a real, live appraiser is responsible for a valuation you think has come in too low, your appeal becomes a little more problematic -- if only because you are dealing with human beings who, unlike machines, have feelings. So to keep your appeal from becoming an exercise in futility, do it with as much finesse as possible. "When a lender reassigns the appraiser to take another look at a house," a real-estate broker whose name is long forgotten once told me, "it's like telling him he screwed up the first time. How many people are going to admit that?"

Of course, you can always ask for a second opinion from another appraiser. But you'll have to pay the freight a second time, too. Moreover, to stand any chance of winning your point, the second valuation must be more than 5 percent higher than the first. In the appraisal game, anything less is considered an acceptable difference. Besides, even if the second appraisal is far above the first, it's the lender, not you, who gets to pick the appraisal on which the loan is based.

While this may seem as if the cards are stacked, you can even the playing field by suggesting, firmly but nicely, that the appraiser assigned by the lender erred and requesting, again nicely, that he be asked to take a second look. And you can grease the wheel a bit further by doing some of the appraisal spadework on your own. It may take time and effort, but it could pay off in the long run.Your job is to search out "comparables" the appraiser may have missed the first time around.

A comparable is a property of the same size and style in the same location and with the same features as the one being appraised. To determine a fair-market value for the subject property, an appraiser looks for recent sales of several comparable properties. Normally, however, they limit their search for "comps" to the multiple-listing service (MLS) operated by the local real-estate association. And when they do that, they may not be looking at the entire market. Even though enough sales pass through the typical MLS that an appraiser should have little trouble finding comparables, not every deal goes through the system. Independent brokers who are not MLS members make many of them, and some are made without the help of an agent, MLS member or not. Then, too, some MLS members don't put all their listings into the system. As a result, half of all transactions in some major markets occur outside the MLS. Your job is to find them. And to do that, you'll have to comb the land records at the local courthouse. Remember, though, that you are not just looking for sales in the same general neighborhood. You want at least two, but preferably three, of the same style -- ranch to ranch, for example, not ranch to two-story Colonial -- size and features. Also, sales should be no more than six months old, and the more recent the better.

If your search bears no fruit, turn your attention to the comps cited by the appraiser. Sometimes they are not really comparable. While the appraiser is required to go inside the subject property and measure every room, he does not have to do the same with the comps upon which he bases his valuation. He may have been inside one or even two, if he has appraised those properties in the past. But more often than not, his knowledge of them is based entirely on their description in the multiple-listing system or the public-land records. Often, those narratives are far from accurate. Sometimes, they're incomplete; other times, they're nothing more than blatant advertisements. A "large, wooded lot" may have but one tree, for example. And wallboard is hardly a fair comparison to your lovely wood-paneled rec room with its wet bar and fireplace.

The trick here is to find as many differences as possible in your favor, differences the appraiser may not have known about or failed to consider. In other words, try to find gray, fuzzy, undefined, superficial values where the appraiser can say you are right and he is wrong. One item often overlooked is the age of the comparable house; another is the size of the lot; and a third is room sizes. Of course, this kind of detective work requires that you visit comparable properties with pad, pencil, tape measure and a sharp eye for detail. It also helps that they have cooperative occupants who will let you snoop around. But if you tell them what you're about, they should be more than willing to cooperate.

Most appraisers are aware of their shortcomings so that if your pilgrimage turns up major differences, they should be willing to re-evaluate their original valuation."We're not arbitrary," says one expert who claims he has no problems changing his opinion based on new findings. "We're open-minded within reason. After all, we're only as good as the data that's available to us."

Lew Sichelman has been covering real estate for more than 30 years. He is a regular contributor to numerous shelter magazines and housing publications. Sarasota Herald Tribune.