Credit Information EVERYONE Needs to Know

If you are thinking about buying a or re-financing now, or anytime in the future, one of the main factors determining your ability to qualify for a loan is your credit score. Understanding what credit scores mean, how they are calculated, and how to improve your score can make the difference in your ability to qualify for a loan and get the best possible terms and interest rates.

Credit scores range from 300-850. Here is how those scores are broken down:

780 and Above: Outstanding

740-780: Excellent

690-740: Good

620-690: Fair

62o and Below: Poor

Typically, the higher your credit score, the better loan terms you will be offered. People with scores below 620 will generally not be able to qualify for a loan.

Credit scores are determined by a number of factors including:

• Amounts owed
• Payment history
• Types of credit in use
• New Credit
• Length of Credit History

There are three major credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. These agencies may all have slightly different information, and they each use a different method to calculate credit scores, so your score will be slightly different from each one. Most lenders will pull credit reports from all three agencies when processing a loan. It is important that everyone checks their credit report at least once a year to ensure that the information is accurate and up-to-date. You can pull a free copy of your credit report once a year through the website http://www.annualcreditreport.com/. This website also offers credit scores, for a fee.

If your credit score has seen better days, there are things you can start doing right away to improve your score:

• Pay all your bills on time
• Work to get credit card balances below 25% of their limits
• Open new accounts only if absolutely necessary
• Lengthen your credit history
• Seek credit counseling through the National Foundation for Credit Counseling http://www.nfcc.org/
• Opt-out to stop receiving new credit card offers through http://www.optoutprescreen.com/ or call 1-888-567-8688

In Boulder County, we have a fantastic resource for anyone who is thinking about buying a home and has questions about credit or related items. The Boulder County Housing Counseling Program offers free housing counseling and classes http://www.bouldercounty.org/hhs/housingcounseling.htm. These services are available to residents of Boulder, Broomfield, and western Weld Counties.

Brought to you by:

Jennifer Fly

Broker Associate

Colorado Landmark, Realtors

(303) 443-3377

jenniferfly@coloradolandmark.com

Twitter: jenflycolorado

Much to my surprise! Real Estate Pirates

"Argh there Mate’s, there are pirates in our mists…”

In my effort to stay current I use Google Alerts and love it! But it can unearth the darndest things. I want to share my thoughts and hope to start some dialogue with our brokers and others about our own real estate style of piracy.

Being an old salty dog and long time listing agent, I believe there is some priority in the listing process, meaning that I am the one that has to provide my seller with the necessary exposure to sell their property. As a managing broker I am the one who designs, implements, and pays for the unique selling and marketing of each listing. I live or die on my performance, competency level and techniques. Or I walk the plank!

Today however there are other agents who scrape our listings and blog about them on their own websites, and market them as their own listings! When a listing is on a website sometimes it is not that obvious to the viewer who the listing belongs to. While at first glance this may seem like additional exposure for our listings, however there are several reasons why this is a problem.

We are hired by our sellers because they believe we can do the best job selling their property. We spend extensive time and money learning about the property, preparing it for sale, collecting pertinent documentation, and ensuring that every detail about the property that we enter into the MLS or any websites is accurate. Our sellers trust us to protect their investment and their privacy. This pirating of listings is counterproductive, disingenuous, and ultimately damaging to our clients, our businesses, and our cooperative relationships.

So, what do you think? If you are an agent, I encourage you to post a comment here or send me your example of real estate piracy and how it has effected you and/or your clients. If you are a home Seller, how would you feel about this if it was your listing being pirated to other unauthorizedwebsites? I’m convinced that social networking and personal communication is not only necessary but healthy. But like any good thing it needs to be tweaked and governed. We as real estate professionals have to work together and respect each other so we can dig ourselves out of this tough market effectively and successfully.

Joel Ripmaster

Broker/Owner

Colorado Landmark, Realtors

joelripmaster@coloradolandmark.com

303-443-3377

Six Home Critical Home Staging Tips for Sellers

The Home-Staging Cheat Sheet

Source: US News and World Report

Six easy ways to make your property more appealing to buyers

Faced with a massive glut of unsold homes, many would-be sellers are struggling to make their properties stand out in today’s downtrodden real estate market. But while the economic head winds are beyond property owners’ control, author Barb Schwarz says they can dramatically improve their chances of making a sale by devoting attention to an often-overlooked corner of real estate marketing: home staging.

Schwarz, the CEO of StagedHomes.com, was a pioneer in home staging back in the early 1970s and has used the techniques to sell properties ever since. “The goal [of home staging] is for the buyer to mentally move in,” Schwarz says. “If they cannot mentally feel and see themselves living here, you’ve lost them.” Schwarz offers six simple tips to help home sellers better position themselves in a sluggish market.

Get them inside. The first thing a prospective buyer notices about a home is not the living room but the front yard. “A lot of people think staging is the inside only,” Schwarz says. “[But] we’ve got to stage the outside to get them inside.” So cut the grass, trim the hedges, rake those leaves, sweep the sidewalks, and power-wash the driveway. And make sure you don’t have too many potted plants scattered around the property. “Nothing dead,” Schwarz says. “You’d be amazed how many people have dead plants in their yards.”

Pretend you’re camping. Schwarz says a cluttered room will appear too small to buyers. “Clutter eats equity,” she says. Schwarz tells homeowners to go through each room of the house and divide their belongings into two piles: “keep” and “give up.” Items in the “keep” pile will be used to stage the room, while those in the “give up” pile should be stored elsewhere. “Pretend you are camping,” she says. “When you go camping, you are not taking all those books, right?” The decluttered rooms may appear bare to the seller, but the buyer won’t think so. “We are not selling your things…. We are selling the space,” Schwarz says. “And buyers cannot visualize when there is too much [stuff] in the room.” Decluttering a home’s outdoor spaces is important, too, she says.

Balance hard and soft surfaces. When staging a particular room, it’s essential to have a good balance of hard surfaces, such as a coffee-table top, and soft surfaces, like a carpet, Schwarz says. For example, a room with a cushy, 7-foot-long sofa, a love seat, and four La-Z-Boy recliners has too many soft surfaces and not enough hard surfaces. “The room is sinking,” she says. “It’s all too heavy.” Instead, consider getting rid of the La-Z-Boys and the love seat, replacing them with two wingback chairs. “If you have hardwood floors but no rugs, it’s too hard,” Schwarz says. “So you want to add a rug.”

Work in ones or threes. Schwarz recommends arranging items on top of hard surfaces in ones or threes. You would place three items—say, a lamp, a plant, and a book—on top of a larger hard surface, like an end table. “You take away the plant and the book, it’s too bare,” she says. “[But if] you put 10 things on it, it’s overdone.” The three items should be closely grouped together in a triangle shape. “I draw a triangle for my clients,” Schwarz says. “I say, ‘Here is the end table—let’s superimpose a triangle on top of it.’ ” For hard surfaces with less area, however, a single item will do.

Decide from the doorway. Since would-be buyers will get their first impression of each room from the doorway, homeowners should use that perspective to judge their staging work. “Do your work, go back to the doorway. Do some more, go back to the doorway,” Schwarz says. That way, you’ll be better able to ensure that each room appeals to buyers.

Make your place “Q-Tip clean.” A properly staged home should be immaculate—”Q-Tip clean,” as Schwarz puts it. “I mean Q-Tips getting dead flies out of your windowsill [and] going around the bottom of your toilet on the floor,” she says. The purpose of ensuring the house is spotless is more than simply making it presentable. If a home is unkempt, a buyer will wonder what other, less visible problems may come with the property, Schwarz says. “They’ll say, ‘Gosh, if they live like this, what don’t they take care of that I can’t see?’”

Broker associates at Colorado Landmark, Realtors can help you sell your home with the best staging and price positioning techniques. Contact Pam at 303-302-8839 or pam@coloradolandmark.com for more information.

Home Sellers - Let's Take Action Together!

Historic evidence shows us that at any given time in a healthy real estate marketplace that 25% of its standing inventory should be under contract at all times. This is not the case in Boulder’s luxury real estate market and it concerns me. Are we really in a healthy place or are we fooling ourselves? I think the latter and the numbers and statistics are proving me right.

So … it is time for our friends and clients to take note and make real changes. Price Changes! In the past I have on occasion lost listings to other brokers. On my exit interview with the seller I have more often than not heard “ Why didn’t you tell me it was price, we are flexible”. Well now it is official, we need price reductions of some consequence to function correctly to get us back to normal.

If there are 115 homes listed over $2,000,000 and 5 of those homes are currently under contract, we actually need 25-30 homes under contract to mark the bottom of the market and put full recovery under way. I want our listings at Colorado Landmark, Realtors to lead the way to that recovery. So when people ask me about the local real estate market, market recovery and the “reality of realty”, I would love to say we lead the way from stagnation to normal and beyond.

Sellers … here is your mission for the next 90 days:

• Lower your listing price - your agent can help with strategic price positioning
  
• consider owner financing as a way to attract additional buyers


• stage your home and don't forget about the front yard


• anticipate and neutralize known cosmetic or maintenance issues that could pull buyers off the fence in the wrong direction


• look into solving buyer problems with creative ideas and methods, such as exchanges and leasing options
  

… and most of all, full out effort by the whole team – sellers, agents, and companies.

We can do this and do it together. Don’t come to me months from now and say “I wish I had lowered my price for the spring market” and be disappointed that you are headed into next fall or winter still sitting on the sidelines. Now is the time!

Joel Ripmaster

Owner / Managing Broker

Colorado Landmark, Realtors

joelripmaster@coloradolandmark.com

Reality Bytes - Boulder County Home Inventories

When I say I can sympathize with frustrated homeowners whose properties haven't sold yet, I really mean it, because my own home is for sale too. I have been considering a price reduction on my property, so I decided to do some research on inventory levels in my home's market area. It occurred to me that other folks in Boulder County might want this information too.

Here's what I did ... I found the number of homes sold in various price categories for the last six months, from September 2008 through March 2009. Then I compared that with the current inventory as of yesterday, April 1st 2009. With some simple math I determined the number of months worth of inventory in each price range. This gives a seller an idea of how long it may take to sell their home.

And let me tell you ... the news ain't good, at least in some price ranges. Not so great for sellers that is, but great for buyers because there is a lot to choose from. Overall the most dismal news is in the high end condo market in the City of Boulder. And not surprising is the glut of homes in county inventory over the $1.5M price point. The good news ... if you have a home between $200-500k you can expect to sell it within approximately 6 months or less. In the chart below, if you see "none sold" instead of a number of months of inventory it is because no properties sold in that price range from September 2008 through March 2009, which in itself is a significant statistic.

A couple of notes ..

• The numbers represent the number of months it would take for all of the existing inventory to sell, assuming that the rate at which buyers are purchasing remains the same and no new inventory is added.


• The existing inventory is just a snapshot in time. Inventory changes daily and usually increases in the spring and summer. But there are also more buyers during this time as well.


• Unfortunately not every home is saleable in its current condition - some properties are just too flawed to attract a buyer without deep, deep discounting.
  

If you would like a similar analysis of inventory in your neighborhood don't hesitate to contact me!

Pam Metzger

Director of Relocation

pam@coloradolandmark.com

303-302-8839 (direct)

Understanding Short Sales - A Good Option for Homeowners in Trouble

Most of us in the real estate business (and probably most people in America) didn’t know what the term “short sale” meant 2 years ago. Now it is a topic that appears in our business on a daily basis, and we are all working hard to stay up to date with the latest information to help our clients.


A short sale is an agreement from your lender to accept less than the amount you owe on your mortgage and release the lien on your property so you are able to sell it and move on. The short sale process can take, on average, 4-6 months and requires a lot of patience, but there are steps that can be taken to make the process easier.

If you are a seller and you have fallen behind on your mortgage payments, tell your Realtor right away. As with all real estate transactions, it is important to work with someone who knows and understands the process. Your Colorado Landmark Realtor can give you a checklist of the items that should be completed and submitted to the bank upon listing your home. Once you receive an offer on your property, your Realtor will help you submit it to the lender along with other required documentation to help facilitate the sale as quickly as possible.

By the time they have reached the point of becoming delinquent with their mortgage payments, many sellers are tempted to just walk away from their mortgage and allow the bank to foreclose on their property. There are several reasons why this is a bad idea.

• A foreclosure can negatively impact your credit score by 250 – 300 points, and it will remain on your credit history for up to 10 years.



• A homeowner who has had a foreclosure is ineligible for a Fannie Mae backed mortgage for a period of up to 5 years, and has to disclose a foreclosure in the last 7 years on any loan applications.



• Having a foreclosure on your credit history can make it difficult for you to qualify for any other type of loan, and some employers will even use this information to re-assign or terminate employees.
  

Instead, if you take the time and effort to get your house sold through a short sale, it will most likely impact your credit score by only 50 or so points, and you are able to qualify for a mortgage and purchase another home after only 2 years. Not to mention that you can sell your home and move out of your neighborhood with dignity, and feel as though you did everything you could to protect your family’s future.

If you are a buyer and you are interested in purchasing a property that is being sold as a short sale, you will also need to be patient. It is important to work with a buyers agent who has experience with short sales. New post coming soon: tips for buyers interested in short sale properties!


The short sale process can be stressful and frustrating, but working with an experienced agent will make it much easier for you every step of the way. At Colorado Landmark our real estate sales associates strive to be up to date on the latest real estate trends and market information. Our sales associates regularly pursue continuing education opportunities to reinforce their expertise and knowledge. If you have any questions or are ready to sell your home, please give us a call.




This blog entry written by:


Jennifer Fly, Broker Associate, Colorado Landmark Realtors

303-506-0253 (cell)
jenniferfly@coloradolandmark.com

Get Off the Fence (and INTO your new yard!)

Is the real estate market in the Boulder/Denver area tough - you bet it is, especially if you are a seller. But if you are a buyer it is a dream come true! The number of available homes in inventory is higher than ever, and mortgage rates are at historic lows. So what are you waiting for?

Afraid you won't get as much out of your current home as you hoped? That might be true, especially if you bought your home between 2000-2006. Historically homeowners have realized 25% appreciation in their homes over every five year period since 1980. Something happened between 2000 and 2006 - that appreciation skyrocketed to 89%! No wonder our ideas of value are skewed now! We saw that bubble and thought "Hey, I want a part of that." Well, guess what? That bubble has burst.

But hey, 25% appreciation every five years is not too shabby, especially as compared to the stock market. From 2000 through 2008 the Dow lost 9.8%, the S & P lost 20.6%, and the Nasdaq lost 47.8%. Let's all get off the fence, back in the yard, and be grateful for our 25% again.

What's going on in the Boulder/Broomfield/Longmont area? Well we all know that sales are down. For February 2009 the number of single family residential units sold was down more than 11% as compared to February 2008, and condo sales were down almost 8%. Average sales prices are down too - 7.3% for single family but UP almost 2% for condos! And compared to the rest of the country, that 7.3% drop isn't that bad! Areas in California, Florida, Arizona, etc... are down over 40%! Again, let's all be grateful that we live in this beautiful, clean, relatively uncrowded area and our prices are holding somewhat steady compared to the rest of the country.

How many times have you heard someone say, or said yourself, "If I knew 20 years ago what I know now, I could have bought that property for nothing. Today that property is worth a million bucks! " THIS is the time folks. If you have a home to sell, you won't make as much money on it as you would have had you sold it two years ago. But chances are you WILL make money on it, and you can pick up a replacement property for a screaming deal.

If you appreciate this information and would like more, please let me know by contacting me at pam@coloradolandmark.com. I am the Relocation Director here at Colorado Landmark. I am NOT a licensed real estate professional and I won't try to sell you anything. As the Relocation Director it is my job to assist people moving in and out of the Boulder/Longmont/Broomfield area in any way that I can. I stay abreast of the current trends and statistics and can help you dig up information, analyze your current situation, and make decisions about where you want to go.

Pam Metzger

Director of Relocation

Colorado Landmark, Realtors

pam@coloradolandmark.com