No zero-down, subprime loan for this baby! Whoa Nellie! Who needs to spend $100,000,000 ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS to live in Nevada?! Who the heck lives in there? Can you imagine building this for yourself?
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MOVE.COM LAUNCHES “TREND SPOT
[photopress:tax_1_2.jpg,full,alignright] When the Seller Pays the Buyer’s Closing Costs, the Buyer still gets to deduct those that are tax deductible. Discount points to buy down the interest rate, may be a selling point for the seller, if interest rates are holding people back from purchasing. Back in oh…about 1994 or so when the market was weak, sellers were offering to “buy down the rate”, and the IRS passed a rule saying seller paid discount points were tax deductible by the buyer, even though the seller paid them.
I have had accountants argue this point with me, saying it is not so. But it is. Those of us in the business back then remember it well, as it was retroactive, and we pulled all of our old HUD 1’s out and sent them to our clients with the new law, so they could file revised returns.
“The amount is clearly shown on the settlement statement (such as the Settlement Statement, Form HUD-1) as points charged for the mortgage. The points may be shown as paid from either your funds or the seller’s.” This quote is from an IRS site. The actual rule is not as clear as this consumer friendly explanation.
Of course, consult an accountant about this, and also about the real estate taxes you may have paid to the seller as reimbursement, and not to the County direct. Get out those HUD 1’s and bring them to your tax preparer along with your income and expense reciepts, if you purchased a property this year. And if the seller paid your closing costs, make sure you have those costs itemized on the HUD 1.
Any closing costs that are tax deductible, not all are, are deductible by the buyer, even if the seller is the one who is paying them for the buyer.
[photopress:images_1_2_3_4_5_6.jpg,full,alignright] I’ve done some simple math calculations and it seems that I have a minimum of 30,000 incoming and outgoing business emails in a year’s time. That’s just me personally, and not my partner or anyone else. That is business only and not including JunkMail or emailed property flyers or ads from Title Companies for Clock Hour classes, so I’m adding 20,000 for the crap to the 30,000 known to be business.
Big file emails, like Rhonda’s done in html, can be very short, like “Hi!”, and yet be large file size.
Sometimes short emails have a huge conversation string attached, and those can get pretty big too, even though the current message is “OK”.
Just adding this info to the now long “Disk Space” comment thread. I don’t imagine Gmail to be a good option for that much email. But I could be wrong. There must be different answers for a 50,000 email a year person, than a 5,000 email person…no? So thought this estimate of email usage might be helpful. This also does not count the emails I send directly from the mls with property links. Just those using my Outlook for email on the laptop.
Thank you for all of your suggestions so far. No “low disk space” warnings today! YAY!!
[photopress:pho.gif,full,alignright]I’m Pulling My Hair Out over LOW DISK SPACE!!! I need your help!!
Given the volume of emails I get with huge contract attachments, I keep getting “low disk space warnings”. I’m cleaning, I’m defragging, I’m erasing stuff I really don’t want to erase. STILL GETTING “low disk space” warnings and sometimes freeze ups.
I was going to get “more memory”, but was told that won’t help. Memory and disk space not the same.
I was told to get a memory stick to store things in, but I don’t get that. Once I put the memory stick in the laptop to work on whatever is in the stick, won’t I have the same problem?
Will deleting big Publisher files help? Word files? I’m at my wits end.
One thing I do know, if I go out and trade up to more memory and I STILL have disk space problems because more memory is not the answer, I’m going to shoot myself!
Your help appreciated. When I get five different answers I don’t know what to do. But maybe if you guys sort through all the answers, I’ll get a concensus opinion at the end.
Thanks.
Well, I promised I’d report in if I saw anything really good sitting around with no offers, or signs of foreclosure woes, on “the Eastside”.
As to good properties sitting around with no offers…not! I showed a few properties on Sunday, turned around and one went STI two hours later. Of course, very close to Microsoft. A few others left over there, but doubt they will last. Even then, those were not of the quality I would recommend. The best of day was a For Sale by Owner and not in the MLS at all. Interesting day. Literally only 5 to show from Juanita to Issaquah in the price range.
But today, I was shocked!! An agent asked me, “What does this mean ‘commission may be modified by lender'”? I said, “WHERE?” They said Kirkland. I said, Oh No!
Then I took a closer look. Who the heck bought that piece of crap at that price last year?! What lender did 100% funding in there? Don’t they know there was a huge suit against the builder for basically irresolvable drainage problems?
That’s not a foreclosure. That’s someone who walked into the bank and said, “Here! You can HAVE it BACK!
Now don’t ask me where it is. I can’t point fingers, but I promised to tell you if I saw “a short sale on the Eastside”, so here’s the first one I’m seeing. Based on the purchase date, there’s no way this should be selling for less today. But it will. Someone overpaid for it back then, never should have bought in there with the problems, and some lender wasn’t paying attention. Some Buyer Agent as well. Buyer Agents should have stripes so we can “strip them of their stripes” when they are responsible for someone buying a distressed property, for too much money, with zero down.
When you didn’t spend a dime on it, no downpayment, stacked closing costs, your credit was already crap which is why it was subprime…why not just walk away if you decide you don’t want it?
That wasn’t a foreclosure…it was a RETURN! No need to ask for their money back. They had not a penny invested in the first place. Don’t like it…walk away and bring the key to the lender.
That one was easy to figure out. But let’s keep our eyes open, because even though there seems to be a frenzy with three offers on one unit in that condo conversion up in Bothell on Sunday, it is definitely time to proceed with extreme caution. Make sure the value is there, before you buy.
[photopress:season_1.jpg,full,alignright]
How much is the market influenced by the fact that it stays light longer on weekdays?
We all know it’s true that people tend to look at property more on weekends, unless it gets dark later on weekdays. We all know the second and third quarters of each year are stronger than the first and last quarters. But how much does that have to do with it getting dark earlier and staying light later?
Well, this is a good year to test that, as tonight is the beginning of daylight savings time. For the first time in, I guess my life, we will turn our clocks forward, one hour, tonight, March 11, 2007.
Compare that to April 6 in 2003, April 4, in 2004, April 3 in 2005 and April 2 in 2006, and we are adding about 36 days to the real estate high season. Will be interesting to see how the March 2007 stats compare to previous years. I think they will be stronger due to DST being pushed earlier.
Maybe that will transcend into April. Maybe sellers who would have listed May 1, will be able to spruce up the home’s exterior earlier this year, with a few hours of daylight after work each night, and get their homes listed a couple of weeks earlier than expected.
I’m just happy that the daffodils are in bloom, I see pink trees everywhere, and starting tomorrow…it will get dark later. One of Seattle’s main claims to fame, is our long, long spring and summer days. And this year, we will have even more of it! Enjoy!
Those of you who are Inman News Subscribers might be interested in tomorrow’s podcast. First time I’ve agreed to do one of these. Apparently they take questions from callers, but their promo piece below doesn’t seem to announce how someone hears it at the time it is “on” or how someone calls in. If anyone knows that, can you post it in the comments please? Thanks.
An Exclusive Inman News Subscriber Benefit!
Monday, March 5, 2007
11 a.m. Pacific / 2 p.m. Eastern
Blogging for Business: Putting Your Personality Online
Hosted & Moderated by Inman News Managing Editor, Jessica Swesey
The number of real estate blogs has exploded over the last year and some agents are finding success in acquiring new clients using this simple and inexpensive medium. Listen to some of the top real estate bloggers in the country as they share practical know-how on what brought them to blogging, what makes a good blog and how they’ve found time to integrate this habit into their overall business plans.
Featured Speakers:
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Noah Rosenblatt, Founder, UrbanDigs.com Noah started UrbanDigs.com, a weblog that offers tips for both buyers and sellers to help maximize profit in the New York City housing market in late 2005. In 2006 Inman News recognized Noah’s blog as the “Most Innovative Real Estate Weblog. 2007 Still looking like a Seller's MarketI ran my stats this morning to track where the market is heading for 2007, based on properties For Sale, In Escrow and Closed so far since the first of the year. I use the stats for Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland as the basis for my market research, as this area has a huge component of housing in almost every market segment,and represents are high expectations for market conditions. When this area turns weak, we need to take notice. So far, it appears that my prediction that 2007 will meet or exceed that of 2006, appears to be on target.
The full data is on my site, with more graphs, but here are the quotes of particular relevance. “…75% of the market will still be a SELLER”S MARKET in 2007, based on how the year is opening up so far. We do not begin to see inventory tipping over into a balanced or buyer’s market until we get over $800,000 in price, which only represents about 25% of the housing market, in the area I have chosen to examine.” “The dominant portion of this market is between $200,000 and $600,000…which is by and large “the safer zone” representing 63.6% of all home buyers and sellers in the Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond markets and the area most likely to rise at 15% to 25% or greater in value by the end of this year.”
“Statistics not compiled or published by NWMLS.” NWMLS is the data source I used to compile the data and I created and published the graph. MLS rule to post this. Seattle Area AppreciationSeattle's Fremont Troll – Street Art[photopress:class.jpg,full,alignright]I like “The Fremont Troll” with people on it. Gives you a better perspective of the size of the Artwork. Grabbed this photo from my sister’s site. This cool video of the Fremont Troll, gives you a pan of the area and better perspective with regard to where it sits in the Cityscape. I was surprised to find that this Seattle Street Art piece was done in the early 90s. Thought it was done in the 60s or 70s, because of the Volskwagon “Bug” that the troll is holding and the Peace Signs painted on it. Seattle has tons of cool Street Art…Eastside has some as well. I’ll have to ask Loretta what her whole “tour” of Seattle is. I know my bedroom is on the tour LOL. View from my bedroom, actually. Have to get that upper deck expanded with a spiral up from the lower deck. Until then…tour through me bedroom is on her list 🙂 Plus the students love to visit our music room with over 4,000 cds and talk with Kim about his 35 years in the music industry. We are “on the tour”. My sister’s a piece of work…runs in the family. |
