Buyers' Market?

Buyers' Market? Depends where it is.

Two months ago, for a span of about 4 weekends. I showed about 25 to 30 homes to my clients in Corona. (Some homes we saw it twice or three times). They have impeccable taste and selected a great location to shop for their dream home. (West Corona below I-91, near Green River Road and the Canyon areas)

They were using Realtor.com to search for homes for sale. They sent me several long list of homes which I looked up on the MLS and promptly found 1/3 of that were already PENDING or SOLD!

I registered them on my Listingbook.com and told them to search there and to avoid the 'P' for Pending.

For several weekends they called me and I would drive over to meet them and showed them around. Many of the homes that were REOs were all sold quickly. Most homes that were left on the market with signs infront of the homes were mostly Short Sale.

When we drove around, we saw many homes with for sale signs but there were no brochures in the boxes, some sign posts did not even have the boxes for the brochure.

Many of the signs are just plain FOR SALE signs. My buyers insisted that I call the agents. Many of the calls I made were to the agents of the homes that either were Pending or already SOLD. THEY DID NOT HAVE ANY SIGNS INDICATED the CURRENT STATUS. WHAT A WASTE of time and my money for those cell phone calls. To have the agents said 'SOLD' or 'PENDING' when I called really irritated us.

Several of those homes with the signs did not have a lock box and if there are lock boxes, there were no codes indicated on the MLS, YOU HAVE TO CALL THE AGENT!. When I called, I got their answering voice mails. I left a message, 1 out of 5 of the agents returned the call, mostly a day after, but the rest - I never heard back from them. Some of the homes indicated on agent's remark on the MLS to call owners of the homes. The same thing happened, NONE of the owners ever call back.

My buyers asked me to write up offers for the homes (that were Short Sale) that they like so I wrote several offers and sent the offers in.

I never heard back from the agents. (Many of those agents were out of towners, many of the agents were local). One agent was very nice and he offered to send the information about all of his listings.

No matter what... In the end, it was quite an effort and much time spent and
it was kind of upsetting to me at the waste of papers that I used to print all of those contracts.

My clients finally decided to get a loan approval from their friend which they did. The friend also happens to have a RE license. The gentleman told them that he has contacts with the bank and he can go through the hoops better thatn I would and they should use him as an agent instead.

Two weeks later my clients called and said he could not get any agents for those Short Sale and REO homes to call him back either lol....

I was laughing out loud to myself and that was quite a stress reliever...

Mortgage rate freeze reached

Today President Bush announced a big program for the relief of the Mortgage crunches for the homeowners. Here is the newsbrief:

Mortgage rate freeze reached

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
11 minutes ago


WASHINGTON - Hundreds of thousands of strapped homeowners could get some relief from a plan negotiated by the Bush administration to freeze interest rates on subprime mortgages that are scheduled to rise in the coming months

There is no perfect solution," President Bush said Thursday as he announced an agreement hammered out with the mortgage industry. "The homeowners deserve our help. The steps I've outlined today are a sensible response to a serious challenge."

Seeking to counter criticism he is violating his free-market principles, Bush said the private-sector plan does not represent the imposition of a government solution to the mortgage crisis.

"We should not bail out lenders, real estate speculators or those who made the reckless decision to buy a home they knew they could not afford," Bush said after meeting with industry leaders at the White House. "But there are some responsible homeowners who could avoid foreclosure with some assistance."

Bush said 1.2 million people could be eligible for help. But only a fraction will be subject to the rate freeze. Others would get assistance in refinancing with their lenders and moving into loans secured by the Federal Housing Administration, Bush said.

Also, the aid will only come to those who ask for it, he said. Thousands of borrowers who are falling behind on their payments have been sent letters about the options, and Bush also urged people to call a new hot line: 1-888-995-HOPE.

The announcement followed news earlier Thursday that home foreclosures surged to an all-time high in the July-September period. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that the percentage of all mortgages that started the foreclosure process in the third quarter jumped to a record 0.78 percent. That top the mark of 0.65 percent of all mortgages in the second quarter.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071206/ap_on_bi_ge/mortgage_crisis_60;_ylt=And28tZReMbDjxW5ai5ZDXyb.HQA