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  Keep Your Home Sale from Falling Apart

  After finding a buyer, all you have to do to make it to closing is to avoid these five traps. Read

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  6 Tips for Choosing the Best Offer for Your Home

  Have a plan for reviewing purchase offers so you don’t let the best slip through your fingers. Read

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  7 Tips for Staging Your Home

  Make your home warm and inviting to boost your home’s value and speed up the sale process. Read

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  5 Tips to Prepare Your Home for Sale

  Working to get your home ship-shape for showings will increase its value and shorten your sales time. Read

Price is everything in this market. Homes are selling in Monmouth County and sourrounding New Jersey Counties. The homes that are selling are priced to sell in this market.

Remember real estate is local, really local.  Even though the overall numbers in Monmouth County may show one thing there will always be pocket of local real estate activity that may not show the same as the larger area.

Having said that, I will show hear some stats from my local MLS, the Monmouth Ocean MLS for all of Monmouth County.  For statistics for a smaller area, contact me through my website at NorthernMonmouthHomes.com and will will provide you stats for more specific areas.

Here is a graph showing the number of homes sales per month for the last year.  As you can see it doesn’t look that much different than last year.  The real estate market is cylical and the spring summer cycle is generally an up cycle.  So it is premature to think that because we are having increasing homes it automatically means we have hit bottom.

Notice that in July ’08 the homes sales for that month were 449 and in July ’09 there were 471.  Not much of an improvement.

Let’s look at the inventory of homes on the market.  Again the inventory rises and falls in seasonal cycles.

Number of homes available in Monmouth County in July ’08 was 4603 and in July ’09 it is 4637.

We all hope the bottom is near, but unfortunately the signs are not there yet.   To make things worse there are likely more foreclosures that will hit the market in the coming months increasing inventory and effecting prices negatively.

All is not glum, however, house are still selling.  In Monmouth County, as we saw in the first graph, hundreds of houses a month are selling.  If you have a house to sell you need a real estate agent who knows how to get your house sold in any market.  Don’t take chances by just picking any agent you come across, choose carefully.

Let’s begin our discussion by defining the relevant terms. Technically, a foreclosure is a bank owned property or REO (real estate owned).  The foreclosure process has been completed and the bank now owns the property.  Next the bank lists the property with a real estate agent to sell it.  This differs from a pre-foreclosure where the owner of the home still owns it, and probably still lives in it, but is the home is in the process of being taken in a foreclosure auction (in our county is it at sheriff’s sale).   You probably have heard of short sales, in which the bank takes less than what is owned as payment in full for the mortgage.  A short sale is done on a pre-foreclosure property.  I will do another post on buying a short sale.

Here are the pros and cons of buying a foreclosure:

Pros:
Probably discount price
Possible special financing from lender

Cons:
Property is generally in poor condition
Bank processes are slow, you must have patience
May have to sign special addendums from the bank
May have difficulty getting funding

During the foreclosure process sometimes the homeowner becomes angry and damages the property or removes items that would normally remain such as appliances, light fixtures, and even kitchen cabinets (actually happened with one of my listings.)  So REO properties are generally in poor condition.

REOs can often be purchased for below market value.  When the bank puts the property on the market, it generally lists it for market value, but as time passes, the bank will instruct the real estate agent to make price reductions.  During this time the property is being taken care of by the real estate agent on behalf of the bank.  But since it is usually vacant at this point, the home is vulnerable to vandals or in winter pipes bursting.

When making an offer on a REO you must keep in mind that the bank usually will not make any repairs to the property, you are taking it strictly “AS-IS.”  So, if your home inspection shows any major defects your only choice will be to cancel the purchase, pay for the problems yourself, or try to renegotiate the purchase price with the bank.  If you do go forward with the purchase you need to be prepared to take on the problems and responsibilities of the property both the ones you can find yourself or through a home inspection and hidden problems that may not be found before the purchase. 

Sometimes the home inspector will not be able to inspect all systems if the property has been winterized or the utilities turned off.

If the properties you are considering are in poor condition it is likely you will need to make a low offer in order to make it worth your while to take on the problems that the house may have.   If you will be making low offers be prepared to have many of your offers rejected.  But keep going and you will likely find a bank who will take you up on it.

It is also worth pointing out that banks tend to take their time in making a decision as to whether or not to take your offer or make a counter offer.  You must be very patient.  Your patience is the tradeoff for getting a bargain. 

There is one other pitfall that you need to be aware of.  If the property is in poor condition it will be nearly impossible for you to get a conventional mortgage loan.  You will either have to buy the property with cash or use a rehab loan.  FHA offers a rehab/purchase loan program for this purpose.

So, if you would still like to purchase a bank-owned foreclosure in Monmouth County, NJ.  Contact me and start making offers.

If this all seems too much for you, please shoot me an email or give me a call.  There are other bargain properties that are not bank owned that may enable you to achieve your dream of homeownership.

Trust me, the report is high on my list and I will get it done and posted as soon as I can. How about I distract you with this?:

Monmouth County NJ - Inventory vs Sales

Comparing the fourth quarter of 2008 with the fourth quarter of 2007 shows average days on market is slightly higher than this time last year.  Inventory is slightly higher than this quarter last year and number of sales are significantly lower.  Median home prices have also declined, by about 10% in the last year.

2008 vs 2007 Sales Compared

We are currently at almost 17 months of inventory. This means that at the current rate of sales it would take 17 months to sell off the current inventory.  We are not at the bottom yet. 

For a detailed analysis of your town, contact me.

May your Christmas be filled with many Blessings

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