Selling Your Home During Quarantine: all the same rules apply, but looks are everything!

Social distancing. It’s just not fun. And it’s certainly not ideal for selling your home, if that was

your plan before this COVID-19 quarantine guidelines made life difficult. Open houses and house tours are, after all, all about the number of feet crossing your threshold — not people keeping their distance.

The current state of the US housing market reveals that homebuyers still want to buy houses. The big difference is that they are making the transition to the virtual home-buying experience (including live video-chat tours) instead of tromping through homes right now. So if you were planning to list your house before all this hit, all is not lost. It’s the perfect time to get your home ready to sell, making it visually virtual delight.

Your first assignment is to walk the perimeter of your home and re-enter it through your front door, imagining it through the eyes of a potential homebuyer. Go through each room in your house and see with homebuyer eyes the amount of clutter you’ve accumulated. Don’t worry, it’s human nature. However, clutter detracts from the beauty of your home and its prime selling features. If you would buy a used car containing a trash bag full of laundry in the back seat or chapstick and hair ties in the center console. Why take chances at this point, when you want the highest price for your house, and you already have challenges showing it during quarantine?

Decluttering means eliminating large furniture/ too many pieces of furniture so that rooms appear larger. If you need tips on this, go online and see what homebuilders or stagers do with each room, and give each room a definite purpose. That means your master should not be your home office, your exercise room and your sleep space all at once. Place extra stuff in storage for now. Or donate it or sell it using appropriate distancing rules and washing your hands often.

This process of decluttering has more of a purpose than just making the home appear more spacious. It’s also helping you prepare for the eventual move. You plan on moving anyways so you might as well start organizing and packing your belongings.... Start by cleaning out your closets and other storage areas before moving onto individual rooms. Sell or donate the items you don’t want to keep, and then begin moving everything else to a storage unit. You’ll be amazed how large your house really is once you begin reducing the amount of ‘stuff’ that fills it from wall to wall.

As you declutter, deep clean, uses the used car analogy. What if that same car you were looking at buying had fast food wrappers on the floorboards, or the steering wheel and dashboard were covered in dust? You would probably think the previous owner didn’t take good care of their car, even if it ran perfectly. Same with houses, presentation is everything.

It’s also a great time to fix a few things. Take notes on each room as well as the home’s exterior and make a punch list, knocking out each task one by one. You’ve definitely got the time. If much of what you see appears dated, why not do a few inexpensive updates, such as changing out the hardware in your kitchen, replacing old doorknobs, updating outlet and light switch plates, adding floating shelves here and there, and doing a bit more feature lighting?

Even if homebuyers hesitate to make an appointment to walk through your home, they will probably drive by it. So curb appeal is definitely called for. “You may live in sunny Sacramento, CA where you can use plants year-round to make your house more appealing to homebuyers, or you may live in Minneapolis, MN where snow may still cover the ground in late spring and you have to work a little harder to make your home shine. Either way, you’ll never get a second chance at a first impression for homebuyers. So rake that yard, pick up debris, pressure wash your driveway, add a few potted plants here and there, consider repainting or staining your front door, and throw down a new welcome mat.

No matter what you do to improve the look of your home before it hits the multiple listing service as well as the video chat world, it will pay off — in photos as well as in person.

Thank you for visiting my blog, please leave me a comment and let me if you like my blog and the information I post. 

Roxy Redenbaugh, Broker

Sr Mortgage Consultant

Residential and Commercial

www.roxyloans.com

The Greatest Compliment I Can Receive Is A Referral From Friends, Family, and Business Associates,

NMLS#269926 Company NMLS#1930219

Mortgage Giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Offer More Relief To Worried Homeowners

In a move sure to bring a sigh of relief to millions of distressed homeowners, loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will now defer all missed mortgage payments, tacking them on to the end of their loans already in forbearance.

HousingWire’s Ben Lane reports that under the new program, borrowers who took forbearance due to COVID-related issues will not have to repay their missed payments until they sell their homes, refinance their current mortgage or their mortgage matures. Under the program, the borrower begins making their mortgage payments again when they’re able.

Lane quotes FHFA Director Mark Calabria, saying, “For homeowners in forbearance due to COVID-19, payment deferral allows them to make up missed forbearance payments when they sell their home or refinance. This new forbearance repayment solution responsibly simplifies options for homeowners while providing an additional tool for mortgage servicers. Borrowers who can pay their mortgage should, because missed payments remain an obligation that will ultimately have to be repaid.” The extension can continue up to 180 days beyond the 180 days granted by forbearance.

“The issue is that forbearance is not forgiveness; therefore, borrowers in forbearance have to repay their missed mortgage payments one way or another,” says Lane. “The GSEs’ (government-sponsored loans’) new payment deferral allows borrowers who took forbearance to shift as many as 12 months of mortgage payments to the end of their loan and is available to homeowners who have completed a COVID-19 related forbearance plan and are able to continue making their full monthly contractual payment but cannot afford full reinstatement or a repayment plan to bring their mortgage loan current.

According to Freddie Mac, the maturity date, remaining term, interest rate and payment schedule of the borrower’s mortgage remains the same as it was before. In addition, Freddie Mac said that utilizing the payment deferral option does not prevent a homeowner from someday being eligible for a Freddie Mac modification if payment relief is needed in the future. This option will be available starting July 1, 2020.

For more information on how this all works, contact your mortgage professional.

I am always available to answer any questions you may have. 

Thank you for visiting my blog, please leave me a comment and let me if you like my blog and the information I post. 

Roxy Redenbaugh, Broker

Sr Mortgage Consultant

Residential and Commercial

www.roxyloans.com

The Greatest Compliment I Can Receive Is A Referral From Friends, Family, and Business Associates,

NMLS#269926 Company NMLS#1930219

Source: Housingwire | TBWS

Best Advice I Would Give To First-Time Homebuyers

I was once asked: We're in the process of hopefully purchasing our first home, and I'm a little lost on everything that is going on.  What's the best advice you would give to first-time homebuyers?

Without question, your first step in the home buying process is to begin getting your financing in order. I realize this may seem like slightly self-serving advice since I am in the mortgage business, but the fact is that most people who buy homes today do so with a mortgage. That part is often the most challenging, with far more moving parts and potential snags than in years past.

This fact should not intimidate or deter you; getting a mortgage today is more involved, but it is not the impossible task some would have you believe it is.

It's an excellent idea to know the shape of your credit. Lenders do NOT require that every applicant is solid gold and squeaky clean, but you should be aware where you stand at the outset. If there are errors on your report, or old past-due accounts you have forgotten about or public records (judgments, etc.), now is the time to be aware of them and deal with them.

You can get a free credit report from sites like FreeCreditReport.com that covers just one bureau (Experian) or Creditkarma.com, which covers (TransUnion) and (Equifax). Most of those sites will try to sign you up for various premium services, but what you're interested in at this stage is whether there are items that you should take care of to get approved for a mortgage. If there are any past due accounts, you should bring them current as quickly as possible. Likewise, if there are judgments or collection accounts, try to settle them. In particular, lenders require that any public record items (judgments and liens) be resolved before closing.

One place you can be sure to get the most accurate and up to date information that is on your report is by going directly to each bureau of the three credit bureaus and bypass these companies altogether. At AnnualCreditReport.com will give you a Free report. If you want scores you will have to pay a fee to each bureau. 

Be aware that collection agencies will typically settle for much less than the amount listed on the credit report—but you'll have to report as income the amount they reduced the debt to settle. You should be very careful about paying off any collection accounts older than two years. Doing so will upgrade the status from "collection" (bad) to "paid collection" (slightly less bad). The problem with this is that it will also change the "Date of Last Activity" (DLA) on your report. A collection account that is, say, three years old may reduce your credit score by 10 points. A recent "paid collection" may reduce it 20 points or more.

It's not too early in the process to find a loan officer to help you with this part of the process. You should specifically look for someone with whom you feel comfortable and confident. It is not worth focusing on the rate someone may offer if they aren't available to be your trusted adviser. You want someone who responds promptly to emails, phone calls, and texts, and who gives you straightforward answers in plain language. The difference in rate between different lenders is quite small since all lenders sell their loans to the same pool of investors for the same price on any given day.

When you've found a loan officer you like, you should begin the preapproval process. You'll typically provide current pay stubs, W2s, and bank statements. The loan officer will help you with your application, then submit it to the Automated Underwriting System (AUS). They will get an answer literally in seconds. You are hoping for AUS findings of "Approve/Eligible" or "Accept," depending on which system they are using. The AUS findings will specify what, if any, additional documentation you might have to provide. The important thing is to get your starting point.

You should ask your loan officer if they can do a "TBD Approval." This means that they will submit your loan application to an underwriter for review and approval even though the property is "To Be Determined." When you get your loan approval back in a day or two, it will be the same as though you had an actual "live" deal. Having an underwriting approval in hand will make for a much stronger offer to the seller. This can be a make-or-break a deal if you find yourself competing with any other buyers for a property. Hope this is useful.. good luck!

Get in on our next HomeBuyers 101 Zoom Workshops.. come join us, you can talk to industry professionals about the home buying process, the struggles, the pros and cons and get your questions answered.  Click here and sign up.. 

All attendees get my Free Buyers Guidebook. 

Thank you for visiting my blog, please leave me a comment and let me if you like my blog and the information I post. 

Roxy Redenbaugh, Broker

Sr Mortgage Consultant

Residential and Commercial

www.roxyloans.com

The Greatest Compliment I Can Receive Is A Referral From Friends, Family, and Business Associates,

NMLS#269926 Company NMLS#1930219