So... today, 3 March 2011, the Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee heard from Spencer Bachus, U.S. Congressman, AL-06 (Twitter Feed @BachusAL06), Judy Biggert, Congresswoman Illinois's 13th district and Subcommittee Chairman (Twitter Feed @JudyBiggert), Mercedes Marquez, assistant secretary of community planning and development for HUD, Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), David Stevens, commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration. Not one of these "Wizards Of Recovery" addressed the real problem with the revitalization of the real estate market.

Do you folks not get it! What the heck are you smoking up there on Capital Hill? Cause is must be some really good stuff!!! 

HAMP, HARP, HAFA and all forms of the Making Home Affordable plans are a joke. They only prolong the fact that, in the end, the folks who take advantage of these "so called disaster relief" plans will be no better off than if they had simply let their homes foreclose early on. 

Congress knows all too well that over ¼ of the nations mortgages are underwater, perhaps way more than that. Congress knows all too well that, if implemented, the provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill that will require borrowers to maintain a 75% loan to-value ratio for refinances, and a 70% loan-to-value for cash-out refinances in which the borrower refinances into a larger loan, will eliminate over 80% of all homeowners in Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada and Michigan from being able to take advantage of those types of opportunities because those mortgages are already 40% to 75% or more, upside down. The February 22^nd 2011 Cash/Schiller report S&P Indices report showed that show that 19 of the 20 MSAs and both the 10-City and 20-City Composite were down in December versus November and all have displayed this negative trend for three consecutive months.

The problem is... that not one of the loan modification programs has addressed the real and direct problem and that is NEGATIVE EQUITY. Until congress puts pressure on the banks to "belly up to the bar" and bear the weight and responsibility of fixing this problem, a problem that they were primarily complicit in creating... homeowners, who do keep up on their mortgages, will never be able to sell their homes for the outstanding balances owed. That means that a major portion of the overall homeowner population in the entire country will not be able to buy a home again, for many years, decades in many instances.

GET THIS FIXED FOLKS!! GET IT FIXED!! MAKE THE BANKS FIX THE MESS THEY CREATED!! MAKE THE BANKS PAY FOR DIGGING THEMSELVES OUT OF THIS MESS AND NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF HIGHER RATES TO CONSUMERS!!

Banks are posting record profits. Make them spend some, or ALL, of their soiled earnings to fix this disaster!

Nuff said... I got'a take a break before I melt my keyboard.

More when I have calmed down...

G-II Varrato II is a Real Estate Professional with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage with over ¼ of a century of real estate experience. He and his wife Lori are mentors for new agents entering the real estate business in the Phoenix Metro Area of Arizona. For the past decade, they have been ranked among the top 3% of all REALTORS® in Arizona in the Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Family and are ranked as the Number 1 Short Sale Agents in Arizona for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. http://ShortSale.AirForceHomeSeller.info 

Hi again folks,

As you know, Lori & I have taken the NAR SFR Course as well as numerous other Short Sale classes that host non-NAR designations. While we do not post or advertise our other non-NAR designations, many of the training venues provide an abundance of useful and cutting edge information about the Short Sale industry.  Having closed well over 160 Short Sales, we stay up to date on the ever changing landscape of how banks and servicers are responding to short sale offers, as well as what Treasury and the FED is doing to manage the distressed real estate inventory. We also keep up to date by subscribing to over two dozen blog sites that we read and/or watch every day.

To that point, we have been keeping an eye on the FTCs MARS Rule for the past couple of months and now, the newly implemented MARS Rule, now 29 days in its infancy has the industry a-buzz.

Many, if not most MLSs have already begun to get the word out to their members. Check out AAR's notice at http://tinyurl.com/4flygtu, and the FTC's web site at http://tinyurl.com/4pyfpvf to download a copy of the MARS Compliance Guide For Business and you can catch up on NARs take on the MARS Rule at http://tinyurl.com/4jdrobz but you'll need to log in with your NAR ID to access the document.

The MARS Rules have only been on the playing field for 29 days, first becoming effective 31 January 2011. Folks, Lori & I are confident that you will agree that the MARS Rule will change the way E&O responds to agents who practice in the Short Sale arena. We are also confident that industry leaders, will want to be the first, to embrace the MARS Rule and get their agents up to speed on the use of the required disclosures, if they are going to work in the Short Sale environment. We are already, personally, in the process of making our Short Sale web MARS compliant.

This also means that the use of eMail as a medium of soliciting and conducting business has now come into an environment wherein the user must be extremely cognizant of what is disseminated in their posts and even more important, the user must now be mindful of keeping and archiving their eMail and Faxes for two (2) years from the date of "document creation" whether the transaction closes OR NOT!

The level of sophistication required for such record keeping of eMail is not exorbitant, however... Lori & I are pretty sure that the majority of real estate agents, nationally, do not understand how to electronically archive their eMail. For example, in our daily conversation with dozens of agents throughout the valley, we know conclusively, that over 90% of all agents, or for that matter all users, DELETE unwanted and "OLD" eMail. Under the covenants of MARS, this practice must no longer be the norm for real estate agents who work with short sale transactions. Civil penalties for non-compliance can be up to $16,000 per occurrence of a MARS Rule infraction.

Two additional notes of importance about what must be "archived" and the use of specific eMail clients.

First: About that "What Must Be Archived". The MARS Rule stipulates that ALL documentation, to include flyers, mailers, promotional material of ALL types, including eMail and faxes must be "archived" for two (2) years whether the transaction closes OR NOT!

Second: If a user does not control his/her own eMail client by using a system such as Outlook or Outlook Express or some other "on-site/proprietary system wherein the data can be stored on a personal hard drive" or if the user does not exercise a "disaster recovery system" for their electronic data, and if the data was never reduced to "paper copy", the user, if audited by the FTC, could face stiff civil penalties. This means, if a user uses an eMail platform such as AOL, Earthlink, Gmail, HotMail, YaHoo or any other third party eMail service, wherein the eMail account must be purged due to storage capacity limits, the user could well find himself/herself in non-compliance with the MARS Rule.

Therefore, it may be well worth the time, of all companies, to investigate the practicality of eliminating their current practice of a maximum storage limit size in the agent's eMail system.  Or, perhaps provide an alternative eMail exchange server platform that will provide enough storage capacity for agents to comply with the "archiving" MARS Rule. Perhaps mortgage and real estate brokerages may be better served by encouraging their agents to print and "archive" their records in a manual format if they don't have the technical "know-how" to manage "electronic archiving" of their data and communication files. Of course there may also be an enormous responsibility thrust upon brokers to implement modified "archive" practices and strategies for their short sale transactions as well, in an effort to comply with MARS.   Another possibility could be that mortgage brokers and real estate brokers encourage their agents to adopt the use of eMail systems that allow the agent to "archive" their electronic communications on their personal computers or digital devices. However, a word of caution here... if the user/agent does opt to manage their data electronically, it is highly suggested that the user/agent implement a "disaster recovery strategy" and demonstrate their adaptation of such protocols. We use an on-site automatic back-up system, daily backing up ALL of our data to a 1TB HD (soon to be increased to a 2TB HD). We also deploy a redundant offsite disaster recovery platform, "CARBONITE" www.carbonite.com.  Carbonite is extremely inexpensive at $55 per year for unlimited storage space and the system can be accessed from anywhere in the world, from any web compliant device, through Carbonite's secure web interface.

One last point to make about third party eMail clients;

MARS, the RED Planet!  It appears that, the on the weekend of February 28^th a MARTIAN   has eaten all Gmail in about 50,000 Gmail user's accounts. Google announced this morning that it accidently DELETED eMail from over 50,000 mail boxes.  While the Google engineers are working on recovering and restoring the missing eMail and attachments, at this time, they are not guaranteeing they will be able to recover all, if any, of the missing eMail and data files.

Folks, this is a perfect example of why users and/or brokers must NOT rely on third party eMail platforms, to archive their electronic eMail date, if there is to be a serious effort to "electronically" archive short sale correspondents and digital documents.

Just thought I'd add some joy to your morning... LOL  Oh yeah... Ok... let's see, Mars is the RED planet.  Did you notice that the cover page of the "MARS Compliance Guide For Business" has a house trimmed in RED as the LOGO?  LOL

We look forward to a rapid deployment of MARS Rule training by all Mortgage and Real Estate Brokerages.

Regards

Lori & G-II

The latest foreclosure debacle by BofA, GMAC, JPMorgan and PNC will, IMHO, most undoubtedly be joined by Wells Fargo, Citi and even Fannie & Freddie. To that point it is our belief that a meaningful and useful solution to the negative equity in residential real estate is one major component that the administration and the treasure refused to address. To add fuel to this fire, is it not interesting that the latest "hot dog" bill from Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) specifically signals out and distances itself from helping folks in the hardest hit areas of the country. If you review the list of eligible states, you will not see, California, Nevada, Florida, Arizona or Michigan, four of the most heavily devastated areas of the country, where homeowners are suffering with record depreciated home values and negative equity. Compare the list of states suffering with NEGATIVE EQUITY http://tinyurl.com/2exzzl8  with the list of states slated to received foreclosure mortgage assistance in the (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) http://tinyurl.com/24ygb7x . Most of these homeowners are growing weary of making payments on their mortgages because they know that, at present, there is no way, in the next decade to two decades or even three decades, that they can ever sell their homes for the mortgage balance. To this point Check out our latest Video Blog at http://tinyurl.com/27no296 to see what I mean.

It curls my hair, and I don't have any hair to curl, when the press spins economic news. Yes, it is true that the GDP reported a growth of 1.7% for the 2^nd quarter of 2010 which is in fact on the positive side of "centerline"; however THIS GRAPH, obtain from the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis http://www.bea.gov/ clearly demonstrates that our the US economy, as defined by GDP, is trending down.  You make up your own mind about where you think the next trend indicator will land for the 3^rd & 4^th quarters of 2010.

It is our belief that not until three major pressures are taken out of the equation, will the US economy truly begin to make a meaningful recovery. Those three major pressures are, job creations, meaningful foreclosure prevention and finally a mechanism to repair and address the extraordinary negative equity in residential real estate. According to PR News Wire http://www.prnewswire.com/ SEATTLE, Aug. 9, real estate values continue to fall, reporting that nationally, home owners are suffering with an average of 21% value decline, since the beginning of the economic crisis we are digging out of. The hardest hit areas report more dramatic negative equity conditions. Areas such as Bakersfield CA at 44.6% negative equity, El Centro CA at 57.5% negative equity, Fresno CA at 38.5% negative equity, Sacramento CA at 58.1% negative equity, Las Vegas NV @ 73.9% negative equity, Reno NV at 61.9% negative equity, Phoenix AZ 66.8% negative equity, Tucson AZ at 41% negative equity, Port St. Lucie FL at 55% negative equity, Sarasota FL at negative equity, Tampa FL at 45.3% negative equity, Miami-Fort Lauderdale FL at 44% negative equity, Ann Arbor MI at 33% negative equity and Detroit MI at 31.4% negative equity. Dozens of additional examples can be viewed at Home Value Index.

The bottom line is this. The private sector must be given the tools to create jobs and the banking and mortgage industry must come up with a way to resolve the foreclosure issue and negative equity in residential real estate.

Currently, there is NO exit strategy available to any homeowner who is suffering with negative equity. In over ½ the country, homeowners who are suffering with negative equity have no way to sell their home in the next 10 to 20 years. Does the current congress and administration truly feel that it is appropriate to allow this financial injustice to be suffered upon homeowners who have played by the rules? Is it appropriate that the economic meltdown, caused primarily by the failure of the sub-prime mortgage industry and major players on Wall Street, should strap a homeowner to his home for the next decade, two decades or in some areas of the country as much as three decades? Does it make sense to you, that some form of "exit strategy" for a homeowner should be devised so today's homeowner can sell his home, weather moving up, moving down or relocating? Does it seem JUST to you that homeowners, who have done nothing wrong, played by all the rules, acted responsible with their finances, should NOT be provided a mechanism to exit their home without being required to write a check to their lien holder to cover the negative equity?

Your thoughts are encouraged and even more important, we suggest that you take the time to write your congressman/women and/or senator. You can reach your congressman/woman at http://www.house.gov/ and your senator at http://tinyurl.com/b1lm.

Do you agree that it is every citizens responsibility to force our opinions, experiences and views upon our elected law makers? We hope you do.

Lori & G-II are raked as the Number 1 Short Sale Team in Arizona at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage and are ranked 7th in Arizona in overall productivity. You can reach them at ShortSale@AirForceHomeSeller.info

Dear Congressmen, Congresswomen and Senators, 

For nearly ¼ of a century, my wife and I have been REALTORS®.  We have been with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Phoenix, Arizona well over a decade. We have processed over 130 successful short sale approvals.  A growing part of our short sale clientele is comprised of good folks who have been placed in very bad and difficult positions, through either job loss, health issue or job relocations.  Many would love to keep their homes.  Congress has failed to move fast enough to help the growing population of short sale sellers.  There is NO reason why many of these folks should be forced from their homes when a "principal reduction" loan modification would keep them in their home and allow them to grow their family and their family nest.  The only thing the current HAMP program offers is a band-aid to a current or eminent payment crises. HAMP does NOTHING to address a fundamental problem with home retention and that is the ability for the home owner to be able to, one day in the future, sell his/her home for a profit so they can move up, move down or retire.  HAMP builds into home retention the reality that the current homeowner will, eventually, be forced to sell the home under the terms of a deed in lieu or short sale and then be demoralized by the reality that the next owner will purchase the home for current fair market value, a figure that, had a principal reduction loan modification been implemented for the current homeowner, would have allowed the original owners to retain possession of their home. 

There are plenty of bank officials and pundants and members of congress who say that "principal reduction" loan modifications would undermine the very fabric of the mortgage market, ultimately scaring away investors from purchasing MBS (Mortgage Back Securities). To that group of idiots I say, get over it! The barn (the current lot of Mortgage Backed Securities) is already on fire. The fire needs to be put out and then you can rebuild the barn (the way MBS are configured insured, sold and traded).  If you don't fix the problem, the pool of buyers who will offer investment portfolios for the MBS market will dry up like a prune.  

The folks we met with yesterday, Mr. & Mrs. SECURE are a perfect example of good folks whom the government and the banking industry has turn their backs on. 

Mr. & Mrs. SECUREs purchased their home in December 2007 for $512,865. They put 5% down, compliant with lending guidelines at the time, to secure a 5 year interest only loan. That loan is set to adjust in January 2012. At the time they purchased their home and were approved for their loan, they had a double income with Mr. SECURE employed at the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Arizona and Mrs. SECURE employed with an accounting firm.  They had a residual income of 4 times their monthly mortgage payment. The Interest Only Loan was sold to them, by their builder, with a story line that was not uncommon back then.  Their FICO scores were in the high 700s at the time as they remain today.The conversation from the loan officer might have gone something like this: 

Loan Officer: "Oh yes, we can put you in this home for only 5% down, that way you can conserve your own personal resources. Let's put you into a 5 year "interest only" ARM.  With the way property values are climbing, you can refinance out of the ARM in two or three years, into a fixed rate mortgage at a rate that will keep your mortgage payments about where they will be when you begin this new loan." 

Of course the loan officer's projections were dashed to pieces with the total meltdown of the mortgage market and even more incredible is the reality and fact that this "spew of goo and nonsense" continued from nearly every lending institution in America, even after the TARP bill had been passed in November 2007, in an assumed effort to stabilize the US economy.  The US economy was racing toward the cliffs, partially because of idiotic loans like the one that was sold to innocent consumers, like the SECUREs, and yet no one put a stop to it. 

Recently, Mrs. SECURE has lost her job, reducing the household to a single income family.  The SECURE's reached out to Bank of America (BofA) for mortgage assistance.  The patch-work loan modification that BofA has offered is but a Band-Aid on a wound that is hemorrhaging gallons of blood.  The conciliatory loan modification offered by BofA reduced the families loan payment by $400 but does nothing to address the long-term problem of the exponential depreciated value of their home. In just over 30 months, the SECURE's home has been devalued over 50% by the collapsed real estate market and economy. Today the home is somewhere between $230,000 and $280,000 underwater. The home they purchased for $512,865 just 2½ years earlier is now valued at around $250,000. 

Given the historic rate of appreciation the Arizona real estate market has enjoyed over the past 2 decades, and the projected and current rate of appreciation now being suffered upon today's real estate market, it is expected that the home will not appreciate in value, enough to retire the current mortgage, for well over two decades, or longer (not accounting for an inflationary upward spiral which is sure to occur over the next few years). This is an incredible and unacceptable burden to place upon Arizonans and Americans. This story plays out in tens of thousands of households across the United States each day. 

But back to the plight of the SECUREs; BofA has plans to launch a "principal reduction" loan modification program but will only offer that program to those families who are 60 days or more delinquent. This is an extremely unbalanced, unfair and flawed strategy. While those folks who are delinquent on their mortgages are certainly in need of assistance, the folks who have struggled to stay current on their mortgage, forsaking all other family and life style creature comforts, should be afforded the same or similar programs. 

Until a system is put in place, by every financial institution who holds, services and/or insures a mortgage on residential real estate, that addressed the incredibly desperate contract between current value of a family's home and the balance owed to their lender, i.e. "principal reduction loan modifications" the tsunami of foreclosures will not subside and a steady stream of families will continue to be displaced because there is no help for good people caught up in a difficult situation, little if any of which is their own making.

Ladies & Gentlemen of the House and Senate, you MUST do something to FORCE loan servicing companies, MBS investors such as Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and independent investors and mortgage insurance companies and Ginnie Mae and Sallie Mae/HUD to work out "principal reduction" loan modifications. Look at the numbers, nearly 3 in 5 homes in Maricopa country in Arizona and Clark county Nevada have mortgages that are more than 50% underwater. The numbers are exponentially worse in California, Michigan and Florida.  Over 1/5 of the nation's mortgages are underwater and property values will not recover enough to retire the current mortgages for decades... unless each qualifying homeowner is granted a "principal reduction" loan modification. 

We can be reached direct at 602-796-5674 or through our office at 623-344-4000 and ask to speak to G-II Varrato II. 

Respectfully, 

Lori Klindera & G-II Varrato II, Retired USAF 820th CES Red Horse, rCRMS, ePRO, ABR, CNE, RECS, SFR, Mentor, REALTOR®
Short Sale / Save The Dream - Quitting is NEVER an Option! - Coldwell Banker Residnetial Brokerage
3050 W. Agua Fria Freeway, Suite 110
Phoenix, AZ 85027
Lori's Cell: 602-574-5674 G-II's Cell: 602-796-5674 Fax: 602-296-0124 http://shortsale.airforcehomeseller.info/Join Lori and G-II on Twitter and our gaggle of congressional leaders... J Join G-II at http://www.twitter.com/G2Realtor and join Lori at http://www.twitter.com/YRURenting

Ok... so I'm on a rant and boy this one has simply really got my goat!

My wife and I have been in this great industry for over two decades. We, like many of those of us who are seasoned professionals, pride ourselves in how we manage our business and how we respond to one another in our profession.  We respect our clients property and offer the most up-to-date methods of securing ingress/egress to the property.

1. We ANSWER our phone
2. We RETURN our eMail messages
3. We use a secure SUPRA KEY Lock Box ingress/egress system
4. We DO NOT place our clients property at risk with unsecure mechanical lock boxes
5. We RETURN our text messages
6. We publish our cell phone numbers in our MLS listings

We make it nearly impossible for anyone to ever say that they couldn't get in touch with us. We maintain between 20 and 30 listings at any given point in time and all of our listings have all of our methods of contact such as cell phone, fax, office phone, text message and eMail. We know everything about our listings. If the listing is a short sale, we know who the lien holders are and we know how many lien holders are involved; we know who the negotiators are; we have points of contact for each lien holder negotiator; such as eMail, fax, phone and supervisors name and points of contact. We know if the properties utilities are active.

If the property is not a distressed listing, I.E. owned by some seller who simply wants to sell their home to move up or move down in size or for any number of normal, and some time abnormal, reasons, we know everything there is to know about that property. We know that one of the best ways to get another REALTOR® to show the property is if he or she has as much Intel as possible, and... can get that Intel from a real live person.

LACK OF SECURIETY AND RESPECT

Now, contrast that with many, if not most, REO Secret Agents who handle REO properties. These agents make it extremely difficult to show properties. Many of them don't use any form of secure ingress/egress control, I.E. a secure SUPRA Lock Box system. There is no way that these agents can protect their client's property without a secure and accountable method of monitoring who has entered the property. IMO, these less than professional acts of inexcusable lacks of professionalism show a total disrespect for their client's property.

My favorite all time reason that I hear REO agents use for not putting a secure SUPRA lock box system on the property is, "it's too expensive".

1. Do you really feel you have a right to not offer your client the most complete and competent protection of their property?
2. Do you not feel your client would like to be able to tell the police, in the event of a break-in and/or the property being vandalized... who the last persons were who entered the property?
3. Do you not think your client would like, at the very least, a small chance of seeing justice done to those who would destroy their property?
4. Do you not think it appropriate to hold real estate agents who are inattentive to their tasks to re-secure a property rafter showing, to be held accountable?
5. What in the world are you thinking? And... what in the world would your client think if you said, "I can't really afford to secure your property with a secure SUPRA lock box system, you'll simply have to deal with the consequences of not knowing who has entered your property last".

DISRESPECT OF FELLOW REALTORS

Try calling a REO listing. If you're lucky, you might get a recorded message that says something like, "If you see a listing that is showing ACTIVE and not under contract, that is accurate information, our listing are updated every day". Yeah, right! But that does not include updating their listings over the weekend. Oh here's a bute... you call on Friday afternoon, about 7pm so you can vet the list of homes you're going to show tomorrow. You begin to make phone calls to vet the availability of the home and you get this: "Our office is closed for the weekend. Please call back Monday between the hours of 8am and 5pm."  Or my favorite, "Hello, you have reached Agent Brown. I am sorry I can't take your call at the moment. I return my calls between 2pm and 5pm Monday through Friday. If you have called after 5pm, please try to reach me the following day after 8am. If you have called me on the weekend, I will return your call the next business day. Please leave a message".  Like heck I will!!! If you want my client's business, you should have answered your phone or at the very least, answered the voice mail message I left you.

WHAT ARE REO ASSET MANAGERS THINKING?

Would someone kindly let me know why any asset manager would want to hire a real estate agent or even better, an entire team of real estate agents who will not give the property the proper attention it deserves? Is there an asset manager out there who can explain why you would not want your property protected by a secure Ingress/Egress verifiable lock box system? Is there an asset manager out there who can explain why you insist on hiring real estate agents who are, well... Secret Sgents? That is to say, why don't you want the agent or team of agents, you hired to answerer their phone in response to a buyer or buyer agent? Do asset managers simply have a death wish for the property they represent? Do asset managers find wisdom in conducing business with real estate agents who do not have the best interest of their client at the forefront?

I just don't get it!

I could go on and on about the most unprofessional niche of our industry, the REO listing agent.

Now, don't misunderstand, there are some GREAT REO listing agents. They secure homes properly, they have a team of agents who really answer their phones or if they are lone wolfs, they answer their own phone. But... sadly, this gallant and noble group of REO listing agents is but fraction of an infinitely small fraction of REO agents and agent teams who manage and list REOs. To this truly noble group; Congratulations on a Job Well Done. This very small microcosm of REO listing agents even knows all about each listing. WoW! That's simply refreshing.

But to the rest of you... get the heck out of the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. You, who match up to my comments in the beginning of this post, do not belong in the REO business. GET OUT and get a 9 to 5 job... or... do the job the asset manager hired you to do, in a dignified and respectable and professional fashion.

1. Answer your phone!
2. Properly secure the property!
3. List your cell phone or the cell phone of an "On-Call" team member!
4. Return your voice mail messages!
5. Return your eMail messages
6. Return your text messages!

And... participate in our industry as professional agents, not "Secret Agents"

G-II Varrato II is a licensed REALTOR® with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. You can reach G-II (G2) at 602-796-5674 or by eMail at G-II@AllAboutRealEstate.pro

$15,000 Tax Credit For Home Buyers - How Will This Help Correct Depreciation Of Real Estate Values? - AllAboutRealEstate.pro - Things you should know about new amendment to the economic stimulus package. Property values are down across the US. According to recent figures released February 4th 2009 by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) property values lost ground in the past 12 months, sighting a net property value depreciation of 7.8% in the Northeast, 11.5% in the Midwest and over 30% in the Western United States and 8% in the South. That's a national average of value depreciation of right around 14.575%

President Obama and Ladies and Gentlemen of the United States Congress, you have the ability to help stop the tsunami of foreclosures if you'll simply urge lien holders to work more aggressively to complete short sale transactions. Short Sales are one of the best and quickest way to turn the tide of the swelling inventory of real estate across the country. In nearly every instance, the short sale offers, made to lien holders provides the best and quickest way to mitigate any additional loss to the lien holder and hedge against continued declining values.

Real Estate Agency Relationship Disclosure is one of the most misunderstood and under-disclosed events between REALTORS and buyers/sellers. This video helps buyers and sellers, understand, WHY they have unique rights in a transaction. If you would like more info about Agency Disclosure Requirements, eMail G-II@AirForceHomeBuyer.info