offer: How to Rock a Mortgage Pre-Approval!!!
- 06/23/22 07:37 AM
How to Rock a Mortgage Pre-Approval!!!
Buying your first home is a daunting task and can be a huge undertaking for the first-time buyer. Shoot, even for a move-up buyer, the experienced downsizer or a seasoned investor, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to begin. But getting a mortgage pre-approval often remains the best first step in the process, and it's also a likely reality that your Realtor won't seriously consider showing you property until you are either pre-approved or pre-underwritten by a mortgage lender or broker. After all, it's really tough to know your purchase power and your budget … (3 comments)
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offer: Five Tips to Rock Home Buying in 2022
- 02/24/22 08:00 AM
Five Tips for Rocking Home Ownership in 2022
If you searched unsuccessfully for a home and suffered one heartbreak after another in 2021, 2022 hasn't necessarily greeted you with open arms either. Near non-existent inventory in many areas, fierce competition and rising interest rates have all conspired to make the landscape rockier still.
Despite this, I've found five tips can be a universal help in getting you into contract, regardless of your own individual circumstances. Rock them with me on Youtube:
Ready to find Paradise City? Please give me a like or subscribe on YouTube!
Welcome to the jungle,
Rob Spinosa
SVP of Mortgage Lending
Guaranteed Rate
NMLS: 22343
Cell/Text: … (3 comments)
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offer: How To Win a Real Estate Bidding War
- 08/18/20 08:59 AM
How To Win a Real Estate Bidding War
What's the one thing you can do to make your offer to buy a home stand out? What's the secret sauce, the magic bullet, the key to success?
If you answered, "There isn't one," you're pretty close. Truth is, I haven't found any singular aspect of any offer that assures success. All-cash offers, zero-contingency offers, overbid offers, offers with colorful "love letters," etc., none of them provide any guarantees to the hopeful buyer. But there is one thing I've noticed that does increase the odds dramatically --- stacking advantages.
More often than not, we observe that the winning … (18 comments)
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offer: Do Any Mortgage Lenders Work on the Weekend?
- 08/18/19 08:29 AM
Do Any Mortgage Lenders Work on the Weekend?
The fact of the matter is that a lot of real estate business gets done on Saturdays and Sundays. Prospective buyers go to open houses and buyers' real estate agents often need to structure offers for their clients. Unfortunately, not all banks are open on the weekend even those that may take deposits and cash checks often do not have a home loan professional available to pre-approve a buyer or answer a complicated home loan question in an instant.
I'm different. Even though I'm generally not in the office on the weekend, I can always … (7 comments)
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offer: Top 10 Tips for Buying a Home in the San Francisco Bay Area
- 07/30/19 08:27 AM
Top 10 Tips for Buying a Home in the San Francisco Bay Area
Buying a home in the highly competitive San Francisco Bay Area real estate market is a daunting task for nearly everyone. Tales of heartache abound --- “everything goes for over asking price,” “we don’t stand a chance against all-cash offers,” “everything we want is out of our price range,” etc. If you only listened to the naysayers, you might not even set foot in the arena. As a lender who has observed the home purchase market, specifically over the last decade (2009 to 2019), I wanted to share my … (4 comments)
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offer: Start Me Up, I Want to Buy a Home
- 11/28/18 08:29 AM
Start Me Up, I Want to Buy a Home
To borrow yet another song reference, and you know I'm fond of those, 'it's not unusual' for first-time buyers to come in our door and readily admit they have no idea where to start the home buying process. Often they are referred by real estate agents who tell them there's zero chance they'll see the inside of their cars on a property search until they have a pre-approval letter in hand. But what is a mortgage pre-approval, where does one start that process and how to get a letter?
The Big Three
Fundamentally, a mortgage … (6 comments)
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offer: Buy Before Selling? Four Sure Four Sure!
- 08/22/18 08:08 AM
Buy Before Selling? Four Sure! Four Sure!
In strong sellers' markets, like the San Fernando Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area and many other areas across the country, making a contingent offer is a virtual impossibility. That is, when a buyer must sell his current home first in order to close on the new one, and when the purchase offer on the new home is specifically written to alert the seller that the two transactions are interdependent, it is said to be "contingent." Another, less subtle, way to describe contingent offers might be, "dead on arrival." This is because the seller knows … (30 comments)
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offer: Lions and Tigers and PMI, Oh My!
- 05/09/18 07:06 AM
Lions and Tigers and PMI, Oh My!
There are a number of things you should legitimately be afraid of in this life --- great white sharks, cigarette smoke, Scott Pruitt's EPA --- but private mortgage insurance (also known as "PMI") is not one of them. We're going to cover the basics here and I'm going to work to dispel a lot of the misconceptions about PMI. Most importantly, we're going to discuss why PMI on your next mortgage might be an entirely viable solution when you're seeking to purchase a home with less than a 20% down payment.
What is PMI?
Private mortgage insurance, … (9 comments)
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offer: Be A.G.G.R.E.S.S.I.V.E. with a 5% Down Jumbo Mortgage
- 03/29/18 07:39 AM
Be A.G.G.R.E.S.S.I.V.E. with a 5% Down Jumbo Mortgage
I never so much as played a single down of varsity football, but that didn't help me escape the Friday night lights, the pep rallies and late-game chants of the Tigerettes:
Be aggressive! B.E. aggressive! B.E. A.G.G. --- R.E.S.S.I.V.E!
Yes, when the game was fiercely competitive, when it seemed the team was down to its last drive, the attitude of everyone needed to change. The cheerleaders set the gears in motion. Gone were the soft-touch tactics --- the pom poms needed to come off. It was time to be aggressive. We're seeing that it's no different … (3 comments)
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offer: How High Can You Get with 10% Down?
- 03/06/18 08:56 PM
How High Can You Get with 10% Down?
First and foremost, let me declare emphatically that I would pass any drug test at any time. You show up at Casa Spinosa at 4am in the morning, drag me out into your unmarked van, make me tinkle in a cup and take a lock of my graying hair, and you're still not going to find a trace of anything illegal. Nothing. Nada. But I don't know why I have to defend myself when that's not even close to what this post is about...
No, instead, I want to tell you about our 10% down … (3 comments)
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offer: I'm Returning Your Love Letter to Sender
- 11/12/17 06:00 PM
I'm Returning Your Love Letter to Sender
Some buyers will try anything to increase their odds of getting into contract and tugging the heart strings of the seller whose home has set their hearts aflutter. One of the most popular tools for this job is the so-called "love letter." A love letter from potential buyer to seller typically fires its opening salvo along these sights:
"Dear Seller, we knew from the minute we walked in the door..."
As a mortgage lender in California, and even more so here in the highly-competitive San Francisco Bay Area, many of the best real estate agents with whom we … (48 comments)
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offer: 80 10 10 Loan in California
- 06/22/17 07:12 AM
80 10 10 Loan in California
It has been said that the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most photographed tourist attractions in the world. But before you get out your selfie stick and entertain visions of relocating to California, especially to the San Francisco Bay Area, know that the median home prices here in the middle of 201 tend to hover over one million dollars --- sometime by more than just a little.
It stands to reason that not all otherwise eligible buyers will have a full 20% down payment saved when they attempt to buy a home here in our … (2 comments)
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offer: California's Stunning Bridge (Loan)
- 04/22/17 06:18 PM
California's Stunning Bridge (Loan)
It is 2017's peak buying season in the San Francisco Bay Area and many buyers in this competitive, low-inventory market face a challenge greater than just the inability to find the right house. For them, there's actually a more pressing dilemma. Before they can even put in an offer on the home of their dreams, they've got a home of their own to sell first.
But it's not as if these buyers have a concern they won't sell their current house or even get top dollar for it. On the contrary, they're quite sure that once it's listed for … (2 comments)
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offer: Sigmund Freud & Low Down Payment Jumbo Mortgages
- 01/07/17 08:42 PM
Sigmund Freud & Low Down Payment Jumbo Mortgages
In psychology, projection is a form of defense in which unwanted feelings are displaced onto another person, where they then appear as a threat from the external world. Now in a minute, I am going to ask you to relax and tell me a little bit about how you feel about down payments. Specifically those that equal less than 20% of a home's purchase price. We'll analyze if you're projecting your own beliefs, right or wrong, onto reality.
Just for a little background, in mortgage lending, we are not immune from projection. This happens all the … (4 comments)
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offer: Top 10 Things Buyers Can Do While Waiting for More Inventory
- 03/13/15 12:10 AM
Top 10 Things Buyers Can Do While Waiting for More Inventory
Years ago, when I had free time, I used to love watching Letterman. In fact, back then, he was on NBC and it used to be called "Late Night with David Letterman," and not "The Late Show." So that's how far back we're talking. Anyway, beginning in 1986, there was a Top 10 list every night. Often, by the time Dave got to Number 1, the audience would be rollicking in laughter.
Flash forward to winter/spring 2015, and for us on the buy side, both mortgage lenders and … (9 comments)
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offer: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: 3 Approaches to Higher Rates
- 06/21/13 07:17 AM
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offer: A Super (Jumbo) Success Story
- 06/14/13 08:08 AM
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offer: How to Counter the Recent Rate Rise
- 06/07/13 06:06 AM
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offer: Why Buyers Should Be Try'ers
- 05/03/13 05:11 AM
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offer: Weekend Availability + Open House Flyers Made Easy
- 10/14/11 12:58 PM
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How to Rock a Mortgage Pre-Approval!!!
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