The lenders goal is first for their properties to be managed secondly for them to be sold. The Banks objective and goal is to get the property sold in 3 months. So get your ducks in a row! Remember you are the banks eyes and ears and they are looking for YOU the real estate agent to be their property manager and take care of that asset until you execute the final goal of selling the property thereby liquidating that asset for them. In order for you to have a bank consider you for the job of an REO Listing agent you must represent you are prepared to do exactly that. So BE PREPARED!
What you need to do next is:
•· HAVE A MARKETING PLAN-Some Broker owners can assist you with this if you don’t already have one. It will include the following points
•· Have all your service providers such as lock smiths, eviction service companies, plumbers, electricians, drywall, landscapers, trash-out companies, pool, termite, roofer, handymen etc., all service providers who have agreed to register with the asset management company you will be doing business. It is imperative you have identified your team, spoken with them letting them know that they will need to register with the Asset Management company and provide their license, insurance and bonding. I personally recommend having more than one of these contractors since you must guarantee the asset management company timely service or your listing will be reassigned to another agent. Remember the banks are most interested in meeting health, safety and code requirements. Note: Banks select their own title, escrow, and attorney. and do require you have buyers qualify with them or a specific lender as a level of insurance the buyers have a lender that can perform the loan closing. This does not mean that it is mandatory that they use their lender.
•· Know your city police department phone number, retired senior volunteers through the police department and grafitti hotline-PROGRAM THIS IN YOUR CELL PHONE as well as your service companies!
•· Know your broker preview and caravan in your area.
•· Have a REO website
•· Have the ability to drive by and inspect each listing every single week and conduct a weekly open house. Either you or one of your team members must be present.
•· Have “Rambo Gear”-sturdy shoes, digital camera, light bulbs, flash light, garden gloves, towel (never leave empty light sockets)
•· Know how to get a property FHA approved
•· If you are located in an area that requires your home to be winterized know that you must turn faucets to slowest drip,….drip….drip and leaving them dripping, with drains open. Make sure the furnace pilot is on, set thermostat to lowest temperature or 55 degrees. Be sure all windows and exterior doors are closed tight, to limit drafts. Open all cabinet doors under sinks for circulation.
•· Have your lead generation and commission sharing agreements spelled out with your team members. Have a buyers agent
•· Have open house folders, guest book for sign in, maps of the city, open house signs, opinion sheet for visiting agents.
•· Know the difference between a pre qualification and pre approval and learn how to identify legitimate loan pre approvals.
•· Know your market statistics and inventory
•· Know the minimum documentation required with a purchase offer submission and always guarantee that it is complete when presenting to the REO Asset Firm.
•· Have good access to e mail-you will have to respond within 24 hours of receiving the assignment.
•· Know e-signing technology (available through some Asset Management Companies)
•· Lastly, weekly check all the above sytems to make sure they are operational. Always document condition of home in sign in sheet.
Provided your license is in good standing and once you have put all these elements together you are ready to apply with the major institutional lenders and mortgage banks across the country. Some require that you include your resume.
What you can expect in your listing package when you receive an assignment?
In your listing package you can expect to have the following elements:
Address, listing contract, initial condition report form, marketing plan check list, valuation report, preliminary title report, utility authorization, no trespassing signs instructions, home warranty confirmation.

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As a sign of the times, PAS (The company that Wells Fargo outsources the majority of their REO Listings to). Has recently sent an email out, informing many agents that they are no longer able to work with their company.

From my understanding, they’ve trimmed back the herd in bulk , good and bad agents were both let go (Although I assume that more bad agents than good agents were let go).

Some are saying that this has to do with the USGOV bailout and purchasing bad debt, which would include large volumes of foreclosures, other say the volume is just down.

Whatever it is, one thing is certain – Getting into REO listings just got a little harder, as PAS was one of the best, well oiled companies to work with.

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Reverse Mortgages – What’s the deal?

I hear this term tossed about from time and time and have seen the commercials on TV. I decided to do a little investigating and I’ll share with you what I found out.

A reverse mortgage is available only to homeowners age 62 and older. It is a loan against the equity in a home that does not have to be paid as long as the homeowners live there. Homeowners can receive payments from the lender in lump sums, monthly payments or as a line of credit. At such time as the borrower dies, sells the house or permanently moves away, the loan must be paid in full including all interest and other charges.

There are reverse mortgages available from state and local governments. FHA insures a reverse mortgage called the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM). FHA insured reverse mortgages have an age requirement, required counseling and education, and a current appraisal. However, there are no income or credit qualifications. FHA also allows for up to a four-unit home and FHA approved condominiums and manufactured homes. These loans usually have to be used for specific purposes such as taxes or repairs.

Reverse mortgages are also available from banks, mortgage companies and savings associations. These can be used for any purpose. The amount you can borrow from the private sector reverse mortgages will probably depend on your age, home value, location and and cost of the loan (fees, etc.).

The AARP website gave a good example of why this “too-good-to-be-true” loan probably is. “For a 74-year-old borrower living in a $250,000 home in May of 2006 who borrows one-half of the maximum loan amount at closing, the total amount paid during her remaining life expectancy (12 years) could be about $7,800.” After totaling the “upfront and ongoing costs described for this 74-year old borrower…..would total about $25,000.”

I’m most definitely not a finance expert nor claim to be. However, I found several websites that had a lot of good information.

Aarp.org

Fha.com

Fanniemae.com

Ffsenior.com

As with any financial decision, the more you know the better. And be sure to get multiple opinions from a variety of sources.

Witten by Lesley Wolfe

Information is for academic purposes only, please seek the advice of appropriate professionals when considering a large financial decision, like a reverse mortgage.

Please Note : You are reading Blog #4 in a series of articles about Deutsche Bank. Please review the other articles, as they may answer any other questions you may have that this particular articles does not cover.

Part #1 The long search for a deal
Part #2 I Did It!
Part #3 How to Contact Deutsche Bank’s REO Department
Part #4 Other Notes About Deutsche Bank

I decided that I would post up another message about contacting Deutsche Bank’s REO Department.

After well over a hundred (Right now easily more than 200) emails about how to contact them. I decided on posting a very simple message about how to contact the bank’s REO Department (Or Lack Thereof)

As SOME of you know, yet the majority do not, The Deutsche Bank REO Department does not accept inbound phone calls. I have had Real Estate Agents, Investors , Banks , Asset management companies and Hedge Funds call me about how to call them ,and there’s just NO WAY TO DO IT without having a very personal contact with someone inside the department.

So , my advice is , if you really, really, really want to contact Deutche Bank’s REO Department, visit one of their office in Santa Anna California, and meet them in person if possible.

As I have stated in my other post at http://realestatecircleville.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/how-to-contact-deutsche-banks-reo-department20696/ the only way to get information on individual properties is to send them a fax of the specific property’s deed of trust, by calling 714-247-6000 and then ask to be connected to their REO hot line.

As always, you CAN email me at brandon.schlichter@realliving.comif you are looking in general to buy a foreclosed property , or are a hedge fund manager looking for bulk REO packages (Yes, they DO exist, but are 50%-60% LTV and have a minimum buy-in of $20m).

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I thought that I would post up a little article about one of the things I’ve been working on over the past few months.

I’ve decided that I’m really going to try and learn EVERYTHING I can possibly learn about real estate, and that includes rehab , building and the associated things.

So, the other day I decide I’m going to look at purchasing painting equipment. I did sign up with a Sherwin Williams contractor account, which was great. In addition , I decided that I needed a good airless paint sprayer.

Most of the sprayers I’ve found were in the $200-$300 range, which I expected, as they do save money over the long run (From what I hear).

That was until I found this gem of a website : http://www.gleempaint.com/paint-crew-770-recon.html Not only do they have this sprayer rebuilt, but for $79.99! Which is a great deal, as one of these from a major retailer will be around $199.

10-10-2008 – I received the sprayer today, so far it works out pretty good, it’s got some definite power to it which I didn’t expect since I’ve never used one before. I can’t wait to try this out on a large project. Cleanup was much worse than I thought , but I guess that’s what you get for all the benefits. I’ve been told that these are almost throw-away sprayers so I will log how many uses I get before problems. The sprayer hose seems VERY ruggedly built, and should allow a long lifespan.

I’ve been spending the past 2 hours or so to try and find decent blogs that allow do-follow and are somewhat interesting.

I’m not going to go into detail of how do follow blogs work versus no follow and the like. At the moment I’m just upset to see how many blogs themselves won’t allow follows to the comments that are posted.

Unfortunately, this blog is a nofollow for the moment, but I’ll change that as soon as I can. Getting google PR Shouldn’t be such a hassle.

So , here’s what I’d like, some comments that list do-follow blogs!

I wanted to post this up as a warning to others who may be thinking the same thing that I have in the past about the potential for tax lien homes via the source of Ebay.

As you may have read at my other posts – http://realestatecircleville.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/i-bought-a-tax-lien-home-this-week/ and http://realestatecircleville.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/i-visited-my-tax-lien-home-this-week/ I have been pursuing tax lien home purchases , through the medium of contacting holders on Ebay.

As of my last post about this opportunity I ran into quite the snag.

THANKFULLY I decided on having Real Living Title Co. perform a title search on this specific home in dayton which appeared to be a good buy.

Purchase price of home – $1,772

Back Taxes Owed – Aprox $1,300

Putting me ABOUT $3050 into the deal, now if you have seen the other posts, the home was a dog, but surprisingly was worth around $5000-$6000. My goal was to wholesale the property to a end use investor and put a quick $2000-$3000 in my pocket.

Well , unfortunately there was a large snag about 3 days before closing. The title company reported a senior IRS lien of $6,500 that would not be released until being paid off (The tax lien company never named the IRS in the foreclosure action) so this $5,000 property purchased for $3000 just went to being about $5,000 in the hole.

Thankfully I was able to dodge that bullet and got out of the contract, my $500 is gone as well as $275 for the title search which I am obligated to give the tax lien company.

Lessons learned -

1. INSPECT THE PROPERTY prior to purchase, as I tell my clients, sight unseen properties are usually loosers, this one could of been turned around for a small profit.

2. Get a good relationship with a local title company, in my area, I can get title searches run for almost free, in Dayton I will be spending $275 to have a search done on a property that I didn’t close on.

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Here is a market update for this year so far, concerning the Columbus real estate market & Pickaway county.

Franklin county-wide :

Single family properties only , including condos.

9,579 Total homes sold , down from 11,340 in 2007 (A total of -15.5%)

$161,882 Average List Price ,down from $169,308 (A total of -4.38%)

115 Average Days On Market, down from 96 days (A loss of 16%)

While these numbers do show that our market is down from last year, our market has not dropped nearly as much as other markets. For instance, Las Vegas has lost 24.5% as compared to 2007.

As for Pickaway County

Average Sales price of $135,217  which is down from $151,771 (A loss of 10.9%)

284 Total sales as compared to 318 sales last year (A loss of 10.6%)

134 total days on market as compared to 109 days last year (A loss of 18.6%)

While these numbers are different than Columbus, the average sales price is skewed quite a bit. Last year, Pickaway county saw atleast 2 Near $1,000,000 sale. This year our highest sale has been half that which throws the numbers off quite a bit in our market. If you would take out the 2, near million dollar sales from last year, our total loss is about 40% less.

As veery few know , I live quite close to the old Mana Pro mill here in Circleville. As I predicted, last week it burnt down, and was a major news story.

I have been waiting for this fire to happen as it’s been a fire hazard for years since it was seemingly abandoned when the company left town. When I woke up , I could hear all the commotion from my house of people running around, horns honking and such associated with such a major event.

I grabbed my camera and took a little over a hundred photos of the fire, these are the best of those that I took. As before , these are the reduced size of the original higher quality photos.

After a total of 94 days we finally closed on this property.

My buyers got quite the deal, even though it took a total of 94 days to close the property (18 days about were for the financing, the rest was mitigation wait).

CITI took something like a $75,000 loss writedown on the short sale, which is huge considering the property mortgage was something along the lines of $250,000.

The buyers are now happy, there was a total of a month time span from which they closed on thier former home and had to live in a transition state to the new home.

Let this serve you a warning – SHORT SALES CAN BE VERY LONG AND RISKY! Of course, the reward was a great house for my buyers (A 5br 2.5ba home on 2 acres, private golf course and such for around $200,000).

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