Last Sunday we held our first open house for a lovely home on Via Marina in Oxnard and buyers came out in droves. A steady stream all afternoon from 1 pm until well after 4 pm.

The first offer was delivered to us at the open house – fast!

The balance of offers came in within the next 72 hours or so. Needless to say, offers came in over asking price.

What’s driving this craziness? Four main reasons:

• Lack of inventory
• Super low interest rates
• Short sales and bank foreclosures have dried up
• Lots of buyers

Bank of America this afternoon announced their new enhanced short sale relocation assistance program. They said “for a limited time, we are offering enhanced relocation assistance payments in which qualified homeowners who initiate a short sale without an offer could be eligible to receive $2,500 – $30,000* in relocation assistance and owe no more on their mortgage with the sale of their property”.

This also applies to Countrywide borrowers.

The homeowner must participate in one of the pre-approved price short sale programs, such as HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives) or Bank of America’s proprietary program.

Call me now and let me explain how their program works and let’s see if this increased assistance program makes sense for you.

On Monday night, the City Council spent most of the evening considering various housing related issues. Culminating almost 3 years of stakeholder involvement (homeless advocates, landlords, city staff, etc), the Community Development Director presented the City Council its report.

Much of the discussion concerns “bootlegged” dwelling units (converted garages, un-permited room additions, etc), but what concerns a lot of Realtors is a proposal for an official, notarized inspection of all home sales in the City, provided to the City, conducted by a local certified home inspector (the “Local Resale Inspection Report Program”). See page 9 in the report. There would be fees involved for this report to the City.

In my personal opinion, this is completely unwarranted and unjustified. There is no reason the City needs to become so intimately involved in this intrusive manner of “big brother”. There will now be hundreds of dollars of extra cost for a home inspector to go to City hall to review the permit file, then act as an appraiser and measure the square footage of the home, determine number of rooms, etc, then have his report notarized before turning it into the City.

Unbelievable! How can this creeping bureaucracy continue? Have these people lost their common sense? I say – enough already!!

The HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives) program became official on April 5, 2010. The HAFA program stream lines the short sale process by preapproving the short sale prior to the homeowner putting their home on the market. There are other great benefits – see our short intro video on HAFA.

But the guidelines didn’t include Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgages. Finally, those guidelines were just released… Read the rest of this article »

I recently received a phone call from a seller wanting to know if she should disclose a particular piece of information regarding some neighborhood activity.

The answer?? Yes!

If you know it – disclose it. Complete transparency benefits the buyer and you as the seller.