If you thought you missed out on the lower minimum down payment for FHA loans, don’t worry due to a postponement you still have time. The minimum down payment for FHA loans which was scheduled to increase from 3% to 3.5% on October 1, 2008 has been postponed. The revised effective date of the increase is now January 1, 2009.
The media has done there best to scare home buyers into believing that they can not get a loan because the credit markets have dried up. But in a discussion I had today with one of our local Spring Texas mortgage lenders, she said “I am looking for loans. We have money to lend”.
But are the curret interest rates any good? I asked that question today and the answer was “the interest rates are good. FHA loans for a 30 year term are averaging around 6%”. They are not quite as low as they were a couple of weeks ago when the government announced their take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but they are a far cry from the 10% mortgage interest rates of the early 1990s.
Good news for Spring Texas home buyers!!! Low interest rates and low minimum down payments are still available for at least a couple more months. Plus with 6.9 months of inventory the Spring Texas real estate market is considered to be a buyer’s market. If you are a buyer your best opportunity for low interest rates, low minimum down payments, and low prices is right now.
If you want to take advantage of the current financing and buying opportunity, give us a call at 281.300.3141 or 281.804.8626 and we will be happy to help you.
Health insurance and homeowners insurance … both are coverage we know we need but rarely take the time to understand. That is until we need it.
Hurricane IKE’s recent roll through our area sent a lot of Spring Texas homeowners scurrying for their policies. Unfortunately some homeowners were taught a painful financial lesson that they won’t soon forget.
9 things you should know about homeowners insurance?
1. Two Deductibles- Unlike automobile insurance, your homeowner’s insurance has two deductibles.
The first deductible is for wind/hail damage and it is a % of the rebuilding cost. The lowest percentage available is 1% with the deductibles of most insurance companies being 2% to 5%.
The second deductible is for “other perils” which would be fire, lightening, theft, and smoke damage. Insurance companies offer a fixed deductible with the lowest typically being $1,000.
2. Flood Insurance is separate- Flood insurance is NOT included in your homeowner’s insurance policy. The policy has to be purchased separately.
Around 3 am in the morning of Saturday, September 13th, I was awaken by the sound of Hurricane IKE roaring through our town of Spring Texas. I was not able to return to sleep the rest of the night as the sound of the howling of the wind and the beating of the rain kept me awake. The whole experience felt as if I was on a dingy in rough seas because the rain fueled by the wind made it sound like waves were crashing against my window panes.
Our electricity was knocked out around 1:30 am Saturday morning but the water, gas, and my land line were all still working. Later in the day, cell phone service went down. During hurricane Rita’s descent on our area, our electricity was only out of service for about an about which made it possible for us to receive the majority of our news updates by watching the weather channel.
Not this time. With no power, we called our family members in other states for updates on the location of the storm. We did have an additional and unexpected source of news. Somehow during the mist of a hurricane, the local paper, our Houston Chronicle was able to be safely delivered to our front yard. By the end of Saturday, hurricane IKE passed but not first without making its presence known.
We live in a community that was established within the last five years and as such the majority of the trees are 25 feet or smaller with the average size being about 12 feet tall. Thus the damage that was felt in our subdivision was minimal as it was limited to down tree limbs and some newer trees were left standing at a 45 degree angle.
The older more established communities in the Spring Texas area received major tree damage with some of the trees causing significant damage to the houses they fell on or went through and older property line fences were completely knocked down. Billboards were split in half, traffic signals went out along with the electricity, and pieces of fiberglass signs were scattered across the roadways. Read More »
All day today, my husband and I have been making preparations for the arrival of Hurricane Ike in Spring Texas. I am sure we are probably like a lot of other residents that wait until there’s a high probability that a Hurricane is coming our way before we prepare. Today was that day and the Hurricane … it’s name is Ike.
First decision of the day is do we pack up and leave or do we stay? If we lived on Galveston Beach or closer to the coast, it would be a more difficult decision for us. But in Spring Texas, we are located about an hour and 15 minutes from the coast. Far enough from the coast not to experience storm surge so we are staying. After all the old adage is “Run from water and Hide from wind”.
We are going to be on the dirty side of Hurricane IKE which means we are going to get dumped on with rain along with experiencing winds gusts that are projected to be 85 miles an hour. Not an ideal environment to be journeying out to a restaurant for meals which means we need to stock up on FOOD. We didn’t need a lot of food but enough to make it through at least three days and the food was to be non-refrigerated.
Out my husband went in search of food. Looking for food the day before a Hurricane is projected to make land fall is similar to foraging for food out in the wilderness. You have to take what you can find and be happy with it. What did my fearless hunter of food bring home? Potato Chips, Ho Hos, Potted Meat, and Bread. My only question was “Potted Meat? What in the heck is Potted Meat?” With shopping crossed off the list, next action item to tackle was Gas. Read More »
The topic for this post “Spring Texas home sellers missed opportunities” is courtesy of my husband, working partner, and fellow Prudential Gary Greene, Realtor, Rick Ratchford. Rick is an exclusive Buyers Agent meaning he only represents buyers and not sellers. I on the other hand represent both buyers and sellers but that’s a topic for a different post.
In his role as a buyer’s agent, Rick has in length discussions with buyers about their desires and needs in a home. He sets up an automatic email notification based upon specified home criteria for his buyers. So his buyers will be notified when a new home matching their criteria is added to the real estate market.
How does all this automatic email notification of new listings to potential buyers translate into missed opportunities for Spring Texas home sellers?
Its in the photos or in this case should I say lack of photos. Far too many times to count, Rick has seen email notification of new listings contain ZERO, ZILCH, NADA photos. Buyers purchase with their eyes. They do not write down the MLS number of the new listing and go search for it every day just to see if the listing agent has finally added photos.
Spring Texas home sellers you only have ONE opportunity to capitialize on pent up demand. If your listing agent is not on top of her / his game its gone. NO PHOTO AVAILABLE = NO SALE
If you are interested in purchasing a Spring Texas home, contact Rick at 281.300.3141 and he will set up an automatic email notification for you. You will then be one of the first to know when a new home is added to the market that matches exactly what you are looking for.
Yesterday I was at a closing with my buyers who were purchasing a Spring Texas home when a discussion arose about a St. Joseph statue that the sellers had buried in the front yard. The sellers believed that if you want to sell your home, you bury a St. Joseph statue in the yard, say a prayer, and before you know it the house will be SOLD.
Now for a little background on the sellers home, it had been on the market for 270 days which is 3X longer than the average days on market for Spring Texas homes. Its initial list price was $233,000. During the 270 days it was on the market it had been reduced three times. When my buyers and I viewed the home it was on the market for $194,500 or 16.5% less than its original list price.
The home was built in 1984 and although it had some recent updates of flooring in a couple of rooms and new kitchen counter tops and backsplash its window treatments and wallpaper dated the house. The house showed dark because of the heavy window treatments and the upstairs carpet was severely in need of stretching. I almost forgot to mention the blue carpeting on the stairs and in the upstairs gameroom.
DOM or Days on Market - what does it really mean? The simplest definition of Days on Market (DOM) is …. its the quantity of days a property has had an Active status in our multiple listing service. DOM is a statistic that is open to interpretation as to what it really means.
The average days on market for Spring Texas homes is approximately 90. So what does that say about a home that has been on the Spring Texas real estate market for more than 90 days? Ahhh … that’s where the interpretation of the statistic comes in.
If the home has been on longer than the average DOM does it mean -
A) something’s wrong with the home? NO. Although this could be a reason, there are numerous other reasons why the home is still sitting on the market.
OR
B) the seller will accept a low ball offer? Again NO. Countless buyers believe that the longer a home has been on the market the more willing a seller should be to accept a low ball offer. If the seller is in a dire financial situation this may be true. But there are many reasons beyond financial ones that create a need for a homeowner to want to sell his home including downsizing, upsizing, or job change.
There are probably as many reasons as why homes sit on the Spring Texas real estate market longer than the average as there are colors in a box of Crayola crayons. And I am not talking about the small little box of 8 crayons. I am talking about the super duper jumbo box. The box with the crayon sharpener in the back. Read More »
What’s going on with the Spring TX Real Estate Market?
• Decrease in closed sales. The 2008 YTD closed sales for MLS area 13 was 1,629 which is a decrease of 14.6%.
• Decrease in single-family median homes price of 1.8%. Even though the Spring Texas Real Estate market is experiencing a decrease in closed sales the GOOD NEWS is that our home prices are still remaining stable with only a small decrease over 2007.
There is no denying that our real estate taxes in Spring Texas are higher than in other states. But you shouldn’t ONLY take into consideration real estate taxes when considering whether its affordable to live in Spring Texas.
For 18 consecutive years the nonpartisan Tax Foundation has published an estimate of the combined state-local burden of each of the 50 states. And they have just released the State and Local tax burden estimates for 2008 and our big state of Texas came in as the 8th lowest state in state-local tax burden. And this rating of being in the top 10 lowest states in state-local tax burden is not a flux. We have enjoyed this ranking for the last four years.
We, Texans, pay 8.4 percent of our income in state and local taxes, compared to New Jersey at 11.8 percent, New York at 11.7 percent, Connecticut at 11.1 percent and Maryland at 10.8 percent. What’s the national average? Read More »
If you thought you missed out on the lower minimum down payment for FHA loans, don’t worry due to a postponement you still have time. The minimum down payment for FHA loans which was scheduled to increase from 3% to 3.5% on October 1, 2008 has been postponed. The revised effective date of the increase is now January 1, 2009.
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