Attitude and knowledge are your biggest weapons when dealing with lenders. Be polite at all times, but pretend that this is the 50th home you're going to buy and you're just doing it because you're bored. You don't need this home or this lender. You bought 10 homes last week.
A contingency is basically a statement in your purchase agreement that you will buy a house if some specific conditions are met or some particular event happens. Some of these conditions are external to that property and some of them are directly related to the property.
The amount of money acceptable varies from purchase to purchase, and may take in a number of factors. In areas where the market is hot, or strong, the buyers with the larger earnest money deposit offer may show the seller that they are more serious than others vying for the home.
Escrow is a way of keeping an amount of money safe while a legal transaction is going on. It's like having someone that both you and the buyer both trust hold on to payment for merchandise or services while the actual changing of hands takes place; in this case, the trustworthy helper is an account held by a broker. Escrow helps reduce the likelihood that either of the parties involved in the transaction will get scammed.
We can only try to prevent undertaking a real estate transaction that is fraught with problems such as existing liens, prior claims to the houses – including ex spouses that seem to pop up at inconvenient times, miraculously materializing lawsuits and other charming situations that can tie up a home for years while people argue over who gets what.
As a real estate agent, you are probably going to come across someone, somewhere who says, "Well you barely did any work at all! Why should I pay you this much?" You may feel that you are charging too much in light of this, especially if you are new to the game. However, there is a very good reason why you get paid what you do and why you should continue charging that amount.
There are many reasons to fire an abusive client. If someone is constantly bullying you, belittling you, criticizing your work or expressing doubts about your ethics, it is time to let them go. What you are being paid is not enough for the stress that an abusive client places on your emotional health and on your business.
The reasons to send clients a thank you note are many. If you help them sell their home, send them a thank you note. If they hire you to sell their home but in the time you work together the home doesn't get a buyer, send them a thank you for having hired you. If you help someone buy a home, even if you aren't successful, send them a note.
It also could help to go over how homes are bought and sold. First time buyers, especially, have no clue about how different home purchase is from the purchase of virtually anything else. Explain the purpose of each person involved in the real estate transaction and the paperwork involved.
The rates oft-quoted in a GFE are what they are at the moment - not what they are upon the signing of the loan papers. The GFE can be manipulated with little difficulty. "Oops, there was an extra fee there! Oh, did we forget to tell you about costs that we don't have to disclose on the GFE?" Ethical lenders will do everything they can to clearly explain the fee structure and interest rates, but as today's struggling market attests, not all lenders are ethical.
The decision of Fannie Mae to relax its rules on housing loan applicants might have some impact on foreclosures by state statistics, as homeowners opting for short sales are expected to benefit from the changes.
With the big push for home buying going on, there are some buyers who are finding that their first-time home buying experience might not be all that it's cracked up to be. There are a variety of ways that first time buyers can ensure that their experience is as good as they can possibly make it just by planning ahead and being a little skeptical of any claim that doesn't have proof to back it up.
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